6 Productivity Tips from a Journalist, Film Producer, Novelist, Screenwriter, and Overall Management
- Jan 15, 2015
- 5 min read
You might say I’m a busy guy. Among other things, I’m I novelist, film producer, editor, journalist and screenwriter. (I’m exhausted just writing it!)
Right now I have three books on the go, editing a new anthology, and writing and producing two films. Oh and I almost forgot I’m also writing a comic book.
Writers and many other artistic professionals need to think more like a small business owner. Art always comes first but if you hope to make money then business needs to come a close second.
Being an artistic professional is no longer just being a skilled worker but it’s knowing about the business aspects such as branding, marketing, product launching, and many more skills that go far beyond the scope of a lowly writer.
So how do I keep my head on straight? How do I shift effortlessly from creator to business person and back again?
Here are some productivity tips I’ve learned over the years that I think you’ll find extremely useful..
1)Write Everything Down
I carry a note book everywhere I go—and I do mean everywhere. If I remember something that I need to do I add it to a list of action items. Sometimes it’s a blog post idea or sometimes it’s something you need to buy at the grocery store.
I have several lists going at once of what I need to accomplish. I have one ‘writing’, one ‘home’ and probably my favourite a ‘brain dead’ list.
The ‘Brain Dead’ list is one I learned from David Allen, a productivity coach, and it’s a list of very simple tasks that you can do when you’re tired and can’t function properly. The ‘Brain Dead’ tasks are usual research I have to do about a particular topic or quick emails I need to write. Things that don’t take much mental capacity to do.
2)You Are Only Human
I think it’s important to note that you can only do one action step at one time. It may seem a stupid thing to say but I find even I have to remind myself every once in a while and even the most productive people in the world can only do one thing at a time.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the amount of things you need to get done – and let’s face it we all do – then it means you haven’t clarified everything you need to do and you probably haven’t decided on what’s the most important action step you need to do at that moment.
3) Schedule Your Day
Once you know what the most important things you need to do are, you need to schedule them into your day. I generally do this first thing in the morning and I assign each task an allotted time frame.
For example I generally allot one hour for social media, four hours to write and two hours for a production meeting.
Sometimes important tasks take longer than you think they will and that’s fine as long as you understand where your time is going. But some tasks are a real sink hole and you can be sucked into them extremely easy if your not careful and you can lose your objective easily.
You’ll find that at first you’ll underestimate the time you need for all your tasks but that is perfectly normal. As you become more practiced you’ll become better at holding yourself accountable to the deadlines you set. I use a timer to make sure I hold myself to my deadlines and only go over if it’s absolutely necessary.
On a side note, what is more important than managing your time, is your energy. I do all my writing in the morning because that’s when I’m most creative. Emails, meetings, marketing research can wait until later in the day when you don’t need to be so creative or energetic.
4) Use Trello for Team Projects
If your like me and are working on some bigger projects you will inevitably need to rely on other team members to compete tasks. To make matters worse, many of the team members are exactly like me and have multiple projects on the go so it can be difficult to keep everything working well.
For example, my film A Thousand Bayonets, there are often many parts that need to happen seamlessly.
When we were shooting the film trailer somebody needs to pick up the equipment, book studio time, manage the actors, make sure everybody knows where to go etc, etc.
To make this happen seamlessly we use Trello which is probably the best project management software out there. What makes it superior is that it is far more visual than any other software of its kind. It’s easy to assign someone to a particular task and then colour code it. It only takes a quick glance to see what projects are on slate and what everybody is working on.
It also helps prevent thousands of emails from going back and forth and things getting lost in the fray.
Trello also has a handy app you can download onto your phone so you can update on the fly.
5) Winners Are Trackers
You might have heard the phrase winners are trackers.
It would be ridiculous to meet a professional football who didn’t know his stats—how many touchdowns he’s completed, or how many interceptions he had. The best professional athletes religiously check their own stats and film producers know how much money their last film.
Why is it as professionals we often don’t know how many email subscribers we have, or how we’re getting them or where our customers are coming from?
I admit I have been guilty of this in the past, but it’s important to know what to focus your energy on so you have to know what works and what doesn’t.
Google has great free tools to use for analytics. Use them! I use Hootsuite for social media and they also have great reports that will help you mold your social media strategy.
Every Friday I check to see how successful I was for the week and I adjust accordingly.
If I notice that LinkedIn brings more people to my website (and more potential customers) than Facebook then the next week I will focus more on LinkedIn. If I'm dissapointed on how my blog post did for the week I look at root causes and adjust.
Often we get so caught up with implementation that we don’t stop to take stock of where we are exactly and the best possible path to get there. It’s the classic example of the tree cutter who won’t stop to sharpen his saw because he has too many trees to cut down.
6) Turn Off Distractions (That means you, internet)
This is probably one of the most important productivity tips ever and probably one of the oldest which is why I have saved it for last.
You need to turn off all distractions. Sometimes that means going to a coffee shop to work, sometimes it means renting an office, sometimes it means staying away from the office.
Everybody is a little different and get distracted by different things. If I’m in a coffee shop I get distracted by the smallest thing, whereas if I’m at home there’s only me and the computer.
The number one distraction is the internet.
When I’m in writing mode, I physically turn the wi-fi off on my computer so I can’t connect. It’s a small step but it has probably saved me hours of lost productivity.
7) Bonus Tips
If you think a friend or co-worker can benefit from some of the strategies here, please forward it to them.
If you have a great productivity tip I would love to hear it. Leave a comment or email me at contact@joelmarkharris.com
Joel Mark Harris is a writer, producer and journalist. (@joelmarkharris) He is the proud founder of Scene2Studio and you can download for FREE his award-winning thriller novel A Thousand Bayonets HERE
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