I’m writing this newsletter issue at 11 in the morning, on a Monday. It was on my to-do list for last week but the list was becoming increasingly long and unwieldy and I just put it off. Yesterday night, however, as I sat down at my desk to plan for the week ahead and felt overworked and overwhelmed, I decided to try a different tactic instead. I took a blank post-it and wrote:
Small wins for the week:
Monday: Editorial for newsletter
Tuesday: Pitch blog post
Wednesday: Inbox Zero
Thursday: Edit one chapter of novel
Friday: Ask someone out for coffee
These are not the most pressing tasks on my list, they’re not the most important, and they’re hardly going to make a dent in my career, or for that matter, my to-do list. But they are things I can do quickly, easily, without much thought, and still feel like I moved forward. They’re the things I intend to do first thing in the morning so that I can get on with the rest of the day with a feeling of accomplishment, like I actually achieved something.
There are weeks when I open up my laptop on Monday morning and feel an overwhelming sense of dread, of so many items on the to-do list that it takes me five minutes to figure out where to even begin. This is a result of having too many projects on the go, but it’s also a result of having limited time (when you already have a full-time job, for example) or limited energy (perhaps you have a health issue). There are a million things we all want to achieve right this very minute and not enough hours in the day for us to get to all of them. And so we take small steps on each of them and with nothing coming to an end, feel like we’ve got a world of hurt ahead of us for who knows how long.
This is how I felt last night when I looked at my to-do list for the week, this intense desire to give up even before I’d begun. But now, this morning, I’m writing this editorial, feeling like I’m accomplishing something, getting stuff done. After I’m done with this, it’s possible, likely even, that I’m going to go on to do a dozen other things. But I won’t feel bad about the three dozen things I didn’t do because I honored the goal to do this one thing. When I finish, I’ll get a shot of confidence and a boost of energy because no matter what else I accomplish or don’t accomplish during the day, I checked off my main task. I gave myself a small win. And I feel better already as a result of that.
In September, along with my new students, I’m starting the 30 Days, 30 Queries challenge for myself again. Unlike previous months in which I’ve challenged myself to pitch national publications, this time I’m more focused on building an audience for this newsletter and my blog and so I’m looking to pitch guest posts and build relationships with other bloggers instead. I don’t know how easy or difficult this will be yet, but I do know that if I can send one pitch every single morning, it will be a small win that I’d have given myself for that day. I will have met my target. Everything on top—the routine journalism work, edits on the novel, the progress on the niche site—will be extra. And they’ll be more likely because I’ll have already hit my target for the day, making me feel pretty good about myself.
I’m a huge believer in the 30 Days concept (shocking, I know) because it works not only for queries, but for anything in life. You can work out for 30 days in a row and get yourself a new habit and fitness routine, you can send out 30 e-mails to fellow writers and have made a dozen new friends, you can write 500 words a day for 30 days and have a 15,000-word manuscript at the end of the month. A query seems like this big massive thing to most new writers but once they’re finished with the 30 Days, 30 Queries course, most of my students see it as a small task on their to-do list, to be finished in an hour each morning before they get on with the rest of the day. It becomes a habit, something they don’t even think about any more because it’s become such an intrinsic part of their routine. I did this for years, this waking up every morning and sending out a query to an editor, that it was a non-event, something as routine as checking email or reading the news. And when those acceptances did come, they were always a shock, a surprise.
You don’t become a successful freelancer by fearing items on your to-do list, be they queries or as so happens for me at this point in my writing life, promoting my blog, newsletter, and e-courses. You become successful by finding the tools and the techniques to make them a routine part of your day. And so, next month, I begin the process of connecting with people, of sending out guest posts, of taking my blog and newsletter to a new and different level.
It’s a challenge right now, but in a year, I’m hoping it will just be something I do every morning without a second thought.
What’s the biggest challenge in your writing life at the moment and what are you going to do to turn it into a routine part of your day?