productivity

Here’s What I’d Tell Myself If I Had To Start Over In Writing

/ Stuart Danker / 40 Comments
Start Over Climb - Michal Matlon

A person climbing up rocky stairs on a mountain

Sometimes I feel like a sham, giving out writing advice. Maybe it’s because I haven’t achieved much through writing lately. Or maybe I’ve been relying too much on goat sacrifices rather than actual skill.

Who am I to tell people how to approach their art, am I right?

But what I can do, however, is tell my younger self what to do. And perhaps by doing so, I can inspire you to reassess your writing as well.

So today, I present you, the unsolicited writing advice I’d give myself if I had to start over with writing.

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How I Use Lists To Help Me Write Better And Smarter

/ Stuart Danker / 70 Comments

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Life happens. It always does. And when that time arrives, writing is always the first thing to go.

I myself often fall victim to the increasing demands of life. Of having to earn a living. Of preparing to have a family. Of dealing with emergencies. But that doesn’t mean I have to set my writing aside.

Which is why I’ve come up with these lists that turbocharge my writing.

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Don’t Just Procrastinate. Make It Do The Work For You Instead.

/ Stuart Danker / 61 Comments

A hand sticking out from under the sheets, with

I’ve always used procrastination as a power tool. For example, I use it as motivation to clean the house. All I need to do is start writing and the laundry will magically take care of itself.

Which brings us to the topic of productive procrastination (that shall henceforth be known as PP, hee hee). Can we actually leverage our lazy tendencies to get more done? Or is it doing us more harm than good?

Let’s find out.

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How To Shift Gears And Rev Up Your Productivity

/ Stuart Danker / 58 Comments

Orange supercar with superimposed text saying: go from 0–100 real quick (kinda)

When’s the last time you drove a stick shift?

Seems like an irrelevant question, until you recall the fact that I’m a writer. And as it turns out, being a writer affords me the ability to make the zaniest of analogies. Hence today we officiate the marriage between productivity and driving a manual transmission.

But first off, let’s discuss productivity overdrive (PO). Is it a fancy new term I made up? Yes. Is it important? Not really. Should we still treat it like pre-existing corporate lingo? Most definitely.

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Why You Should Plan Your Days The Night Before

/ Stuart Danker / 67 Comments

Plan Journal - Lauren Sauder

You know how optimistic you feel at night, and you tell yourself tomorrow’s going to be different?

Maybe you’ll wake up before sunrise for once. Maybe even go for a run. And that’s the least ambitious thing you can think of.

Then the next day rolls around and all your dreams fall victim to the snooze button, sometimes quite literally.

That tends to happen a lot when you start your day without a plan. In a previous post, I mentioned the benefits of planning your day ahead of time, and I still do believe in its powers.

My planned days unfold much smoother than my unplanned ones, for some reason. It’s almost as if the universe acknowledges my efforts to live better. There must be a magic to this. And it’s this magic that we’ll be exploring today.

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