(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best time management books

Yeah, working full time and being creative can be tough. There's always something else to do, and if you spend a glorious hour creating, you end up feeling guilty that you "wasted" that time when you could have been cleaning the house or walking the dog.

I feel your pain. I spent an hour today watching a tutorial and trying (and failing) to draw a nice curved line in a drawing program. It feels like I'm wasting time and accomplishing nothing, even while the objective part of my brain knows I have to learn how to use the tools before doing something truly creative.

I will say this: doing something creative as an adult, while we have a ton of other responsibilities, requires commitment. You have to treat it like an unpaid, part-time job. You have to put time in, consistently. You won't get good messing around for hour hours one day a month, you have to put work in regularly, every few days if not daily, to build skills to get to the point to where you can do the interesting stuff. This quote by Ira Glass sums it up nicely. You will get better, but you HAVE to work at it.

I'm going to do something else kinda unorthodox, I'm going to recommend a book to you. Around the Writer's Block by Roseanne Bane. This isn't some touchy-feely, follow your muse writer's guide, but a book on time management for creative endeavors. It's directed to writing, but the principals are pretty universal. Figure out when you are most creative. Block that time out to do your art. Recharge your creative energy. It gives concrete advice on how to achieve nebulous goals. If you want to make art, and you are prepared to spend time consistently to improve, then this book will tell you how to make that happen efficiently.

Good luck!

I just ordered! Holy FROG! $35 + $7 shipping with the exchange rate, comes to almost CAD$60!

I had originally ordered this black dot grid journal and I was testing to see what pens would work in it. I'm using white Sakura Gelly Roll. I'm hesitating on getting the Moonlight colour ones, but I'm sure they work, just don't know if they'll be bright enough. I tested a Uni Posca paint pen at the store and it seemed to work well too. Crayola Metallic markers also work well.

There were many things that I didn't like about that notebook though. The size, the doesn't-lay-flat-ness, the squares are not exactly 5mm apart =\ I actually just tore out all the untested pages last night and was going to trim them, fold them in half and make my own notebooks out of the pages. =D

In between, I ordered some cute black page notebooks, but were blank. I was trying to see if I could make them work somehow...

There's a book I picked up after seeing it recommended on the Nano forums called Around the Writer's Block that really helped me with recognizing what was going on with my own resistance to writing. I'd built it up in my head as this Big, Important Thing- and for your fiance, having quit his job to pursue a career in writing, I bet every time he sits down at a keyboard he freezes. I know I did.

Writing a book is far, far messier than it appears when you're used to picking up the finished product and judging from there instead of seeing all the chaos from draft one to bookshelf. He wants this to be a career, so his mind is focused on Write A Book I Can Publish That Is Good. But what comes out when you actually sit down behind a keyboard and start writing isn't good. There are a whole lot of stages of Not That Great along that path from draft one to bookshelf, with meandering loops through Actually Fucking Terrible and Oh Wait, I Stole This.

When you're hyper aware of that gap between The Drivel I Actually Write and That Awesome Book I Want To Write (that justifies the time and resources I've put into Me As A Writer), the pressure to write something good is paralyzing. The act of putting words down on a page becomes something sacrosanct. I can't count the number of Very Important Looking Notebooks I bought when I was younger, to go along with my Very Important Writing, then never wrote more than a page in because my actual writing wasn't up to the standard of belonging in my Very Important Notebook.

That's part of what makes Nano so important, I think. Because Nano is about setting aside all that stress about what we write being good enough, and just showing up to actually write.

There's only so much you can do from the outside. If he's willing to engage with you, have him watch Ira Glass' advice on creativity, then get him a copy of that book. Best wishes to you both.

A quick recommendation, I’ve only heard good things about this book and it could be a good neutral ground to base the conversations on: Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525541934/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_m9FUDbQRFHMZH

Read a book on delegation. Here's a random book with good reviews: https://www.amazon.com/Want-Done-Right-Dont-Yourself/dp/1884956327/ref=cm_lmf_tit_13

Practice at these Escape rooms.

Have fun :)

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I'm pretty much in the same boat as you.

Check out The Time Crunched Cyclist by Chris Carmichael. Pretty good stuff.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

I've seen this recommended elsewhere, but I haven't tried it. The look inside feature might be able to tell you if it seems like something that would be useful for you.

Basically following the Zettelkasten method. Working great so far. Check out How to take smart notes by Ahrens. https://www.amazon.com/How-Take-Smart-Notes-Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B06WVYW33Y

Interesting!

A really fun book on this subject (time use studies) is I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam

This book, Taming the Workweek helped me out. It's not for peopel with ADHD specifically but it has really good ideas for time and task management. Also it's short and only $2 or $3 on ebook

You know, I spent a long time thinking all that was bullshit. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was "the thrill of the chaos"...

Over the last few months, I've been putting together systems, checklists, processes, and schedules for a lot of the common things I need to do for the business. It helps things run so much smoother.

https://www.amazon.ca/Work-System-Mechanics-printing-September-ebook/dp/B005R4TMQC/

It's a super helpful guide that I've been following. Very impressed with how "less out of control" things feel. I'm still not out of the woods, and things are still somewhat crazy, but it feels like I'm on the right trajectory to having the business be a lot less stressful.

better to add link as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Successful-People-Before-Breakfast-Mornings-ebook/dp/B007K3E2YK

I'm sorry, yes. I was referring to the system semi-explained here, which I believe is this one. It got me wondering if there are other alphabetic systems, and how they compare. Thank you for the in depth replies.

You want the National Association of Professional Organizers and the Board of Certification for Professional Organizers. NAPO has a great FAQ sheet that addresses how to get into the professional organizing and productivity business.

You can also take a look at How To Start A Home-Based Professional Organizing Business by Dawn Noble, and Born to Organize: Everything You Need to Know About a Career as a PO by Sara Pedersen.

I'm currently reading Monica Leonelle Write Better, Faster. She swears by dictation and wrote a book on that too: Dictate Your Book. May be worth checking out.

http://amzn.com/B013ZVSVC4

I haven't tried it yet myself but I plan to.

Writers block is a myth. Just write. I struggle with sitting down and doing it myself but it's not lack of creativity it's lack of sitting down and writing. Here's my two cents (most of which I need to follow myself!)

-Read [The War Of Art] (http://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1936891026/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450114231&sr=8-1&keywords=the+war+of+art&tag=thelexfiles05-20) (or Turning Pro) By James Pressfield. I keep a copy of both near the toilet and it always sets me straight. He talks a lot about what he calls resistance, which is what I now believe in, instead of writers block. Really, really good stuff.

-Dictation can he HUGE if you like doing it. I type really fast so I don't have as much incentive to give it a go but more and more authors seem to be moving in that direction. I read [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Dictate-Your-Book-Smarter-Storytellers-ebook/dp/B013ZVSVC4/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1450114377&sr=1-2&keywords=dictation) and found it to be a no nonsense guide on getting set up for a life of dictation.

-Write in the morning, before you do anything else. We only have so much mental energy every day if you're waiting till the end of the day to write you're going to find yourself drawing on thin reserves. This is the one I have to work on the most. I want to start getting up at 5am every day to write. I'll try again tomorrow!

This came to mind when I saw your post - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KFEJNAE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Nope, just change the URL to your country code.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0741QSSMG

Here is a link for you:http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1589792483/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51gYsBJwaOL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL100_SR100%2C100_&refRID=0148ZNACE5HN6H2ZTARX

US site http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00MWZDQJI

Googling "black paper dot grid notebook" seems to yield some results. Here's a few that look decent:


https://www.jetpens.com/Pilot-Black-Note-Notebook-B5-Dot-Grid/pd/18585

https://www.dotgrid.co/products/a5-dot-grid-notebook-black-pages

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Page-Journal-Dot-Grid/dp/1543046185

The book Around the Writer's Block helped me. Basically, the advice was turn writing into a habit (there's more steps to it then that, but that's the end goal) so you don't even have to think about it, you just automatically start doing it.

http://www.amazon.com/Around-Writers-Block-Science-Resistance/dp/158542871X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427164435&sr=8-1&keywords=around+the+writers+block

The other thing, maybe really think about your mental state, and whether or not you have untreated depression or anxiety, and not just writer's block. There's description online everywhere about the signs of each, and I'd take a peak at those. Neither one is great to leave untreated since it'll just get worse over time, and they'll make writing that much harder.