For whatever reason, as my brain was recovering I had a much easier time with nonfiction, so back to the old standby that I already know I don’t like that much: self improvement books! This is entirely my own fault, but who knows, maybe this is one of the good ones?
Nope. I fully acknowledge that this book is definitely written for the exact opposite kind of person from me. I do not have trouble starting things and, though it might take a bit of time, I’m also pretty good at finishing them as well. This book is very much about getting people to start doing things and getting through the mental blocks that might be preventing them from doing so.
And no mention that I caught of rolodexes!
I did like a few elements of it. The idea of unscheduling was interesting and follows some things I find really useful, such as setting maximums on the amount of time you spend on work and scheduling in your breaks and things you do for fun. Having done something similar, I can confirm that it is definitely a thing that works pretty well.
Ultimately, though, not my thing. I do not have the issues outlined and found some of the pep talks to be a bit abrasive and not accounting for things outside of someone’s control that could be getting in the way. Overall, though, still a few interesting ideas. Check it out if you have trouble starting things!
Picture it: I had done all the work to get myself ready. I had identified the areas of my life that were important to me, hypothesis around what would make those areas better, and clear metrics that would make it obvious when I was improving or not.
And then I ended up breaking my brain.
The easy-to-explain version is that I ended up with a disease-induced concussion. I was having trouble holding thoughts together, stringing words together, and having constant migraines, dizziness, all sorts of things that essentially took me right out. I was bedridden for a couple days, even! It was a rough time.
But once I started to pull myself together a little, I tried to take this as an opportunity. Getting myself better could be the first thing. And so a new hypothesis and new metrics were born! ((Which took weeks to put together, but ignoring that…))
If I can think clearly, I can accomplish my goals
I had been told from friends who had been through the same thing what to expect and that was that I would essentially need to treat this like a concussion recovery program. I had no idea what that actually entailed, but I could figure out where I was now and where I wanted to be. So my key metrics were being able to maintain the following over three days without crashing:
Metric
Starting
Return to work goal
Recovery goal
Minutes per day I could maintain concentration on something over the entire day
40
240
600
Minutes I could sustain attention on a single task
5
30
120
Average complexity of tasks (Scored out of 5)
1.5
2.5
4
With this in mind, I started tracking everything and trying everything I could to try and make those numbers good. I ran a lot of experiments on myself, from trying to make sure I was timing myself to make sure I was taking adequate breaks to actually writing down what I did on breaks so I knew which activities were restful and which ones were making me worse.
As I figured out what worked and what didn’t, there were a lot of small, incremental changes. I started the day with planning what I was going to do. I used Pomodoro to make sure I stopped and didn’t work for longer than I knew I was able to, then increased as I went slowly. I started taking notes when I did anything so that I could reduce the amount my brain was actively working. And slowly, I was getting better.
Some things didn’t ultimately matter that much. I wasn’t getting light headed, for instance, now that I was off work. Some tasks I’d initially thought were fairly light on the cognitive functions were actually a lot heavier than suspected. There were a bunch of things I just couldn’t do, such as writing. And I miss that, but I have to refrain until I’m better.
And, of course, I had to adjust my systems a lot as I went along as I found things that worked or didn’t. For example, I needed to track conversations differently because I couldn’t take a break from them and often couldn’t take notes while I was talking to someone to try and refer to them later. Conversations were, really, the hardest things I did.
Where were the medical professionals that could have helped guide me through this? That is a rant for another time.
As I write this, I’m still very much in the process, but I have at least hit the return to work milestones. And hopefully that return to work won’t impede my progress on my way to a full recovery!
This is the first book fiction I was able to get through with all the brain issues I’ve been having! It took me a lot longer than it usually does (A couple weeks instead of a couple nights) but I was happy to be able to read like I used to in some capacity again. That being said, let’s talk a little about it.
When he wakes up in the small town of his childhood, Seth doesn’t know why he’s there. He was drowning, surely dead, but somehow he’s alone in the town that his family left ages ago after an incident that left his brother scarred and never quite the same. Throughout the book you learn about what happened as the memories of Seth’s life come back to him and he starts to unravel the mystery of where he is and why he’s there—as well as the others who remain.
I really liked the first half of this book. The slow reveal of what’s going on and context about Seth is engaging, and the introduction of Regine and Tomaz are a welcome addition so that Seth has another personality to bounce off of. They are very welcome additions to the cast and come with a more positive outlook when Seth’s depression threatens to overwhelm the whole story.
On the other hand, there’s a twist about half way through where we uncover what’s going on and I found I didn’t like it nearly as much as the prediction that I had in my head. It takes a turn for the sci-fi and tries to have something come in to act as an antagonist when an antagonist feels like a distraction. It also creates a lot more questions that are not answered by the end, and it makes the ending feel more like a stopping point, with very little feeling wrapped up. I don’t mind a stopping point as an ending, but I wish that the story had been a bit less complex in terms of plot and kept more inline with the character study.
At least, that’s what I wanted at the moment. It might just be a wrong book at the wrong time thing. It’s still pretty entertaining and if you’re up for a book with a sci-fi speculative twist, then you might really enjoy it!
I have known a lot of people who really want to get started with writing and want to make it a thing that they do regularly, but they just don’t know how to get into it regularly. It can be really hard to add a new habit to your day, though, and writing is especially tricky because it can also be very dependent on making sure there’s something to write when you do remember to do it.
So here are a few ideas for finding a way to make writing a habit in your life.
Set aside some time in your day dedicated to writing
If you can, schedule a block of time for it. Figure out how long it takes you to get into a good rhythm and stay in it, and be sure to block about that much time a few days a week so that you can get a lot of words in every once in a while. But just to start, block off a little time every day to get started and get in the routine of it.
Set a place
In the same way, sometimes creating a dedicated space for writing can really help. Whether that is setting aside a different part of your room that is dedicated just for writing, or something that you can do to an existing area to change it to a writing space, it can really help to trigger the mindset and the habit if you have a dedicated area for it.
Tell people about it
A little social pressure can be just what we need, so long as it isn’t too judgemental! For some people, just knowing that other people know they were going to try and do this is enough to kick them into making it happen. The knowledge that they might be asked about it eventually means they will make sure they have an answer.
Get a writing buddy
Alternately, get a friend to join in! If there’s two of you working on the same goal, you can coordinate your schedules and meet up to get some writing done, get on a call to write at the same time, or just check in with one another to talk about what you’re working on to keep one another motivated.
Find the time in odd places
If you really look at what you do in a day, there might be a couple strange pockets of time that you can utilize to get some words in on a project. When I wor5ked downtown, I would be on transit twice a day for an hour each, so those two hours were dedicated to writing. I was able to make sure I always got a seat because of my schedule, and that might be something you can manage as well. If there’s a time where you’re waiting for something, or traveling as a passenger, you might be able to turn that into a writing session.
Outline your work
Sometimes the biggest hurdle to the habit is just not being able to figure out the words and what you need to happen. If you can create an outline for your work, or even spend a few of your writing sessions on creating that outline, that might help alleviate that issue because you’ll always know what needs to happen next.
Habit tracking
If you find that you’re just forgetting to do it, or you need to see yourself build that habit visually, try a using something like a habit tracker to help you to remember to do sit down and write. Whether that’s just a mark on a calendar, a page in a bullet journal, a sticker chart where you can add a sticker for every day you remember to do it, or an app like Habitica that can gamify the process, sometimes it’s good to be able to see progress in other ways than word count to stay motivated.
Build in rewards for milestones
Sometimes the fun of writing is not enough motivation, especially if you’re dealing with a lot of other things in your life or your story is just not cooperating with you. In these cases, you might want to try giving yourself another reward for not just finishing, but also for hitting milestones. I’ve used plot points in the past: When I get through a plot point, I’d earn a little treat for myself.
And if you’re the kind of person who will just give themselves the reward without doing anything, you can do this with someone who can hold you accountable and let them be in charge of doling out the treats when you hit milestones.
Do you have any other strategies for building a writing habit?
Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential
Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.
I’ve been trying to read and be normal, but I read this while dealing with cognitive issues and after having failed to read a lot of other, more complex books. Like YA novels. But this was frames as a book about problem solving for adults framed around how children do problem solving, so I figured I could handle this one!
And I finished it.
The book really is just a walkthrough of problem solving techniques for business with pretty straightforward language and all of the examples are based around kids problems. It’s kind of amazing realizing how difficult some of these techniques are for people in business that I’ve worked with to grasp. Things like “Just ask your audience” and “Test a couple options” are amazingly foreign to a lot of the people I’ve worked with.
It was exactly at the level that I could handle and it does provide a lot of great insight into how to do some preliminary research to uncover the reasons for a problem before jumping into finding and working out a solution. Just because you think you know does not mean you do, and it’s nice a pretty quick, easy read.
If you’re having trouble with finding a solution to a problem you’ve been having for a while, or just want to do a book club book with some people at work who think they know exactly what is wrong and what will fix it, this might be a good one to pick up.
I’ve been making a lot of updates to the shop and I’ve come to figuring out how to list and price the jewelry I’ve been making. Jewelry has been something I actually can work on while I’ve been recovering from the brain issues, but I have never been good at figuring out pricing, even when my brain was functioning properly.
When I was able to do markets, I would sometimes ask the other vendors how to they figured out what to charge. Many of them were doing this in hopes of going full time, and it’s something I would like to look into eventually as well. They told me some variation of the same thing:
You need to value your own time and charge properly for your work.
It’s an idea I’ve been very resistant to. I’ve thought largely about making pricing competitively, and about only charging what I would feel comfortable with paying for an item myself. I’m someone who goes to multiple stores and tries to find a good deal or wait for a sale, so the lowest I could possibly go and just enough to cover materials and feel like it was correct for the item.
But that’s also not how I shop markets. That’s not what I do when I am looking at handmade goods, at custom jewelry, at things I know that was made by a person and not a factory. And that’s helped to shift my mindset.
I’m also very aware that, while none of them ever said anything about it, it was making things harder for everyone else around me. Undervaluing my own work can make everyone else look like they are overvaluing their own, especially if they have something similar or if someone with something similar comes in on a day I’m not there. It’s not good for anyone to do it.
So I’ve taken a lot of the general feelings out of the pricing, stopped choosing numbers based on what feels like a good deal, and turned everything into a mathematical formula. There’s a spreadsheet, though I’m now also considering making this into a whole program for myself. Now if only I could get into some markets and see if it’s worked!
So I’ve had bad luck with business books that are recommended by CEOs and by the people I work for in general. So what about a business book about something that is pertains to something that has been a bit of a pain point and of particular interest to me?
This book is almost entirely about something called OKRs: Objectives and Key Results. This is a pretty straightforward concept in terms of metrics that measure success. You decide on an objective (We are going to be the best at thing) and figure out what will happen in order for that to be true (NPS score you will hit (Do not ask me about NPS, I will rant at you for an hour), number of purchases, conferences attended, etc.) and then use that as a bit of a guide for the future. Everything you work on should be towards moving those numbers closer to success.
I will admit that I read this in large part so that I could find something to throw at some of my coworkers who are a little new to the world of measuring success, and I think this is a nice foundational look at how OKRs could be used and integrated, as well as making the case of them being a successful methodology.
And, you know, I can use them for some of that life stuff.
It does absolutely make them seem like the only solution as opposed to part of a more robust strategy, but it’s a good starting point. Overall, good read, a lot better and significantly more practical than most business books out there.
The question of pen names comes up when people are early in their publishing journey, as well it should! But it can still be a very difficult decision to make. As someone who started with a pen name and then switched to my real name, it can be a difficult choice to reverse. It’s gotten harder on some platforms over the years!
So to help, I’ve put together a quick quiz to help you with the choice.
I’ve been needing some fiction after all those books that are supposed to be bettering myself and my life, so I managed to find something that sounded like something I would write. Hitman who is not a good person spared from death so that he could take over for the Grim Reaper while he takes a holiday? Well, maybe not a book I would write, but still very much in my area.
This book follows Buck, a down on his luck average guy who also works as a hitman. He is set up on a job and ends up being spared from death by an overworked Grim Reaper and takes over trying to kill off the ones who refuse to die. In the process, he discovers the supernatural underbelly of Chicago and a civil war happening, as well as an adorable child who is definitely going to turn out to be dangerous.
I think I needed this book right now. It was a fun, light, and generally entertaining read that I didn’t feel the need to take too seriously. No heavy subject matter, nothing too intricate, but definitely with a few fun twists here and there. The pacing was quick and I did enjoy how Buck was portrayed as not a dark and serious hitman, but a guy who did it as a job and spent the rest of his time playing D&D and generally getting into other geeky hobbies.
Overall, it was a lot of fun! There’s not really a lot else to say. If it sounds interesting, it’s pretty quick of a read so check it out.
Last time I got a whole bunch of ideas down and separated those into different key areas that I found important in life that I wanted to focus on. But there were a lot of items that fell into multiple different areas, so how did I deal with this?
First off, I accepted that life is complicated and sometimes things aren’t neatly categorized. That’s just something that happens with life. But it also means that I get to possibly improve two things at once sometimes, which is always good!
So with this in mind, I started brainstorming.
The hypothesis
Given that I had an idea of what would make my life amazing, I took these general ideas and started coming up with some hypothesis. Ideas of what I thought would make my life better if I did them, and made note of which areas these might fall into. They took the format of “I will be happier if” or “This will happen if” and I just wrote a bunch of them down.
Some examples are:
Hypothesis
Areas
I get a restful night of sleep every night.
Mental health, Physical health
I have a plan for the day.
Day to day life, Mental health
My chores are done regularly and not forgotten about.
Environment, Day to day life
My mortgage is paid off.
Money
I’ve also made some notes about why these would improve my life, but I’m going to move on to the next key thing.
How could I measure these?
The metrics
Something important about me is that I am not good at just sensing when something is improving. I am someone highly motivated by seeing numbers change and watching progress, so I knew I needed to have something to look at to determine if things were getting better.
Some of these were pretty easy to find metrics for. How much is left on my mortgage? Did I create a plan for the day, yes or no? Pretty easy things, and there were pretty easy ways to track and measure these.
Other things are not as clear. What counts as a restful night of sleep? Is that measured in hours? In how I feel in the morning? How easy it was to fall asleep? There’s a lot of factors, so I needed to brainstorm to come up with a bunch of them.
And, because I know these numbers might change as I figure out if I’m even tracking the right things, I didn’t stress out too much about anything. I just tried to gather as many metrics as I could to track and then started to think of what should come next: Figuring out my baseline and coming up with my first project.
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