After a single week of using a physical daily planner, I realized I'd accomplished more in the previous week than I had in the past 6 months. No looking back.
Every Sunday I write down a single thing to accomplish for each day of the next week:
Read a chapter of a book,
Write a post about a specific topic,
etc.
Procrastination is super dangerous when there isn't a deadline. Way too easy for "tomorrow" to turn into never. Professional/Personal development stuff seems to fall into that trap pretty frequently.
I tried tracking things with all sorts of different software, but nothing clicked for me like pen and paper.
(Field Notes 56-Week planner pairs well with a uni-ball 307 Gel Pen.)
My biggest problem with planners and to-do lists is I don't consult them. I've tried evernote, I've tried google notes, I used a Palm Pilot 20 years ago. I think technology is better for me because it's always available, but simply having a todo list doesn't cause me to remember to check it. I never think "hey, I'm bored, I wonder what's on the list!"
Don't wait for boredom before you check. For me, it's declaring something as priority for the day that otherwise wouldn't have made the cut at all. If I don't get to something, I put a line through it and write down what I did instead.
For this week, the list has
Code Complete - Chapter 4
Brain Bugs - Chapter 2
Don't Make Me Think (reread)
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chapter 1 + 2,
Economist + Web presence
(read economist, write/email/etc deliberate internet stuff)
For the most part, this stuff happens after the kiddo is in bed, but before I sit down to watch something with the Mrs, or tuck into fiction/games/etc. Everyone's schedule is different, but everyone has some time they could be spending a bit more carefully.
Meant to get to Chapter 4 of Code Complete last week, but we wound up with a kid free weekend (thanks Grandma), so I took the Mrs. to dinner instead, and we followed up with GOG (1954).
Easy to burn out quickly if you're switched on and going at it all the time. Just as easy to let all of the extras fall off the edge while you're floating through seasons of whatever HBO's current thing is. There's not a line where activities are either relaxing or productive, it's a grey area, for sure. Need to find the right balance.
Grow a habit of checking some (any) system first. BJ Fogg's Tiby Habits program is a good start. And make sure it's a tiny investment of time/energy at first so no full-blown complex planning right off the bat.
Generally reading 'Making it all work' from the GTD guy also helped with just wanting to get everything into some system; which I developed bit by bit using tiny habit changes.
By now I have an amazingly complex system involving a Google Sheet, Workflowy and Evernote that would be just about ready to be turned into a professional product... but getting there I went through dozens and dozens of little improvements of just getting everything out of my kind and into some system.
I've had the same problem you describe and think it has been partially solved since I'm using Inbox instead of the classic gmail. All Reminders are sitting between the mail I've got to do and so I'm actually forced to look at them and deal with them. Of course this only works if you don't spam your Inbox with things you need months doing or don't do at all. But the "delay" feature is great for that as well.
Same problem, I never check any notes I write on a computer or phone. A physical planner for me is the way to go, I'm not sure why I tend to check it more often but I do. I also enjoy writing in it quite a bit more, I can draw diagrams or doodle if I feel like it. I bought a notebook with a dot grid for this reason.
Same here. Digital lists are never reviewed. I carry one or two scrap envelopes in my back pocket (or a skinny notebook) at all times with a list of things to do. In the morning, when I transfer my wallet, keys, and envelopes to the pants that I'll be wearing, I check my list and see what needs doing.
Grain of salt / what works for others won't work for you / etc.
Don't leap back to school without carefully vetting whatever program has caught your attention. A lot of hoop jumping, and a lot of curriculum that's a decade out of date (or more) out there these days. I've tried to go back a few times, and it's been a complete waste of time/money.
Read Pressfield's "The War of Art." It's cheap, it's short, and it's helpful. There are a few passages that don't quit hit home, but it does one thing really well. It gives you the kind of internal vocabulary you need to get out of the "I'll do it tomorrow" sort of procrastination. "Tomorrow" is really dangerous thinking when there's not an actual deadline. You'll be saying tomorrow for years at a time, without actually moving the needle.
Move the needle every day. Do -something- that counts as forward progress. Momentum goes a long way. Track what you're doing. "What gets measured gets improved" sort of thing.
Be honest with yourself. What have you done that makes you think you should be more than just another office peon? Put in the work. Stop wishing. Earn it.
"Read Pressfield's "The War of Art." It's cheap, it's short, and it's helpful. "Tomorrow" is really dangerous thinking when there's not an actual deadline. You'll be saying tomorrow for years at a time, without actually moving the needle."
+1 to all of this. The War of Art is excellent, as is the advice about "tomorrow".
This tldr isn't very accurate. And the article isn't really that long. Worth the 20-something paragraphs of time.
But, to offer a slightly better summary:
Voltaire earned ~ half a million livres over about a year after discovering a broken lottery with a mathematician friend. The guy in charge of the lottery was fired, and the lottery was cancelled.
Voltaire used that money for additional investments, substantially increasing his wealth and allowing him to freely pursue his writing.
The mathematician used his winnings to fund scientific research and expeditions.
Directly from the article: "As he later observed, “If you want to make a fortune in this country, it is enough to read the king’s orders-in-council.” In other words, if you want to get lucky, read the small print."
Said mathematician was Charles Marie de La Condamine, maybe he isn't too well known abroad but the guy also discovered rubber (well, for the Occident of course, the natives knew it already), a malaria treatment, and measured the shape of the Earth (to confirm Newton's hypothesis that the poles would be flattened) in a great expedition to Peru.
So he's a reasonably important 18th century man who wasn't only a mathematician.
If you're writing a lot, it's not a risk. You've got something sitting in a folder that you haven't touched in five years. Blow the dust off, polish the edges, and maybe you make a couple bucks.
Lining up those SFWA ducks will be important. At that point, even as a new publication, if they're easy to work with, they'll quickly become a great second or third stop for fresh stories. They won't get first submissions for awhile, because you can't compete with Terraform's (and others') 25c/word rate. But that's okay. Gems fall through the cracks. Loads of great fiction out there looking for a home.
A pro-rate story (over 5 cents a word) worth of writing can take weeks or months to polish to an acceptable level. If this person plans to be affiliated with SWFA and get a reputation as having good taste in stories to publish, it's not just a "sure, I can take your trunk story" deal. Trunk stories are trunk stories for a reason.
If you write every day, and you've been published at a pro-rate previously, you most likely have something near-publishable in your trunk.
Obviously, the publisher needs to be discerning in what he actually buys. But if you're a writer trying to build a relationship with a new publication, I don't see any problem recycling work that didn't quite hit with some of the established markets.
If you're unpublished, or you've only been paid lower rates, you probably shouldn't be asking the question "Why should I submit here when I can submit to XYZ?" You should just tack the new publisher onto the end of the list, and when you've worked your story through the others, drop it here before it hits the trunk.
Your math is a little off, but you should seriously consider brushing up a bit and writing. SFF (and speculative fiction as a whole) has a diversity problem.
Diversity problem? Nonsense! Just look how many succesful Speculative Fiction authors are female: Andrea Norton, Susan Cooper, Connie Willis, Ursula Le Guin, Julian May, Nancy Kress, Octavia Butler (black, as well as female) and dare I say it, J.K. Rowling - all off the top of my head.
Then there are well known award-winnning gay authors such as David Gerrold.
And I've just finished reading last year's Hugo Award winning novel "The Three Body Problem" written by Cixin Liu, a Chinese SF author.
If anything, SF is the field of fiction which has the least problems with "diversity" - its readers are open-minded almost by definition!
It's "Andre Norton", not "Andrea Norton". Her real name was Alice.
It'd be nice to think we'd advanced far enough that females wouldn't feel it was necessary to use male pseudonyms, but it's "JK Rowling" not "Joanne Rowling" to avoid scaring off the boys.
Yes, Joanne Rowling was asked by her publisher to publish Harry Potter under two initials because they thought boys might not want to read a book written by a woman. Not having a middle name she choose K as a nod to her paternal grandmother, Kathleen.
4-5 pieces per month, posting them for free on the site but charging a subscription for kindle and other e-reader versions. Since this is a hobby all proceeds can go back to paying more authors and buying ads to promote. If that model doesn't work I may have to change it down the road. I'd also like to eventually have pieces read for a podcast, but not initially.
For a company that matches employees to employers, this is a pretty brilliant passive way of saying "Hey, look at how unexciting or terrible your job is, we can help!"
Personally, I was neutral across the board. Instantly had me thinking "should I be poking around for a new gig?", even if responsibilities/life make that somewhat unpractical.
