I'm still going to finish this whole book in less than a week. Probably it will take me five days. (It took six.) We're going to find out together as I continue to dictate.
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Action Steps
Eliminate as many distractions as possible.
Commit to breaking through the initial writing phase and hitting the zone.
Train the people around you to respect your writing zone.
Develop a writing ritual and take it very seriously.
Believe that writing is a skill and that makes it possible to improve.
Do a sprint session to find a benchmark of words per hour. Track what caused you to lose focus.
Keep tracking your words per hour and words per day.
Keep notes about all of the distractions that kick you out of your zone and the things that interfere with you even getting into your zone at all.
Part XI
The Art of Experimentation
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
- Denis Diderot
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Trained to Distract Ourselves
Distractions are one of the true challenges for this type of career. Any career where you’re the boss, where you are the entrepreneur, requires a great deal of focus. When you're working in an office, you're working for someone else. You can spend time being distracted, and it doesn't matter.
For most jobs, we get paid for how many hours we are there. Even if you're on a salary job, ninety percent of your paycheck comes from putting in the hours rather than the quality of your work. It is no surprise that a recent study found that many Americans spend six hours a day playing with e-mail. In an eight-hour workday, we only get two hours of productive work.
When you're working for yourself, efficiency is far more important. If we can create a day where you can work for eight hours without any distractions, we will quadruple your productivity. You will get a week’s worth of writing done every single day.
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Email is so Distracting
To overcome these time-wasting distractions, we will build systems. I use a very simple system to prevent losing six hours a day to email; I only check my email once a day. By having a fixed time to check email, I no longer feel any urgency to check email again the rest of the day. I used to be a smartphone guy who had my phone connected to over a dozen different email accounts.
Each of my pen names has an email address attached to it. I have more than a dozen active email accounts for my projects and partnerships, in addition to my personal accounts and support addresses.
Throughout the day, at my peak, I was getting over a thousand e-mails a day, and my phone would buzz in my pocket every few minutes. I would check it even when I was driving. I would even imagine phantom vibrations and look at my phone only to discover no messages waiting for me.
We attach so much importance to email when it's not important. Since I switched to answering email once a day, I haven't had any problems. I've never had a problem that couldn't be handled within twenty-four hours. Checking email is how I start my day, and when it’s done that task is off my plate for another twenty-four hours.
The key to transitioning to one email check a day is managing expectations. I tell everyone that I only check email once a day. It’s one of the first things I tell new contacts. When they expect it, they no longer overreact when it takes me a day to reply to them. My coaching clients all know that I check my email every evening between six and eight P.M. EST.
If you send me an email, and you are certainly welcome to, that is when I will reply. If you accepted the free gift at the start of this book, then I emailed you from my personal email account instantly. There is already a message from me waiting in your inbox. If you reply to that message, I’ll get back to you within twenty-four hours.
I answer each email personally, so you will have to wait for my daily email checking session. I do hope that you decide to turn this into a real relationship with me. If you email me, I can offer you more customized advice and guide you down the path to success. This could be the start of something amazing.
So far I haven’t had a single emergency from my email system. The only change is that I have more freedom and less stress in my life. We waste massive amounts of time throughout the day. Rather than tracking all the time you waste and constantly making you write down every time you do something naughty, I just want to focus on these moments where we're trying to write.
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The Skill of Focus
We are trying to develop the skill of focus. As I mentioned earlier, we are born with natural talents, but we can always improve our skills. The ability to focus is a skill. I know this because I have terrible focus. My focus problem is so severe that I went to a doctor to see if I needed to take medication to improve my focus.
I was anxious. I'm just about two or three years older than the generation where they put every single kid on medication because they decided that approximately twenty-five percent of male students have a problem and need to be medicated. I'm very lucky that they never got me with that because those powerful medications limit and often destroy your creativity.
I just get very distracted by all of my ideas. That's why I'm working on so many projects; I love to do so many things, and it's why I need to write fast.
The thought of spending an entire month writing a book is my nightmare. The longest book I've ever written was Serve No Master. I wrote ninety-three thousand words in four days.
I don't have the attention span to work on the same book for months on end. Some authors spend months or even years writing their book, but that doesn't work for me. So I've developed a system that allows me to write very quickly.
When you're dealing with distraction, when you're dealing with your focus issues (and you will have them because everyone does), it’s vital to self-analyze. We're going to test different techniques to see which one works best for you.
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The Great Pomodoro Experiment
The idea that there's a universal technique for writing fast that works for everyone is garbage, and I hate books that teach that. It's an easy out. If I said there was one method for writing fast, and I only taught you that one single method that only worked for twenty percent of my readers, this book would probably sell a lot more copies, but it would violate my sense of integrity.
Because I've worked with so many authors, I know that everyone writes in different ways. Everyone needs different techniques because we're all different, unique, amazing individual people. Some people learn visually, some learn through sound, and some learn from writing. We all learn in different ways, and we know that there's tons of science behind that; this process is the same thing.
Many people I know swear by the Pomodoro Technique. This system is extremely strict. You work for a fixed block of time and then you do something else. The day is broken up into twenty- or thirty-minute blocks. My neighbor breaks his day up into twenty-minute blocks, and he is only allowed to work on any project for two blocks in a row. Other people do thirty-minute blocks which include twenty-five minutes of work and a five-minute break in each block.
This system is very useful for people who require this rigidity. The clock controls everything you do in this system, and it is extremely effective for many people.
Rather than start with a random block of time and test your writing ability within that structure, we want to start in the other direction. We will test and stretch your writing ability and focus. We will develop Pomodoro blocks that are based on your natural talents. The best writing and rest lengths for you will be very different than they are for the other writers around you.
The only way to find your numbers is through experimentation and testing. This is a process where we can get better results by having a solid testing strategy.
> 113
You are a Snowflake
I can give everyone better results by teaching them how to self-test and improve. Rather than just giving everyone a single process that doesn't work for many people, we now have a system that you can develop and improve yourself. You can continually become a better writer.
It is time to start studying yourself as we enter a phase of experimentation. Try writing at different times of the day. Experiment with different types of sprints. Mix up the lengths of your sprints and the breaks you take in between them. Track yourself writing dialogue versus writing action scenes versus writing exposition.
I write different material in different ways. I write blog posts, articles, emails, podcast show notes and books all differently. I have a different rhythm for each writing task. Now I am dictating a book for the first time, and this workflow is different too.
Each writing process is a little bit different, and the more you can self-analyze without attaching negative emotions to the process, the better your writing will become. When you try twenty-five-minute Pomodoro writing sessions with five-minute breaks, and they don’t work, do NOT call that a failure. Don’t think of yourself as a loser or weak writer. Focus on the fact that you have eliminated another possible technique from your list. You are one step closer to success.
When you hit a setback, I want you to say, “That's not the right technique for me. I will continue to experiment, and I'm going to find the method that works for me best.” The 20K System is a process. Becoming a fast and efficient writer is a process, not a single moment.
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Hold the Breaks
I have been a professional writer for seven years, and I’m still finding ways to improve my writing skills. My quality is certainly better now than when I started. This is the first time I’ve ever dictated a book. Most people think that after a few years you can become set in your ways. That’s not the right approach at all. I’m always looking for ways to improve my process.
When you are experimenting with different writing blocks, you must be very strict with the length of your breaks. Measuring your breaks is critical. If you are supposed to be on a ten-minute break, and you fire up Facebook or start watching a movie, you can easily go over time.
It takes an unbelievable amount of willpower to stop a movie after ten minutes and go back to writing. I wasn’t able to do this until a year or two ago. For my first five years as a professional writer, if I started a movie, I couldn’t turn it off. It’s very easy to turn a ten-minute break into two hours. Don’t get sucked into this temptation. Save your rewards for the end of the day or a longer break.
If you're in the middle of reading a newspaper article and your timer beeps, you need to switch gears immediately. One of the reasons I prefer longer writing sessions is that I also prefer longer breaks. I usually start my day at five AM and take my first big break at noon. Sometimes my break is two or even three hours. But that’s ok. By that point, I’ve already worked seven hours. That’s more than most people get done all day.
If you are in the middle of a distraction and the alarm beeps, it can take you longer to get back into the writing rhythm. It takes me five to ten minutes to get back into my writing groove. For those first few minutes, I still have leftover thoughts swirling in my brain. If I only wrote for ten-minute sessions, I would never even get close to the zone.
Don’t start anything that will take longer than the length of your break. It can mess up your timing and ruin your tracking results.
I hate television. Television is a real curse in our society because it's so powerful as a distraction. There is no beginning, and there is no end. I long for fifty and sixty years ago when at a certain time of night all the television shows ended. They would just show a test pattern and tell you to go to sleep. Now you can watch TV and be “entertained” twenty-four hours a day, while your mind turns to pudding.
If you want to integrate watching video into your breaks, then you need to change the way you absorb that content. You need to watch movies, or you need to download television shows and watch them in time blocks. If you are a marathon writer like me, you can use those longer breaks to watch TV shows.
Perhaps you'll find that one hour on and twenty minutes off is what works for you. So you watch, and you write for an hour, and then you watch a twenty-minute television show that you've downloaded or that you have on your D.V.R. Watching a recording removes the temptation to flow right into the next program.
I’m going to be super honest with you right now. You deserve that. I’m adding this chapter in during the editing process. One of my big personal challenges is how I read. I read a book nearly every single day. As soon as I finish a book, I start the next one. Just like a smoker lighting the next cigarette with the butt of the last one, my Kindle allows me to just keep on reading. I just started a new book and realized what was happening. The opening scene had a great fistfight between a cop and a bunch of vampires. I could tell this fight scene was about to get engaging. I had to force myself to turn off my Kindle and sit back down to edit more of this chapter. With a Kindle, reading can be just as distracting as television now.
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Broken Rhythm
You need a beginning and an end to whatever you choose to do during your break time.
The danger when you're developing your new writing rhythm is that if you extend your breaks you lose your rhythm. It will affect everything else. You might have a great twenty-minute sprint, but then if you extend your five-minute break into ten minutes, your entire schedule will be knocked off course. You will lose your word count for the day. Everything will be just a little bit off.
Whenever I lose my writing rhythm, I know that the whole session and possibly the whole day is toast. If something major happens, like a fight with my wife or the day my dog got run over, I know it will be nearly impossible to recapture the zone.
This happened earlier today with the restaurant fiasco. I lost my rhythm. I only recorded about fifteen or twenty minutes instead of an hour of content. I only accomplished a third of my target. Missing a goal by seventy percent is a lot to try and recover from.
I'm in my second rhythm now, and if someone comes and distracts me and breaks my rhythm again, I won't be able to dictate again today. I'm in the zone right now; I'm flowing, and I don't want to lose that zone. I know how I work and if my zone gets broken, I need a three- or four-hour period before I can try again.
Everyone is different, but I have done so much self-analysis that I know exactly how my mind works. I've been writing a long time. Writing has been my profession for so long that I have a thorough understanding of the processes that work and don't work for me.
We're on a journey together. I’m pushing myself to dictate every single word in this book so that I can remember what it’s like to experiment with a new and challenging writing method. I hate getting advice from somebody at the top of the mountain who doesn’t even remember those early struggles.
Getting into the zone while recording into my phone in the blazing sun is different, but I am in that sweet spot right now. Join me on this journey. Experiment with yourself. I’m willing to lead by example. The more you learn about yourself, the easier this entire process will become.
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Action Steps
Make a plan to eliminate your most common distractions.
Turn non-priority tasks, such as reading the news or checking your email, into once-a-day tasks.
Track your breaks as well as your writing sprints.
Test longer and shorter breaks and pay attention to how your break length affects your word counts and ability to get into the zone.
Find break activities that match your break lengths.
Part XII
Advice is Worth the Price
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde
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I am a Writer
There are
as many opinions as there are people in the world. Everyone likes to give writing advice. Everyone acts like an expert. I'm not a writing coach. My real career is writing. Writing about writing is my secondary business. This book is the result of my passion for writing more than anything else.
I have enough work, and I make enough money from the books that I write that I could retire right now. I could spend the rest of my life not working and just living off royalties from my different projects from the last seven years. I love what I do, and I want to write more than twelve hundred books in my lifetime. There are so many books that I want to write, and I have at least a dozen books and courses in development at any given time. Writing fast is my only hope of finishing all of them.
20K a Day: How to Launch More Books and Make More Money Page 14
