Productivity & Simplicity

Read more about the article Get In the Habit of Yearly Reflection

Get In the Habit of Yearly Reflection

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(Note: I originally wrote this post last year for GovLoop, but as the year's end has rolled back around I think it's still relevant. I've adapted it for this blog.) Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, And Play When No One Has The Time uses the word "time confetti" to describe the harried mishmash of time in modern life. Our days are sliced to ribbons by hordes of overlapping responsibilities, our constant connectivity to work allows it to seep into our personal lives, and the demands of our families seep into our work days. And any free time we manage…

Read more about the article Dealing with overwhelm

Dealing with overwhelm

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I've been thinking a lot about how to deal with overwhelm. Some days, I can feel myself skirting up against the cliff that is total burnout, only to shift myself back on course at the last minute with a weekend off with friends, or taking a long bike ride in the middle of the afternoon. As my freelance business picks up, I've also come up against some pretty pressing deadlines in my fiction biz – which means that my usual strategy of dropping the fiction to accommodate client projects won't work. A very regimented productivity and scheduling system allows me to make…

How Changing Two Letters is Simplifying My Life

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I wrote this post originally for GovLoop's blog on November 13th In November, I took a fiction-writing class with a local author and singer extraordinaire, Ken Scholes. As we went around the room to introduce ourselves, a common theme emerged. Most of us thought we should be writing more words, we should be submitting more short fiction, we should be taking more classes, we should be reading more books. “My best time to write is in the morning,” said the woman to my right. “I really should get up two hours before my kids so I can use that time.”…