When writing a book, having to focus is the key but it is not that easy to have. Now, where does the focused writing come from??
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to the absolute best tools to help you get your focus. These are the tools that I specifically use.
That's one of the reasons why we're going to discuss, Where Does The Focused Writing Come From?? By the end of this blog, you are going to know why focus is so important when it comes to your writing and your self-publishing.
You're going to have the steps necessary to get it as sharp as possible. And you're going to feel great based upon the amount of progress that you're going to be making as you move forward through your writing using these very tips.
Well, I can tell you after having put out over 200 books onto the market, there are several steps necessary to get through that. To figure out what it is that is going to be the most effective and get the highest sales for the books that you're putting on the market.
I've put those steps in a Secrets Checklist that I give away for free right here. So, just check that out. The thing is that one of my clients, I guess about two years ago, was working on writing her specific book.
Her name was Rebecca and she was trying to get daily writing practice in. And this is something I hear so often from many of my 1-On-1 Program clients, it says they're trying to work through this. They feel they just don't have time for it.
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There are so many things in life that get in the way. Whether you have responsibilities to your family or you have responsibilities to your day job. Maybe you have responsibilities to community organizations and sometimes you have hobbies.
We like to watch TV, go to the movies, and do entertaining things. And based upon all of these things, Rebecca found that it was becoming nearly impossible for her to make any progress on her writing.
So, we go day after day. Sometimes, I get to the next session and am like, okay we haven't made any progress since our last one. That was leaving Rebecca feeling a lack of focus and that is one of the things we're going to be discussing.
So, let's get into it. Where does the focused writing come from?? What exactly are the keys? What did I tell Rebecca? Well, there are a couple of things that are very important to keep in mind.
The first thing is the tight connection between focus and motivation. If you feel demotivated, you're not going to have the focus. Motivation is the energy to do this thing. Like when you were at the beginning when you were just starting to write.
You felt inside of yourself it was so easy. You had these ideas, these stories, these things you wanted to share with the world. And as you move forward, it was effortless. It was completely effortless as you're moving forward, it was just so easy.
Then things started to get more difficult. In reality, if we look closely at this and this is something I like to do with my clients as well is that we look at how motivation is going. We have to be very careful because our focus is directly connected to your motivation.
Keeping Motivation High
If you're able to keep your motivation high, you're going to discover that your focus is going to be razor-sharp. That brings us to our second tip of the day and that is motivation comes from practice and repetitions.
Like if we go to work out with weights and things, going through repetitions, we're going to do 10 push-ups or whatever it might be. As we're going through these repetitions and so we're setting a schedule. We're going to get up and we're going to do our writing during this period.
It doesn't matter if we succeed at getting anything out. It's just a matter that we sit down and we devote the time to do the writing or whatever that most important task may be. You're on the formatting step of your book or the marketing space, one of these phases, right?
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You're going to keep your motivation high by simply investing time every day. A certain amount of time for me. I would say when I would lose complete motivation on a task, I would then set a five-minute goal on that task, okay?
I don't have much time but I'm going to use five minutes a day to get a high-level focus on this specific task that I said I valued and wanted to see progress on. So, I'm going to repeat this. Well, what are we going to do tomorrow?
We're going to do the same thing. You're going to focus on a certain time of the day. Maybe you have to go to bed earlier and get up earlier to do this. Or go to bed later if you're a night person. But notice the point in the day in which you're doing this, you want to make sure that this is happening day after day.
It is in the pattern of doing this and feeling the flow of progress as your book is almost magically writing itself that we discover that progress is made. Which brings motivation and something magical and that is the focus.
Your focus will start to come back in and you set up let's say five minutes and before you know it was 10, 20, or 30 minutes that you've dedicated to this. But that brings us to the third point which is a very powerful one.
This is the tool that I specifically use and one bonus tip here as well. The first thing is I use a tool called Focusmate, it's a free one if you're only doing a few sessions. But you can put your camera up to your webcam.
You can be connected with a stranger and you tell them at the beginning of a session what you're going to accomplish. In the end, you tell them what you accomplished in a 30-minute session or one-hour session. You can do it for free, you can do it three or five times a week, something like that.
You can do it for free and Focusmate will be what you will want to look up. So, this is a really powerful tool. It was in one of the books and it's something that I use all the time. But I found that as I started making progress, my focus came in and my motivation.
So, I no longer needed to use the tool as much. But if I ever find it difficult to get my time and focus on these things, then I will go back to Focusmate. Because it is a great way to stay focused, okay?
Knowing What’s Important
Then, number two, Toggl. That's the next tool and it is completely free. Well, they try to sell stuff I haven't bought before. But the free version will give you the ability to put a start and a stop whenever you start to work.
So, you can have an idea of how much time you're using. Sometimes we think we're using more time than we are. Most people do things, let's say most people watch more TV than they think they do. Most people sleep more than they think they do.
Most people drink less than they think they do. So, there are all of these sorts of things in life that we think we're doing one way. But in reality, we're doing something else. And if we don't measure it, then how would we know that we are doing these things that we actually say are so important to us?
When it comes to your writing and you want to focus, let's make sure that there's a clock going. So, we can keep track of how much time you're using towards reaching your goals when it comes to writing. What better way than a free tool Toggl, you could use a normal stopwatch but this one is great because you can see it weekly.
One of the things I go for is a weekly goal of how many hours I'm going to get in. Then, I try to make sure it works out throughout the week excluding of course days for which it's impossible if you're on a vacation. Then you have no responsibility, if you do work, we still record that but it doesn't count toward the week's goals, okay?
This is a really important one and the final thing is that it's sort of a tool technologically but not really. It's accountability and that's daily accountability where I check in with my business coach daily. This is a service that I also provide inside my Group Coaching.
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We go back and forth daily. Those who do their daily updates, make a lot more progress than those who don't do daily updates. So, it helps get you motivated when you're at a location where other people are giving their updates.
You're able to get motivated about the progress other people are making. You're like, well I should also be able to do the same sort of work. I should also put in some more time. And what happens is that we get this trigger again.
We feel the motivation kicks in like, wow I really should get going on this. And then as we start doing anything moving in a direction, the focus starts coming in. And as we have that focus, we get into the zone, and then magic happens.
The book almost writes itself, the formatting, and all the technologies involved. We're just excited as we see things going forward and that's one of the things even with my Formatting Course students or the ones who are going through the Content Marketing, it's by taking it one step at a time.
We do things the easy way and there are a lot of gurus who say, oh it'll be easy you know; you'll sell millions of books in a month or something if you just follow these steps. There are a lot of people who will try to tell you that. In reality, that is several as I've never seen that ever work for anybody.
So, it isn't going to be easy in the sense that you don't have to work. It's easy in the sense that we're using methods that are going to keep your motivation high. Giving you that focus and then pulling you in.
You will be amazed at the progress you can make as you invest in yourself. Which is something that far too few people do when it comes to things like their business or their hobbies or whatever it is they're trying to do. It's putting out an investment in themselves.
In reality, one of the end goals is to see the sales showing on your products. That's one of the reasons after having gone through this cycle over and over and over again, I was looking at my Audible for my audiobooks and I saw we had just crossed the 18,000-audiobook sale marker.
I thought it was fantastic. I know people have sold 60,000 using all sorts of interesting tricks. But you know, for me, 18,000 is fantastic. These are the sorts of things you can expect when you do focus. If you want to hear more about the story of How I Sold 18,000 Audiobooks, check out my previous blog.