BenCrowder.net

Once again the proverbial light bulb has gone on, this time pointing out to me that I’m still trying to do too much. And I’m still getting distracted by stuff that doesn’t matter.

This time around the realization came via Cal Newport’s article on fixed-schedule productivity. Read it. Great stuff. I’m also digging the Zen Habits blog.

A while ago I realized that my life’s work is in books, and more recently I found that that’s in writing them and designing them. That’s what I’m made for. But is that what I spend most of my free time doing?

No. And that’s the problem.

From now on I’m not letting myself work on any side projects unless they have to do with books. I’m axing Donne (the to do list web app I had just started building), Beyond (my genealogy web app), the chord chart I was designing, and all other non-book projects. Instead, I’ll make do with existing tools.

For example, I was going to typeset a nice PDF of our Mormon Artist volunteer handbook, but I can just put the information up on the website. Much faster. Similarly, I was going to extend my Glider wiki for multiple users so we could use it for the magazine style guide, but I realized I could just use Google Sites and have it up immediately. Check.

Also, to keep myself from getting distracted too often, I’m going to do my best to limit my time on email, Twitter, and Google Reader. We’ll see how it goes.

My new plan is to have no more than one writing project and two book design projects going at any given time. Here’s what I’m working on:

Current writing project: Tanglewood. It’s coming along really well, too — I’ve woken up fifteen minutes early each morning to write and have managed to hit my 500-word quota every single day so far.

Current book design project #1: the D&C reader’s edition. I’m still reparagraphing it and have been dragging my heels, but I’m going to focus now and make it happen.

Current book design project #2: a short illustrated edition of Christina Rossetti’s poem “The Rainbow” (which is actually part of a longer poem). More on this soon.

Will I still be thinking and writing about web stuff? Sure. That’s my job, after all. But in my free time I’m focusing strictly on books. That’s the only way to get really, really good at making them.