A Guest Post by Zoey Martin of Good Goog

I am a reformed perfectionist. Not completely. I’m not perfect at it. See? I’m reformed.

Perfectionism is a nice idea, alluring even. ‘Do your best’, ‘aim for the stars’, ‘give it your all’. The problem is that these goals are completely unquantifiable. How will I know if it was my absolute best? Is this the stars or the moon? Maybe I could have done a little bit better. And that’s the insidious nature of perfectionism, you could always have done better.

Perfectionism is a black hole of neediness.

Your best is never good enough. Because ‘good enough’ isn’t in perfectionism’s vocabulary. Unlike ‘die trying’ which I’m pretty sure is. And perfectionists are always disappointed, always. And speaking from experience, they also tend to be paralyzed by fear most of the time.

Example: In my former life, I re-wrote a prologue more than 100 times. That’s not an exaggeration, I’m being conservative. Imagine that, over 100 times, on a manual typewriter. All for two pages of text, at best. Perfectionism sells itself as the ideal, the apex, what you could be if all the stars aligned. But it’s a silver-tongued enemy, holding you back, and down, and out.

Your inner perfectionist will tell you that anything less than full, unbridled perfectionism is lazy, unacceptable and just plain wrong. Don’t listen! Let your passion be unbridled, allow yourself to actually jump into a project rather than agonizing over it and make mistakes fearlessly. People boast about being perfectionists, but deep down, they all know that perfectionism isn’t a friend, or even a frenemy, it’s an albatross around their neck. Because guess what? You could write a prologue 100 times or you could write a whole novel in half the time.

But even reformed perfectionists need a plan. Here’s how I battled perfectionism and won:

1) Realize that perfectionism is the antithesis to happiness This takes time. But whenever you feel perfectionism rise within you, take a moment. Remind yourself of why you have chosen not to see your life and your efforts in this way. Know that if you throw everything at a project, invest your heart and your passion and your mind, you will be entirely secure in the outcome no matter what.

2) Indulge in guilty pleasures Sometimes, us reformed perfectionists need to indulge in certain behavior. I used to alphabetize. It’s therapeutic. All our books, DVDs in a happy perfect order. Because thankfully books and DVDs are not human and they really are that simple. Unleash all that perfectionism in bursts of activity if need be. You’ll be pleased to know that I no longer alphabetize. My bursts of perfectionism are limited to the occasional spring clean.

3) Keep Your Eye on the Prize Perfectionists of have a nasty habit of not getting anything done. If everything is so perfect, why are they so ineffectual? Because a perfectionist starts with the goal of folding the laundry and ends up re-organizing the entire wardrobe, re-folding everything and possibly even moving the aforementioned wardrobe into a better position. Don’t fall in to the trap. Develop a finite goal and stick to it. Trust me, it’s a lot quicker too.

4) Make Mistakes and Like It Mistakes aren’t the problem, being paralyzed into inaction is. Re-frame in your own mind how you relate to mistakes. Don’t think of them as something to be avoided. Mistakes are opportunities. And not in the unrealistic, fake I-am-in-prison-but-it’s-a-good-thing-because-I-get-all-this-free-time kind of way. In the way that anything worth doing risks a mistake (or several). You cannot truly be passionate about something unless you’re wiling to get something wrong. You don’t learn anything by standing back on the sidelines. You learn by knowing that when you fall down, you’ll find a way to get back up again.

5) Perfectionism Isn’t a Personality Trait Seriously. It’s not. Perfectionism is a coping mechanism for unpredictability. It introduces all kind of comforting control. You are not changing yourself by renouncing perfectionism, you’re taking the first step to discovering who you are without armor.

Taking the Plunge

Perfectionism is a habit. A bad one. And change doesn’t always come easy, or overnight. It’s a choice that will be made a million times over. But it is liberating, and it is worthwhile. Start small, set goals and stick to them. Don’t allow relapses into perfectionism dissuade you from your chosen course. Alphabetize at will. Allow yourself to make mistakes – you might finish a book, you might uncover a hidden talent or you might stumble upon something even better – the ability to surprise yourself and others. Reform yourself. Go ahead. I dare you.

The ideal of writing is to be thoughtful, memorable, meaningful and evocative. Perfectionism is an epic deception – promising the pinnacle of achievement and offering only self doubt, procrastination and inaction. The secret to changing it is simple. Don’t stop being a perfectionist. Start being passionate. Start taking risks. Start discovering who you are. Do you want to be great? Then stop being perfect.

Zoey Martin writes about parenting, general neurosis and toddler mayhem at Good Goog. She also blogs about books for little people and their admirers at Little People Books. She takes too many photos and tweets far more than is healthy @zoeyspeak.

A Guest Post by Bamboo Forest of Pun Intended

What’s the ultimate hack for writing productivity?

Set a timer… folks.

There’s no better way to plug into your writing and destroy distractions than by setting a timer and telling your mind youíll write for the allotted time you’ve chosen. It works like Jedi magic.

And come to think of it… Magic is what you need in an online world where you’re distracted every couple seconds.

When you set a timer and seriously commit yourself to writing for a duration of time you’ve chosen, you’ve just single handedly put yourself in a bubble of kick-ass. It’s actually the place I feel most at home.

Nothing can touch you here. Twitter? It’s got nothing on you. Nothing. Instant messenger? Sorry! You ain’t welcome around here, kid. The phone? If you put it on silence for the duration of time your timer’s ticking, I can assure that when your writing time ends, you’ll be looking sharper than ever and no harm will come. You’ll have accomplished something great. You can check your phone when you’re done, OK?

Nothing Grows Our Blog Like Great Writing

There’s a lot of  little ways to tweak your blog. Lots of little tidbits, nuggets and sprinkles you can glean from blogs on blogging that may help you…†a little.

But let’s get real, shall we? None of that, absolutely none of it is really going to grab the attention of prospective readers like prose that grabs them by the throats and keeps them there until the last line has been read. Great writing is the number one ingredient that gets our blogs out there and admired.

Let’s do this.

So my advice if you’re strapped for time as many of us surely are: Use the time you have almost exclusively on creating awesome content.

Here’s what Leo Babauta, who knows a little bit about this, has to say about what worked for him while he was working full time and doing freelance writing on top of it:

“What’s the most important thing a blogger can do to grow his blog and readership? Write great content. Not add links or widgets to the sidebar, not check stats, not reading or commenting other blogs, not even responding to comments or email. Writing great content. That’s by far the most important thing you can do.” [Bold emphasis mine]

And it’s not like you have to complete a full post in one sitting. Nonsense. You could set a timer for 15 minutes a day of hard, focused writing and by the end of the week finish a†solid post or two. Using a timer for our writing sessions forces us to put everything aside and write like maniacs until it sounds. It makes the little time we do have, laser focused. And even if we do have a fair amount of time on our hands, it helps us stay miles away from the distractions that bombard us, keeping us honest.

So yeah… We can say we’ll write five minutes from now and we just might. We can say we’ll write after we’ve eaten supper and… well… maybe we will.

Or…

We can be real. We can be writers. We can do this. We can set a timer, commit ourselves to working non-stop until it sounds and feel proud at what we’ve accomplished. That’s what I’m talking about. You with me on this?

After all this talk about using a timer to generate focused, timely writing, you’d think I’d offer you a resource to use right about now? Wouldn’t ya? Of course I will, child.

Online Timer for Writers

I’ve recently given birth to a little, humble site with a timer you can freely use 7 days a week, 365 days a year (Even during all major holidays). This site was spawned by me, one of your fellow and very, very obsessed writers. Setting a timer has worked wonders for getting me to write and to increase my general productivity and it’ll probably help you enormously as well.

So if you want to kill procrastination and plug into a time frame where you do nothing but write, I recommend you head on over to my little site, Tick Tock Timer.

Oh… and when you hear the gongs going off… after you’ve just finished writing a kick-ass blog post that’ll put massive smiles on the faces of many… I want you to party like it’s 1999.

Bamboo Forest writes for Pun Intended. He’s created an online timer that makes bloggers ridiculously productive.

A guest Post by Annabel Candy of Get in the Hotspot

Have you noticed how easy non-writers think writing is? When you’re a writer that can be frustrating.

There are three main things about writing that make it lack the social proof people expect of professional activities.

• It’s intangible – Many people don’t seem to consider writing a proper job, maybe because often writers type away for days with apparently little to show for it. Yes, there may be the occasional article in a newspaper, possibly even a published book you can actually show people. But even then that small book, an object you can hold in one hand, isn’t a good indication of the many hours, months or possibly years of work that went in to actually writing it.
• It’s unpaid - This is true even of successful, established and published writers, people like Zen Habits and Write to Done founder Leo Babauta who still regularly give away his writing on his own blogs and elsewhere. Many writers have blogs they write unpaid and if you’re not paid for something then other people tend to see it as a hobby and an unnecessary indulgence when for most writers creating a blog is a carefully planned career move.
• It’s intellectual – People see hard work as being physical like laboring, or stressful like being a fighter pilot. They don’t realize the kind of mental determination that writing calls for, the inner motivation that’s required to get you writing and keep you going until you actually finish the work.

No wonder writers often struggle with motivation.

Writing is a common dream for people. Yet most people who dream about writing don’t actually do it. Some of them hardly even read. Meanwhile writers who do actually earn a living from their work still struggle to stay motivated and keep writing.

Faced with all this opposition, both external and internal, how can we motivate ourselves to get writing and keep at it?

Here are six ideas that work :

1. Get motivated
   Accept responsibility for you own actions. Acknowledge that you’re the only person who can do this. That if you don’t glue your backside to the chair and first start, then finish writing your article or book, no one else is going to do it for you.
2. Create tight imaginary deadlines for yourself to spur you on.
   Try pretending you only have one hour to write today and that can be a good incentive to get on with it. Or ask yourself what you’d start or finish writing if you only had a month to live.I motivated myself to write a 70,000 word manuscript by telling myself that if I didn’t write it that year I never would. These scare tactics do work and best of all no one has to die in the process.
3. Commit to your writing.
   Work out how much time you can give to your writing and when. Schedule it in your diary it. Make it a part of your routine and keep at it until it becomes a true habit.Now stay focused. If it’s a book you need to be able to maintain your focus for months. For a shorter piece like a blog post or an article you need to focus for one or two hours.
4. Remove all distractions.
   You know what they are. Unplug the phone, turn off your router, find a place where you can write away oblivious to the household duties which are being neglected.Try using a kitchen timer to keep you seated and writing. Set the timer for an hour and write away. When the time’s up have a five minute break then repeat until the piece is finished.
5. Use motivational tools.
   Don’t dismiss Twitter as a waste of time waster or, at best, a simple networking tool. I’ve found it a powerful way to motivate myself and other people. It surprised me too but here’s how it happened.I followed a well known novelist and journalist called John Birmingham @johnbirmingham on Twitter.I noticed that he constantly tweeted how many words he’d written on a project and how many he was about to write. He’s prolific and his word count put me to shame so I decided to try his tactic and see if it helped me.First thing in the morning, I’d tweet:”Three jobs: edit chap two of fiction manuscript, finish short story for the competition, write blog post for Get In the Hot Spot.”Then I made updates on my progress via Twitter, as the day went on, such as:”Chapter two edited and looking good. About to update my blog now. Hope you’ve had a productive morning too.”

   I know this sounds ridiculously simple and unnecessary too, but if it works as a motivational tool, that has to be a good thing.

6. Try co-motivation
   Sometimes on Twitter I’ve challenge other writers or bloggers to a word race if I know they’re in the same boat as me. As we both write more than we would have otherwise, we both end up winning. I’ve found that innocent bystanders who’ve seen my word count tweets are motivated and inspired by that just as I was by John Birmingham.This type of motivation even has a proper name. Appropriately enough for writers it’s called “bookmarking”.

   Basically, you tell someone your goal and then update them regularly on your progress. It may be a friend, but it can be anyone, and it can also be done on the phone, with a text message, face to face, or on Twitter where you don’t even need anyone specific to report too.One brilliant side-effect of this is that as well as John Birmingham motivating himself and me, my progress reports have motivated other people too.

   One man told me that my tweets about writing and my word count have inspired him to start writing again. Another Australian writer Peter Moore @travdude who’s published six travel books, emailed me saying”I’m impressed that you’re knocking out those kind of numbers in a family environment.”

Final word on motivation

Who cares if writing’s intangible, unpaid and misunderstood? We mark our progress in words written and don’t worry that most of them will be removed in the end. We pay ourselves a favor each time we put pen to paper and practice our craft. We wage a war against lassitude and writer’s block on a daily basis and we win.

We just sit down to write no matter how hard it is, because no one else can write it like us.

How do you start writing and stick to it even though it’s easier not to? Please share your tips in the comments.

On the Internet it’s just the same as in real life ~ if you spend time with positive, inspiring people, you’ll be motivated to improve yourself and work harder.

Brrng, Brrng! Got to go now, the timer’s ringing. Have a super duper and highly productive day everyone.

Annabel Candy writes about self improvement at Get In the Hot Spot. She runs a web design company with her husband and manages to stay mostly focused on her writing despite the general mayhem created by their three children. To have as word count race or boast about how much you’ve written, tweet her @inthehotspot

Image credit: Photo by CarbonNY

A guest post by Bamboo Forest of Pun Intended

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a method ensuring every article you wrote was concise, relentlessly focused and said everything you wanted it to?

There is.

I recommend using a thesis statement and outline for many posts that you pen.

Jesse Hines has written,

“A thesis statement is generally one or two sentences in which you clearly lay out your focus, idea or argument.”

While in an academic setting a thesis statement is included in your actual paper, I’m referring to something you write just for yourself. Write a thesis statement before you begin your post and it will set the tone for the rest of your article. It will encourage you to stay consistently aligned with what you’re trying to get across, making your article stronger and better.

After the thesis statement has been made, you’re now ready for the outline.

Have you ever gone to the grocery store without a grocery list? I don’t know about you, but I have. And the outcome often results in forgetting important items that you really wanted to purchase. It’s a real bummer, isn’t it?

This can happen with your writing, too. If you write a post without first gathering exactly what you want to include, you’re bound to forget a few important points that would have made your article better. Let’s not do that.

Prior to writing an outline, I recommend you first look over any notes you have pertaining to the post you’re about to write.

Then, simply break it down. I take a real relaxed approach to writing an outline and I recommend you do as well. Remember, we’re not submitting this outline to a stuffy teacher. We’re simply preparing ourselves to write the best post of our life.

I break my outline down using capital letters, A;B;C; etc. After each letter I include an important point that I don’t want to forget while writing my article. The outline ensures that everything I wanted to get into my article, does. It also keeps the order and flow of my post logical.

Another benefit of using an outline is it encourages†very tight writing.

Jesse Hines has written,

“Once I’ve developed a solid outline, writing the article is, in a sense, simply filling in the blanks.”

When you know from the beginning exactly what your article is going to encompass, you fill those blanks in with ultra focus. You say only what you need to say to get the specific points across.

Of course, as you’re writing your post and referring back to your outline — you’re not beholden to it. You can change the order as you see fit.

Also, youíll most likely include more information in your post than your outline lays out. This will happen organically from the main points you wanted to ensure got included in your post.

Using a thesis statement and outline in your writing is like laying down a strong foundation before building a house. Your architecture will end up stronger, and more beautiful.

P.S. — This is my outline for this guest post:

A. Wouldn’t it be great…
B. What’s a thesis statement?
C. It helps you stay focused and not drift all over the place
D. An outline works like a grocery list
E. What’s an outline?
F. Conducive to being concise, because now you’re essentially filling in the blanks.
G. Conclusion: The preparation stages are like laying down a strong foundation to a house.

Bamboo Forest writes for†Pun Intended, a blog that will make you laugh and feel inspired. To ensure you don’t miss all the goodies,†subscribe†here.