EP25: On Productivity, Timing, & Intention - TRANSCRIPT

EP25: On Productivity, Timing, & Intention - Our Second End-of-Year Lesson

Hi! You're listening to Hyba is Writing, and I am your host, Hyba. Last episode, we discussed one of my lessons learned in 2020. In this episode, we'll be discussing another lesson learned, this time to do with productivity as an independent author.

As I mentioned in the last episode, this year has marked a year of very big changes for me. I've started to learn certain things about writing that I didn't know before, and I'm starting to come to certain realizations that make writing easier and less stressful. This was one of my motivations behind creating this series of episodes on lessons learned - to share with you lessons that will hopefully make your life easier as they have made mine. My other reason for sharing these lessons is for me to have a record of how I've evolved as a writer.

In high school, to the best of my recollection, I wrote almost every night. I just loved it. I mean, it was frustrating because I didn't know where to take most of my stories and I was still in what I feel has been the hardest part of the my learning trajectory, and I just remember that all of my stories would hit a wall at some point that I could not get through. But I still wrote! I wrote every night.

When I went to university, the first year or two, I didn't really write much. It wasn't until about halfway through university, if memory serves, that I started writing again, and this time with a great deal of seriousness. I wrote a 60,000 word manuscript one summer that I then proceeded to scrap, but it made me realize that I wanted to keep going. So, I kept writing, and I wrote a lot. I believe I had written about 100,000 words for my fantasy series by the time I started to get active online. And, when I did get active on social media and started sharing my writing, I saw that productivity quickly get replaced by a misleading productivity - all that effort that I put into creating content on social media, which was never my goal in the first place, but which I realized was important if I wanted to have what was called an author platform and engage readers before launching my first books. If you've listened to the last episode, you know why that was perhaps not the best place to put my efforts, though I will say that blogging has proven much healthier and more manageable for me.

The thing about productivity is that you have to understand that everyone and their mother has an opinion on it, and a lot of the opinions that you find online about how to be productive are just echoes of one another. Productivity, therefore, seems straightforward. Everyone keeps saying the same things, sharing the same so-called secrets to productivity. When you search for how to be more productive, you get millions of articles, with everyone chipping in, many of them with the same two cents. Why is it still so elusive, then? Why are we always trying to figure out how to be more productive?

I think, in part, it has something to do with how certain people approach productivity. As authors, our productivity is often measured through the number of words we write. If you haven't written anything, you haven't been productive. But that's not altogether true. If you've thought about new plot points, if you've discussed your story with someone, if you jotted down some ideas - any of that falls under writing productivity. I wanted to get that out of the way because I'm actually interested in this episode in talking about the lessons I've learned this year about the specific ways in which we perceive productivity levels - our own and other people's - and how that perception doesn't always have to align with the reality in order for us to be productive.

I'll start by saying that by being online we are exposed to a number of figures that seem to us so productive we can't help but wonder how in the world they've gotten to that stage. For example, I used to follow a blogger who made new art almost every other day and who has a range of books and always new excerpts to share, and who on top of that managed an online writing community and held down a full-time job and volunteered and so much more! I also followed another author who completed a book every 2 months. My mind was boggled. I remember thinking: How is it even humanly and physically possible that they're so productive? And why can't I be that productive? What am I missing?

For a while I thought I was simply missing the discipline and the dedication. To be fair, I do think I can work on my self-discipline, but this year, after writing and posting over 80 blog posts and recording and uploading over 24 podcast episodes (among other things), I realized that it wasn't just about that. Instead, I've realized that it's about timing and intention. Let me break down what I mean by those two things.

Timing is important because you have to look at yourself and think, Where in my journey am I right now? At what point - temporarily speaking - am I? For me, I'm maybe 6 years into my professional writing journey, and about 2 years into my online writing presence. What does this mean? It means that my writing skills have come a long way, and I'm a comfortable writer when it comes to technique and my own style. It means that my online presence - my blogging, social media, website, and all of that good stuff - has only been around for 2 years.

And, when I was comparing myself to those two wildly productive writers, I was less than a year into my online presence. What that meant was that I was jumping the gun, because I was still very early in the game - a baby compared to the two aforementioned writers, who were both older in years and experience - and I was essentially comparing apples to oranges. Now that I'm two years into my online journey, I know things I didn't know before, like how one of the authors has been active online for at least 9 years, and the other had a similar number of years of previous experience. I also know that being productive isn't just about what you choose to do and how much of it you choose to do, but rather it's an accumulation of all the things you've done and all the things you've learned to do.

For example, when I first started blogging, I wasn't very good at it. I needed a few tries to get it right. So productivity was naturally low, because I was still learning how to blog. The same goes for my writing. When I was in high school, I struggled because I was still learning, and I often ended up with pieces that were maybe 5,000 words in length on average. Now, I have pieces that are over 80,000 words in length, and I write more every week. Because I've improved my skills as a writer, I'm able to be more productive because it comes more easily to me now.

So, you need to give yourself time, especially if you're still early in your writing and online journey. You're not going to feel productive until you really get the ball rolling, and that could take a year or two before you start feeling that change happening and you start to identify and recognize how productive you've become. This is why I think timing is important. When you're evaluating your productivity is an important factor in how you will perceive your own productivity.  

Now let's move on to intention. This is equally important in your perception of your productivity. Intention is when you intend to do something. You mean to actually do it. In many ways, it's a plan or a goal that you have in mind. I really like that one saying that goes something along the lines of, shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. For me, when I apply it to my own goals, it means that I can approach my writing with the intention of doing a lot, and the honesty and genuine intention of working towards that goal. Even if I don't make that goal, whatever it is, I can still be satisfied with what I've been able to accomplish in my pursuit of that goal. When you approach something with intention, you'll be satisfied with the work you put into it. You're more likely to feel more productive when you're satisfied with the things you're working on.

So, what's your intention? What is your honest, genuine intention - not just a hope you have or a think you might like to one day be able to do? For me, I intended to finish the first two books in my fantasy series this year. While I didn't get to achieve that goal, that intent drove me to write over 50,000 words for those projects during a year that has been very difficult for us all - and a further 20,000 at least for other projects. I intended to release a blog post every day, and even when I didn't, I still ended up writing a lot more than I thought I would by the end of this year. Do I feel productive? Absolutely!

So, that's the last part of my lesson today. Evaluate your intentions. They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I disagree wholeheartedly. Good intentions that are honest will get you far in life, and you should absolutely consciously intend to do whatever it is you want to be more productive in - whether that's writing or anything else you have in mind.

Evaluate your intentions, stay aware of where - or, rather, when you are in your journey and experience, and measure your productivity through that personalized lens. It's a lot more accurate, and it's an approach that is growth- and quality-focused, which in the end is what you probably want.

If you're interested in learning more or asking some questions, drop by my blog and leave me a comment there, or contact me at my website or social media. All the links are in the episode description. Thanks so much for tuning in today, and I hope to hear from you soon! Until next time!