Originally posted to Patreon: January 25th, 2018
I always see a lot of writers talking about how they’re really productive at [insert specific time] and they always try to schedule their writing around that. I’ve never been one of those people and I was never really able to figure out how to get myself into the headspace to be productive.
Usually, my go-to method of working would be to open whatever file I needed to work on that day on my computer and keep reminding myself to go do the thing, even if only a few paragraphs, throughout the day. This works pretty well, but I rarely sit for even a solid hour of uninterrupted work. I get distracted easily. Already I’ve checked both my twitter and my facebook and kind of want to check my Tumblr really quick, but I’m resisting.
I had a bit of an epiphany this morning while I was drinking my tea and sitting in this really cozy hostel in Sapporo, Japan: The cold makes me productive.
Well, not being cold. That would do quite the opposite. However, I’ve always enjoyed the feeling of being warm in the cold. Like that feeling of being by a fire on a cold night, or wrapping up in a blanket with some hot cocoa while there’s a snowstorm outside.
Just when I started to enjoy that cozy feeling this morning my brain started itching to work on some writing. Then I started to remember the last time I enjoyed this feeling.
I was living in a small apartment in New York. It was up in the mountains so it would get pretty bad in the winter. And to top it off my apartment had pretty thin walls so it would get pretty cold in the winter. To cut down on bills I would put up blankets to keep the heat in my bedroom and only turn on the heat in the kitchen and bathroom when I needed it. I would be all warm and toasty in my room, wrapped up in a blanket with my feet resting on my electric heater, and a heated back massager keeping me relaxed while I wrote.
When I lived in Northern Ireland I didn’t get to enjoy this same cozy feeling. Yeah, it’s pretty cold there, but you rarely get snowy evenings and it just didn’t FEEL the same. Except for that one winter when I was younger where it snowed a LOT!
During my time in my little apartment in New York, I was going to school and working, but despite this, I was really productive with my writing. I was able to churn out a steady 500 words minimum every night. Yet when I was in Ireland I found it more of a struggle to get any writing done, even when I wasn’t doing much.
I didn’t realize this while I was in my apartment, but thinking back it seems almost obvious now. My writing progress was about even throughout the year, yet my workload from school and work would always be significantly larger in the winter. You would think my writing would take a hit when I went from working about 20 hours a week to almost 40 hours, or it would go up in the summer when I wasn’t going to class, but it was always about even.
Now I know I can’t just make it winter in New York year-round, and I’m not really prepared to live in a place where it is snowy year round. I enjoy being productive, but I enjoy being warm too.
Although now that I know this about myself I can start working around it a bit. I’ll still need to power through the warmer months, but I can give myself more time in the winter to write. I can also travel in the warmer months to colder places so that I can write.
Cheers to getting more work done.
Slán go fóill
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Charlotte L Tracey 