Efficiency and Productivity: It’s a Snooze Fest for Authors. But we can help with that…

Those words: “Efficiency. Productivity. Time management.” only rear their ugly heads like Godzilla suffering from a Mojito hangover on Mondays, especially at those board meetings where it’s your cue to sleep with your eyes open.

For others, it’s the calling of the New Year’s Resolutions, that mid-year tax time tune, or the birthday mark of ‘What the frigging heck have I done this year, day, life…’

New Year’s Resolutions, that mid-year tax time tune, or the birthday mark of What the frigging heck have I done this year, day, life… Click To Tweet

SO WHAT’S EFFICIENCY, PRODUCTIVITY, AND TIME MANAGEMENT GOT TO DO WITH BEING AUTHORS?

Efficiency, productivity, and time management can help you sit down and write your book quicker. True story.

Just by working out what matters to you will help you streamline your processes. Such as setting a daily word count to complete, where you can reward yourself with a guilt-free-gift such as listening to that new audiobook on the drive to your favourite fishing spot or while at your next mani-pedi. It’s all about balance.

WHAT IS EFFICIENCY, PRODUCTIVITY, AND TIME MANAGEMENT?

Productivity is the output of time used to create something. Like writing one book per year and trying to post on Twitter when you remember.

Time management is all about organising and planning how to divide your time between different activities. And there are 2,5,7, 1986789 ways to manage time! And time is the only thing you can’t take back.

Efficiency refers to the amount of effort and resources (including time management) to help make you produce higher-quality products in a shorter amount of time. It’s like writing four books per year while keeping to a weekly blogging schedule.

It’s all about being more productive and efficient with your time where:

Productivity + Efficient Time Management & tools = True Productivity 

And there are 2,5,7, 1986789 ways to manage time! We get it, you can't take back time but… Click To Tweet

AUTHOR EXAMPLES OF USING EFFICIENCY, PRODUCTIVITY, AND TIME MANAGEMENT

Productive Author #1 writes a post a day about the book she’s writing. That includes editing, images, and scheduling as a daily task, on what she wrote in her book that day.

Time Managing Maestro blocks out time to meet his daily of 500 words a day to write his book. While the family sleeps, he’s up at 5 am to tap away at the keyboard until breakfast time. He’ll then record his daily word-count progress, and then resets his alarm to do it all again tomorrow.

Little Miss Fancy-Pants of Efficiency will block out time in her calendar to batch writing out a bunch of blog drafts in one day. The next day she’ll do the edits, add imagery, and then schedule them to social media, giving her up to six weeks of content done in a few days.  This then allows her to focus fully on writing her books in large chunks of blocked out time. If any ideas for blogs or social media show up, she’ll jot them down quickly, to then keep on writing her book. When it’s time to start batching blogs in a month’s time, she’ll refer to her ideas list, and prepare to write her next book.

(*Little Miss Fancy-Pants of Efficiency is someone we all really love to hate, right?)

EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY HACKS FOR AUTHORS

Life hacks learned for efficiency, productivity and time management — if you can stick to one task at a time, with no distractions, this will help you get into that deep flow state where time disappears and the work output is phenomenal.

It’s like having your writer’s brain working in a full-tilt rocket launch phase with retro chargers blasting you through gravity.

But then you suddenly lose steam in space, floating around with all those moon-dust particles, grappling for some way to hook onto an asteroid belt, while flashy planets called Netflix and Instagram Notifications scream at you for attention.

This causes the flow state to disappear.

Dun-dun-dun…

And the moment is gone.

So, working on one thing at a time works.

And switching off any distractions is also a big-big-BIIIIG help.

Keeping count of your words also helps you see daily progress in the bigger picture of completing that book. It’s a great motivation tool to keep you on track with your author goals.

USING EFFICIENCY AS A GOOD TIME MANAGER FOR GREATER PRODUCTIVITY

Did your eyes glaze over that title too…

Anyway, think of efficiency as being a time manager taking advantage of assorted tools designed to help you. Because really, it’s all about mastering your time to efficiently produce more books.

Wasting time on things that don’t matter, like scrolling through Tick Tock as a consumer and not as a creator, isn’t the best way to spend your productive time. Is it?

According to Life hack: Success is not just about getting more stuff done, efficiency plays a big part too.

Whichever way you look at it, being efficiently productive is all to do with your goals. Without author goals, you’re like that floating particle in space.

So, what do you want most as an author?

And then look at how you can plan your time to get there.

What tools can you find to help you be more efficient?

BONUS FREE TOOLS TO HELP YOU WITH PRODUCTIVITY, EFFICIENCY AND TIME MANAGEMENT:

The following tools we use and recommend can help you get your word counts done for the day. We all know writing is about putting your bum in that seat with your fingers flexing over that keypad. So having tools that work for you can help…

Use a time tracker like Toggl — this free tracking tool can show you where your time goes. It’ll help you work out where you are wasting valuable writing time. Or to help you work within a certain time – like a 30 minute writing sprint.

Stay Focused — is a Chrome extension. Its job is to block time-wasting websites. It will stop you from checking those dancing-shirtless-cowboy reels that are extremely addictive on TikTok. *clears throat*

Using a planner — we have one we share with our email readers monthly as one of the many tools to help them map out the months ahead. Want in?

Word-count Tracker — this FREE tool allows you to see your daily progress, motivating you as you watch those word numbers rise while writing your book.

Read books on productivity where we scrolled through our kindles, cupboards, and backseats of our cars to bring you the list of books on productivity and efficiency for authors.

Lastly, and firstly, know Your Author Goals! It’s you who gets to decide where you want to go. After all, it’s your story.