NEERA MAHAJAN – Page 31

5 Secrets to Write More In Less Time

September 19, 2021September 19, 2021 Neera

Lately, I have been able to free up more time during the day while writing much more than I ever did.

I don’t feel as stressed as I used to and have much more time reading books, going for walks, and even watching TV.

I attribute my current productivity to five changes I have made in the past few months.

Here they are without much ado.

1. Use a timer

The timer has become my #1 productivity tool. I have become very diligent in using a timer while writing. For example, before writing an article or working on a book, I set 15 minutes timer on my computer.

I tell myself I am only going to work on it for 15 minutes. I get much less resistance from my ‘monkey brain.’ I get focused quickly as the clock is ticking, and I get a fair deal done. Sometimes I go into a flow state, and 15 minutes pass in 5 minutes. By that time, I have written more than 300 words. That is a decent size article.

This technique is based on the Pomodoro technique, where you focus on a task for 25 minutes followed by a five-minute break afterward.

2. Only one priority per day

I used to spread myself very thin. Each day I will have a to-do list of 8–10 tasks, and I will go from one to another, crossing them off my list. It would leave me exhausted.

Not anymore.

Now I only have one writing-related task a day. Whether it is working on a chapter of the book I am writing or an article on Medium. When that task is done, I am free to do whatever I want to do.

I get much more done this way compared to when I had a long to-do list.

3. Step away from the computer

My eyes get exhausted pretty soon while working on the computer. Previously I used to persist and keep going. Now I have limited my computer time to the bare minimum and use other tools. I do my planning on the notebook. I even write my first draft in the notebook and then type it up on the computer later. I check my mail on my phone, and I download imaged on iPad or iPhone.

4. Use Roam Research

Recently I have started using Roam Research, a note-taking tool that uses 20th-century German writer and sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s Slip-box technique to create notes. This tool is a life changer. I have been able to organize my research (still working on it) so that I can access it at a minute’s notice.

5. Get to the point straight away

We often get stuck trying to connect points or find appropriate stories while all we want to do is give the vital information. Write in dot points. Give the information and forget the fluff. Just like you, other people don’t have time either. Short is better. To-the-point is best.

Final Thought

It was close to 10:15 pm when I started writing this article. I finished it in two 15 minutes intervals. If it weren’t for those, I wouldn’t have written it.

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

60 Lessons Learnt In 60 Years

September 18, 2021September 18, 2021 Neera

This week I turned sixty.

While there weren’t many options to celebrate amongst the six-week-long lockdown where I live, there was plenty of time to reflect on the six decades that I have spent on this planet.

While God’s Human Creation department forgot some ingredients while making me, his Good Fortune department compensated for those errors by giving me a good set of parents and a stable upbringing.

Both my parents were teachers who gave me a solid foundation to face life’s trials and tribulations. Of course, I had my fair share of those. But, what they did most was to install in me a passion for written words. So, ever since I was a little girl, I have been collecting quotes which over time, guided me, comforted me, and became the inspiration to try my hands at writing myself.

Some of them became life lessons.

I see no better way to celebrate my sixtieth birthday than to revise those and remind myself that, life is beautiful, and then you die.

Here are my handpicked 60 lessons learned in 60 years.

She that loveth books will never want a faithful friend. Books are wholesome counselors, cheerful companions, and effectual comforters. Also, they don’t reveal your secrets.
Education is the training that will help you get on without intelligence. If you have figured that out, you are intelligent enough and hence don’t need a college degree.
You will escape from school only to find that the world is a bigger school and that you are back again in the first grade. The only drawback is that there is no second grade.
Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they don’t know just as much as you do. Online teaching is prompting students that there is a better and more expensive course than the one they just bought.
Examinations are formidable to even the best prepared, for the greatest fool can ask more than the wisest can answer.
A secret is what you tell someone else not to tell because you can’t keep it to yourself. This is also a great way to create fake news.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Alternatively, you can try praying.
Don’t waste your time collecting other people’s autographs. Devote it to make your autograph worth collecting. While you are doing that, practice your signatures.
If at first, you don’t succeed, then marriage is not for you.
We are all mad; only the degree varies.
He who rides the tiger cannot dismount. Try a donkey instead. They are more prevalent anyway.
Rabbits jump, and they live for 8 years, dogs run, and they live for 15, turtles do nothing and live for 150. They also win the race.
The road to success is always under repair. Mind the potholes.
Living is the art of getting used to what we didn’t expect.
What you are afraid of doing is a clear indicator of what to do next.
People who are late to the parties are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them. (It is because they have a husband who doesn’t confuse parties with work meetings.)
When you have to put up with mean people, think of them as sandpaper. They may scratch you, rub you the wrong way. But eventually, you end up smooth and polished. And the sandpaper? It will be worn out and ugly.
We all boil at different degrees.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Do what you feel is right. You will be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves yet make them know that you are lying.
Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them — then they destroy you.
It is important to know when to stop arguing with people and give them the pleasure of being wrong.
Be a good person, but don’t waste time trying to prove it to others.
Every next level of your life will demand a different version of you.
There’s no rule that says I have to live life like everyone else.
When a student is ready, the teacher appears. When a student is truly ready, the teacher disappears.
You’ll have good days, bad days, overwhelming days, too tired days, I-can’t-go-on days. And every day you’ll still show up.
Life is about how you handle plan B.
Grow through what you go through.
A woman is unstoppable after she realizes she deserves better.
When you can’t control what is happening around you, challenge yourself to control the way in which you respond. That is where your true power lies.
Money is just a concept. It has no real value. The day you understand that, you will understand how to make your own money.
If you don’t get on to build your own dreams, someone will hire you to build their dreams.
Life is like an elevator on the way up, sometimes you have to stop and let some people off.
Keep smiling… One day life will get tired of upsetting you.
Nothing ever goes away until it teaches you what you need to learn.
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.
As long as you know who you are and what makes you happy it doesn’t matter how others see you.
Make yourself a priority. At the end of the day, you are your longest commitment.
It is up to you to see the beauty of everyday things.
Energy flows, where focus goes.
There’s no need to rush. What’s meant for you is always to arrive on time.
A bad attitude is like a flat tyre, you can’t get very far until you change it.
You can’t change the people around you. But you can change who you choose to be around.
If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you will find an excuse.
Being negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult. you make be given a cactus, but you don’t have to sit on it.
When you’re not sure, flip a coin because while the coin is in the air, you realize which one you’re actually hoping for.
One year = 365 opportunities.
You either say how you feel and f*ck it up, or say nothing and let it f*ck you up instead.
The smarter you get, the less you speak. You grow to realize that not everyone is worth confrontation. Your time is valuable, your energy is priceless and you don’t want to waste either on people who don’t deserve it.
Every time you are able to find humor in a difficult situation, you win.
Be careful who you trust. Salt and sugar look the same.
You are the best project you will ever work on.
Stop setting new year resolutions. Stop raising the bar each year. Stop under-promising and over-delivering. You are not a Fortune 500 company that has to show more profit each year. You are a living being like any other. You have the right to be in this universe. A cat never has to set a new year resolution. Free yourself of any expectations, especially your own.
There is a trick to a graceful exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what is over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out. The trick to retiring well is the trick to living well. Life isn’t a holding action but a process. We don’t leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the sports field or the office. We own what we learned back there. The experience and the growth are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves along quite gracefully.
Beautiful young people are due to makeup, but beautiful old people are works of art.
We do not necessarily improve with age; for better or worse, we become more like ourselves.
In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It is the years that you don’t have to spend in the nursing home.
When you get to the age when your thinking goes from “you probably shouldn’t say that” to “what the heck, let’s see what happens,” you are in the sixth decade of your life. At that age everything is fun.

Write A Book A Month To Earn 100K

September 3, 2021September 3, 2021 Neera

The year was 2020. Pandemic had hit. Michelle Kulp, a struggling writer, made a bold announcement on social media.

“I am going to write and publish a book a month.”

The day she started her first book, her daughter moved in with a two-year-old child. She had separated from her husband.

“Have you ever imagined writing a book with a toddler in the house,” moaned Michelle.

But Michelle didn’t let that deter her. She was determined to keep her commitment. Just a few months ago, she had read a blog post by Written Word Media that said that an average self-published author who makes $100K has 28 books published.

She immediately thought, “I need to make a $100K with my books! I’m going to write a book a month and create a 6-figure passive income stream SOLELY from my royalties.”

She had published eight books since 2011, but most of them were old. The information was outdated, and she hadn’t been marketing them. So they were dying a slow death.

In 2018, she had spent more than a year writing the second edition of her book, Quit Your Job and Follow Your Dreams. It was earning a few hundred dollars per month, but considering the time she had invested in writing, editing, publishing, and launching that book, the payoff wasn’t huge.

While she was mulling over her decision, she came across a quote by Seth Godin, author of 18 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into over 35 languages. (He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and, most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, and Purple Cow. He has also been writing a blog post, every day, for 20+ years and has a collection of over 8000 blog posts at his site.)

Seth Godin wrote:

“One of my books took more than a year to write, ten hours a day. Another took three weeks. Both sell for the same price. The quicker one outsold the other 20 to 1.

A $200 bottle of wine costs almost exactly as much to make as a $35 bottle of wine. The cost of something is largely irrelevant, people are paying attention to its value.

Your customers don’t care what it took for you to make something. They care about what it does for them.”

When Michelle read that quote, she realized she didn’t need to spend months or years working on one book. I needed to write short books.

Since writing and teaching were her passion, she knew I could easily do this. So she embarked on her project.

She built herself a system.

She called it BAM! (Book-a-Month)

She would write a book in the first two weeks of the month, get it edited in the second two weeks, and self-publish it on Amazon.

She started writing a book a week.

She had heard the prolific author’s adage, “Nothing sells your first book better than your second book.”

She found that adage to be true. Each new book she released she included references to her previously published titles, which created new readers for those books.

Volume Boosts Visibility!

Today she has 23 books published and is still counting. She is making a four-figure monthly income and is on target to make a six-figure income.

I read her story from her book 28 Books to $100K: A Guide for Ambitious Authors Who Want to Skyrocket Their Passive Income By Writing a Book a Month.

I have adopted her strategy.

For the last two weeks, I have been working on my next book, Eight Steps to Authorpreneurship. It will be done by the end of this month. Next month I will start another one.

To succeed with this strategy, you need to have a few things in place.

Write Shorter books. I write 100-page books which are roughly 20,000 words. Kindle has many short book categories. Since time and attention are in short supply, there is a great demand for quicker reads.
Write Your Book as quickly as possible. I share my process of writing a book in a week in my book How to Write and Publish an eBook in One Week. You can use the same format and extend it to ten days and take the weekend off in between. It is surely doable. I have been doing it since June this year.
Pick a narrow niche and dominate it. The more books you will write in a narrow category, the more authority you will gain in that field. I write books for authors who what to be entrepreneurs. I target ambitious authors and entrepreneurs who have a strong desire to meet their writing goals.
Make a schedule for an entire year. Identify 12 titles you want to write, allocating one to each month. You can change them as you go, but knowing them in advance means you will be able to do research in advance, which will make writing a breeze.
Write each chapter as a Medium post. This way you will write your first draft, test it with the audience and refine it before including it in the book. This article is going to be a chapter in my next book.

Are you intrigued? Are you a game to write a book a month? Write me a note in the comments section and we can buddy up and help each other. It is not a sales pitch. Just a genuine note to meet like-minded aspiring writers.

Photo by Jarek Jordan on Unsplash

Writing The First Draft

August 20, 2021August 20, 2021 Neera

The hardest part of writing a book is writing the first draft.

That’s until you have written it.

Once you have knocked it down, it becomes the easiest part. Then editing becomes the most painful activity.

For the last four days, I am grappling with how to tell the story of my inner critic.

My first approach was to construct various conversations between the two of us, make them funny and yet insightful.

That still is the goal.

But if you have written anything in your life, you would know that thoughts rarely portray on paper as well as they do in the head.

I conjured up a couple of thousand words on the first day while my mind tried to figure out how to tell the story.

The second day I woke up with the idea to write numbered paragraphs. Just like David Sedaris’s book ‘Theft by Finding.’ So I spent the whole day scanning my diaries to find moments when my inner critic and I had some interesting encounters.

I was thrilled to find our first mishap. It was in January 2011. For more than ten years, I have been aware of the presence of my inner critic.

I have come across many snippets in my diaries and journals where I am denigrating myself, but it was, in fact, my inner critic accusing me, belittling me, and stripping off my self-confidence.

But how to put it together as a story?

Just the diary entries won’t do because most of them are monologues. That could be very boring to read. I want this book to be witty and insightful.

So many times, I almost gave up.

My inner critic was sitting on a wall, laughing his head off, watching me struggle. Yet, it is his laughs that keep me going.

Presently I am just collecting all the related incidents and inner thoughts I am finding in my diaries.

I was delighted yesterday when I found a paragraph that I thought was a perfect opening for the book.

Today morning I wrote a scene that too can become the opening chapter.

I am still searching for the right tone of voice. I want it to be mature and funny, self-humorist but compassionate, revealing yet reserved. I have a glimpse of it at places which is heartening. I will be delighted if I could learn to include humor in my writing. I have been an uptight person most of my life. I am at a stage in life where I can loosen up and laugh at my own quirks.

This book is different than the first one. Progress is slow. Then I remind myself that it is just the first draft, after all.

First drafts are meant to like this. Anne Lamott calls them sh*ty first drafts.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the ‘down draft’ — you just get it down. The second draft is the ‘up draft’ — you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy. — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or a professional, writes Lamott, when you first sit down with something new, “We all often feel like we are pulling teeth.”

David Rakoff too compares them to sh*t.

Writing — I can really only speak to writing here — always, always only starts out as shit: an infant of monstrous aspect; bawling, ugly, terrible, and it stays terrible for a long, long time (sometimes forever). Unlike cooking, for example, where largely edible, if raw, ingredients are assembled, cut, heated, and otherwise manipulated into something both digestible and palatable, writing is closer to having to reverse-engineer a meal out of rotten food. — David Rakoff, Half Empty

Whenever Austin Kleon writes a new book, he reminds himself:

“It doesn’t matter if it’s good right now, it just needs to exist.”

That is what I am reminding myself over and over again. Right now, the story just needs to exist. In time my brain will figure out a structure.

Until then, I need to keep going.

I Am Writing My Second Book

August 17, 2021August 17, 2021 Neera

It is about conversations with my inner critic.

I have been silent for a few days because I was up to something.

From Friday, my city is in lockdown for the first time in 2021. It is the strictest one this time, which means no gym, no yoga session, or unexpected family and friends’ visits. One week of full ownership of my time.

That is when the idea popped into my head.

Why not this week to write the next book?

Some of you already know that I wrote a book in a week in June.

Despite my good intentions, I couldn’t repeat the performance in July.

But this month, there is this great opportunity. So I spent Friday clearing my usual tasks, writing the weekly newsletter, writing the travel article, submitting it to World Travelers Blog, and getting ready to start the book on Monday.

The story behind my second book.

In July, when I was trying to write my second book, 22,000 words into it, I threw my hands in the air.

It was rubbish.

All of it.

The book was about my story of moving from a competitive to a creative life. It was supposed to be inspirational and entertaining, yet it sounded boring and clichéd.

It was not the first time I was writing this book. I made the first attempt at writing this story in 2019. But couldn’t pull it through.

Then again, in 2020. This time I finished a version of it. I even got it edited and was about to self-publish it, but it didn’t go ahead.

Why?

My inner critic stopped me.

And it was stopping again, this time.

And the truth is, ‘he’ is right. (I have always perceived my inner critic as a male. It pops up like Jack In The Box. I have even started calling it Jack).

Jack has been right several times. He keeps me in line. He protects me from making a fool of myself. He is annoying, restraining, and cruel but has my best interest in his heart.

When I struggled to write the book in July, Jack said, “Just dump it.”

He and I had had many conversations in the past. I knew his tactics. I wasn’t going to give in that easily.

“No way. I need to tell this story. It is too important to dismiss. It is my story, after all. I can’t let it get lost in the oblivion.”

“It sounds ridiculous. You call it inspirational. I bet even you can’t read it. Admit it.”

“Oh! Go away. That is why I wrote my last book in one week so that you don’t get a chance to talk me out of it.”

“Yeah! that is why there are so many mistakes in it. Had you giving me a chance, I would have helped you make it a much better book.” Jack had gotten out of the box and sat on the bathroom benchtop where I washed my hands.

“What! now you want to get involved with writing books as well?”

He looked at the ceiling and swayed on his spring torso without saying anything.

“That is why you are visiting me? You want me to feature you in this book.” I exclaimed incredulously.

“You are smarter than I think.” he winked. “See you later!” Then, before I could blink, he jumped into the box and disappeared.

I have two choices now. Ignore him again or rewrite featuring him in the book.

If I do, the book will recount the conversations we had in the past three years. I will still be telling my story and my insights, but I will be using many fictional elements. So rather than being an inspirational book, it might turn out to be a witty memoir.

I asked my readers whether they would like to read conversations between my inner critic and me.

I told myself even if one person comes back and says they would like to read the book, I will write it.

Several readers came back and said they would love to read the book.

One reader wrote back saying she too has Jack in her head.

“I struggled for years making music with a good jack and a bad jack dialoguing and fighting in my head, sometimes I shouted at them to stop and let me play, but they took the stage again. The bad one was straight, telling me what was rubbish, but the “good” one was actually worse, he was mean: as he was complimenting me just to tell me: you won’t think you can do it again, uh? You cannot get along so good, you’ll soon make a mistake… So, I’d love to read your dialogues with jack, especially now that you made such a good cartoon portrait of him!” — DG

So I am writing the book for my readers.

Rules are a bit different this time.

I will write the book in ten days rather than one week, and I will take the weekend off in between.

I will not write a daily progress report but will definitely write at least four articles to share my struggles with all honesty. I think we learn more when we hear about other people’s failures along with success.

I am aiming for the book to be 10,000 to 20,000 words long. I am still debating whether I should do illustrations as well.

You can help.

Do you have an inner critic? How do you see it? What does it tell you?

Would you please share stories of your inner critic with me through comments? It will help me write the book.

What Is Frustrating You Right Now

August 13, 2021August 13, 2021 Neera

Removing little frustrations can lead to big gains

We all cope with many little frustrations every day.

The fridge needs cleaning. “I will do it when I have a bit of time,” you tell yourself. Days pass by, and you don’t get around to clean the damn thing. But every time you open it, you feel frustrated.

Rosebush needs pruning. It is about time. In 2 – 3 weeks, it will be too late. “I will do them when I have a free hour.” But, of course, you never get the free hour. You keep putting up with its long protruding tentacles every time you walk past it.

Little frustrations like that suck energy and make you feel clogged.

The fact is it takes much less energy and time to remove them than to keep putting up with them. And you feel good at a result. Just as a plunger unclogs your sink, cleaning out little irritations unclogs you.

When our physical surroundings are cluttered, we feel clogged and uncomfortable both in our physical space and consciousness. We feel constantly frustrated. Our energy is blocked. Our creativity is squelched.

Now think about the time when you took the pile of stuff gathered in your garage to the tip. Or when you donated clothes from your closet that you hadn’t worn in years.

How did you feel after you finished those tasks? I’ll bet you felt a rush of adrenaline and a true sense of accomplishment.

You walked away from the job feeling more positive about yourself. You felt as if you had accomplished something big.

Roll up your sleeves and start reducing the physical clutter.

Physical clutter is not the only thing that can clog our system.

Pent-up emotions clog our system too. We don’t realize it, but anger, resentment, and grudges are the constant sources of frustration. We remain emotionally and spiritually clogged when we hang on to negative emotions.

Are you holding any resentment toward anyone right now? If so, your emotional and spiritual system is clogged. You’re devoting energy to that resentment, which “steals” energy you could be applying to more productive things.

Forgive those who you feel have wronged you. Why hang on to something that makes you feel angry and miserable?

What about the digital clutter.

At the moment, my biggest frustration is digital clutter.

Ever since I started using personal computers, I developed a habit of collecting ‘stuff.’ The ‘stuff’ could be self-help articles, free books, images, emails, PowerPoint presentations (remember we used to get many of those via emails), animations. You name it; I have it.

Digital clutter not only takes up significant space on my devices but in my head as well. It distracts me, demands my attention, and is mentally taxing.

This week I decided to get rid of digital clutter. However, since digital clutter keeps accumulating, I made myself a strategy to deal with it regularly.

Take Away

We all get frustrated from time to time with little things. Instead of keep on putting up with them, work on removing them.

Pay attention to inefficiencies. What wastes your time and money right now? Solving those problems could be more beneficial than you think.

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