Productivity

We are all lazy people. We love to procrastinate, we find comfort in sleeping, we idle away time as though it were a useless commodity, and we have all built our personal utopias where we do everything except work.

It’s perfectly natural to be lazy. I imagine that if it wasn’t for the deadlines and binding commitments that force us to do work, none of us would go back to those dungeons, aka offices.

Thankfully though, we realize that laziness should be overcome in order for us to be successful and be useful to the society.

So, what to do to beat laziness and reclaim the lost inspiration?

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So, which one of you wants to become an authority blogger?

Hmm.. I see quite a few hands raised in the air, but are you up for the challenge?

What is an authority blogger?

Before we talk about the ways to become an authority blogger, let’s first put down a quick and dirty definition of authority blogger. Quite simply, an authority blogger is someone who is sitting at the very top in his niche. Authority bloggers are an inspiration for newbies, they are considered an authority on their subject, they get a whole lot of attention, and they make very many of us jealous.

What is important to note is that it takes real expertise to become an authority blogger. People are all not fools, they know who to trust and whom not to.

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Are you by any chance a shy bloogger? I have a sad news for you: you are going to fail as a blogger if you have not already. Blogging is about socialising, and a self-conscious person lacking good social skills can never be a blogger, let alone a good blogger.

Not sure whether you are a shy blogger or not, and what do I mean by that? Here are some clues: You think a hundred times before writing a sentence, you delete whole paragraphs from your posts just because they make you look bad, you are scared to say something foolish, and.. you are too shy in dealing with your readers. If you are shaking your head in horror, you are, sadly, a shy blogger.

Not to worry though, because shyness can be overcome once you know you are unreasonably shy about things others could care less about.

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“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci

The simple always leaves the strongest impression. A simple design is beautiful, simple writing is clear, and simple expressions are pure.

When I write a blog post, I tend to wander into small details and make it so complex that it becomes difficult to sum it up. I have to revise and unstuff the whole thing many times to reduce it to a simple piece that conveys the same meaning more efficiently than a long-winded complex one.

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Writer’s block or blogger’s block happens when you run out of things to post about, and your brain simply refuses to generate new ideas. If you see a blogger staring at blank computer screen, looking puzzled and upset, he’s probably experiencing writer’s block.

If it’s any consolation, it happens to all of us. Even the most prolific and creative bloggers hit creative roadblocks.

Where does writer’s block come from?

It is important to know why we experience writer’s block. There are a number of emotional and physical factors that directly or indirectly contribute to the build-up of writer’s block. So, before you frustrate yourself even more by allowing this condition to get the better of you, you must identify what is causing the block.

Physical factors

You experience writer’s block because:

• You are overworked and tired.
• You didn’t get enough sleep.
• You are hungry, or dehydrated.
• You are ill.

And so on.

Emotional factors

You experience writer’s block because:

• You are scared.
• You are pressured.
• You are stressed.
• You are married!

And so on.

How to overcome writer’s block

You can’t overcome writer’s block by simply agonizing about it. Staring at screen and waiting for ideas to pop into your mind won’t work.

Once you have identified the cause of writer’s block, you can take appropriate steps to overcome it.

When I am stressed or tired and need to clear my head to continue working because of a tight deadline, I do any of the following:

• Take a long walk.
• Listen to soothing music.
• Close my eyes, and shut off all kinds of thoughts.
• Call an old friend and reminisce about the old days.
• Do something that I enjoy doing.
• Spend time with relatives/family.

These things work by providing distraction from the continuous stress of work. You can do all that and more when you hit a writer’s block to distract yourself and come back with re-energized brain.

Ways to practically eliminate writer’s block

Look for inspiration

As I emphasized earlier, ideas don’t pop out of nothing. If you want your creative juices to start flowing again, look for inspiration on other blogs. You can take an idea that is already being discussed by your fellow bloggers and put a creative spin on it.

Following technique has always worked for me:

1. I open up my feed reader and start browsing randomly.
2. I keep an eye open for anything that might strike me as interesting.
3. As soon as I read a word or phrase that inspires a new idea, I close the reader.
4. I now take that idea and start dissecting it into small pieces.
5. When the dissection is over, I expand on all those pieces and eventually join them together.

In this process I do not forget to look at the pieces from even the most absurd perspectives. This way, I make sure I am putting my own spin on the idea rather than parroting what others have already said.

Write a story

Sometimes it is very difficult to even start off the process of writing. To overcome this annoying obstacle and put the pen in a writing flow, I do something very simple.

I write a story.

Writing a story that you won’t publish is the easiest thing to do. Start from any imaginable place, create and manipulate new characters, and breath a life into your story. It’s ridiculously easy and it works.

If you are not a good story-teller, you can write a detailed log of your day’s activities. Write down what you have been doing since you got up in the morning, and let your brain work on the details. Once you notice that you have developed a writing flow, and it has become easier to put a new color on otherwise mundane details of your day’s routine, you are ready to go back and start writing the real thing!

Conclusion

Writer’s block is the result of fatigue and stress of our hectic lives and our own willingness to let it prevail over us. With a logical approach towards pinpointing the cause of writer’s block and taking steps to overcome it, you are very much on your way to restore your writing fluency.

Do you hit writer’s block often? What do you do to overcome it? Please share your techniques in comments.

Update: I have submitted this post to Problogger’s group writing project. So, let’s see if it gets approved. I am keeping my fingers crossed!

I was browsing my feeds in Google Reader when I saw this compelling title in Copy Blogger feeds summary. The title said “10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer” I clicked on it expecting some well organized bulleted list of writing advice, but what came up made me chuckle. The advice only consists of one point, which is ‘write‘ Of course we all know it is practice that makes man perfect, but it was a good humorous reminder that we shouldn’t be slacking when we are supposed to be writing.

Without more ado here is the link 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer

Though, I’d disagree on point 5 which says ‘write when you don’t want to’. Well, this is kind of harsh with yourself don’t you think? There are times when we don’t want to do even the most interesting and important thing in our life, and if we force ourselves to do it we end up making a mess of it. So we’d be better off doing something else rather than obsessing about writing.

One good suggestion would be that we should be reading when we don’t feel like writing. Reading is equally important, because we get ideas for our own writing from reading others writing. And there is a good chance that when we finish reading our fingers will be itching to type!

While you are at it, don’t miss the post I wrote earlier on becoming a better reader.

The amount of memory we have can not be increased, but our ability to learn and remember can be improved. We have to make the memorizing a conscious habit. Like everything else we do is (hopefully) methodical, reading, remembering and memorizing should also be done with a few important guidelines in mind.

The following tips are going to help you get better at reading books and retaining the read information, though you can apply the same techniques to newspapers, articles and information in any other printed/written form.

Take a bird’s eye view - Make it a habit to review what you are going to read. Skim through pages and let your eyes rest for a while on bolded words and section headlines. This cursory inspection will give you a good idea of what to expect in the book, and what it is all about.

Mission rememberable - Reading is like storing the information on a RAM, and remembering is like saving it to the hard disk. Therefore to save the information to hard disk, so you can access it later, you have to literally save it to your brain. Don’t get it? Remembering is not difficult if you remember the fact that you want to remember what you are reading. Seems like a no-brainer but often times we read to temporarily store the important points in a disposable corner of our brain, with the intention to forget it later. If you truly intend to permanently remember what you read, you most certainly will.

May the Stephen Spielberg be with you! - What is easy to remember, a visual film or a written book? Let me guess: you answer is film. You can watch the events described in a book unfold on the cinema screen of your mind as you relay the information to it via two projectors (your eyes) So, visualize as you read. Visualizing while reading occurs naturally in mind’s eye, but when you make a concious effort to run a film (directed by you) of events you are reading, you make sure that you are going to remember them for a long time.

Re-read the sections not passages - While reading, if you come across a difficult passage or concept, don’t stop. It is likely that it will be explained in detail later by the author. If you don’t quite get the concept even after you have read the whole section, come back and re-read the difficult part, hopefully you’ll be able to understand it in the light of other related information you have just read.

Thinking is not just for philosophers - Thinking is important. This is when you relate the newly acquired ideas to the facts you already know, and make sense of them. Relax, drink water and think after finishing every chapter to make the new facts a part of the remembered facts.

Don’t overdo it - Don’t take the whole book in one go. Our brains are not designed to work like a donkey. Take breaks after every thirty or so minutes, or whenever you feel tired and feel that your attention is wandering a lot. Likewise, spread the study sessions over a week or so depending on the length of the book.

Write while you read - Take notes. If you are lazy, don’t bother reading this tip, but if you insist you are not, take notes as soon as you come across interesting or important points. The notes should just be in the form of key words or little scribbles. The key words will help you easily remember the whole passages when reviewed later.

Well, that’s about it. There is a lot more that can be said about organized and methodical reading and remembering, but above are good starting points.

Let me know if you like this post, I’ll do another post on remembering names, numbers, addresses, faces and so on.