Podcast: Productivity for Writers Who Don’t Want to Burn Out
With sue campbell
Master productivity as a writer! Join mindset & book marketing coach Sue Campbell for game-changing strategies to overcome procrastination and get more writing done. As a former "champion procrastinator" turned productivity expert, Sue shares actionable tips that won't lead to burnout. Perfect for fiction & non-fiction authors looking to make consistent progress on their writing goals while maintaining work-life balance.
What you’ll learn
Two proven productivity systems for different personality types
How to identify your productivity tendency & work with your natural style
Digital & analog tools to support your writing practice
Ways to balance writing with life, family & other commitments
Mindset shifts to build trust with yourself & follow through
resources
Four Tendencies Quiz from Gretchen Rubin
Byron Katie’s Four Questions
Subscribe for weekly writing insights at https://pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
transcript
Anne Hawley: Hey writers, could you use some help thwarting procrastination and getting more done? Then this one's for you. Hello and welcome to The Write Anyway Podcast from Pages and Plataforms and the Happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, we present a replay of Sue Campbell's recent live webinar on productivity for writers.
So grab a notepad and a pen and let's dive right in.
Sue Campbell: For those of you who don't know me, I'm Sue Campbell. I'm a mindset coach and a book marketing coach. I work with award-winning authors, bestselling authors, regular old authors, fiction and nonfiction. Traditionally published, independently published. I don't care. I just love working with writers and I'm a former procrastinator most relevant for this conversation, like Champion procrastinator and a current productivity nerd.
So that is why I love talking about this stuff. I get shit done. By managing my mind. That is a huge piece of productivity is what is going on up here. I've published two books. I've got two more that are almost ready to go. I run my own business. I've got two kids. I've got, she's not really a puppy anymore, she's two. But I've got a Labrador, I've got a husband I successfully have a little handful of chronic conditions that I manage, and for the most part, I am happy and I'm not burned out. So I am not one of those people who's gonna teach you productivity that just runs you into the ground.
Here's me in a hammock with said Labrador. She's got like a stick in her mouth or something nasty in her mouth. My husband's in the background, we're hanging out right. Once I pick my kids up from school, most of the time I don't work after that. And it's summer right now. During the school year, once I pick my kids up from school, that's it. I'm not working.
I hardly ever work weekends unless we have a really big event that needs a little bit of time on the weekends. In the summer, I'm doing it a tiny bit because my husband's got a crazy work schedule. So I get good coverage when he's home. But you get the idea, right?
I'm not productivity to run myself into the ground. I'm productivity so I can get done the important things and still have time left over for life. So before we start, I recommend turning off your phone, minimizing any distractions, grab a pen and a notebook or however you like to take notes.
Because this is gonna be fairly active. I want you to be thinking about stuff, writing stuff down, figuring out how you wanna do this.
So here's what we're gonna talk about today. We gotta start with productivity philosophy. Remember I said mindset is such a big part of this. Then we're gonna figure out your productivity tendency.
I'll explain what that is, and I'm gonna walk you through two productivity systems. Now, there are a ton of productivity systems out there, but these are two pretty foundational ones. And I can speak from experience because I've used both of them for an extensive period of time. So I can speak to them very well and I've had clients use them as well.
And I want you to make an informed decision about which one you wanna try out, and you don't have to accept either of these whole cloth. You can absolutely customize them. So think of this as, okay, this is my foundational productivity structure, and then as I use it, I'm gonna tweak it to meet my needs.
I'm also gonna give you my favorite digital and analog tools to support each of the systems. Then we're gonna spend a little time talking about Goal Getter School, which is my favorite thing I've ever created. It's a three month program where I, former project manager, I forgot to mention that I used to be a business systems analyst, project manager, so I bring a lot to this discussion.
I help you create a project plan and scope a goal appropriately, whether that is a marketing goal or a getting a manuscript to the next level goal. That program has helped dozens and dozens of writers at this point. This will be the eighth cohort, I think, helping those writers actually break through on projects that they've not been able to break through on their own.
And then giving you the skill so you'll be able to go forward on your own as well. So we'll spend a little time talking about that, and we will hopefully have time for some q and a as well. I know we'll at least have a little, so tell me in the chat right now, what is your biggest productivity challenge?
Robert says, making time. Emily says, prioritization. Yep. This is gonna help today. Christine says depression. I'm so sorry, Christine. Sylvia says Too many ideas coming at me Christine, and I want you to know there is help. I'm really glad you're showing up on the webinar today, if you can get some forward motion going with something that is a help.
Bobby says, staying focused. Michael says, focusing on my novel work and school. Kelly says, writing my memoir while running an online business. Yep. Julie says, fatigue. Yep. Brad says, prioritization. Ida has too much time on setting. Okay. So there's a part of it that you like doing, that you're spending a lot of time on.
Dora says, finishing my first draft. Ann says, not believing it will all really happen. See what I mean about mindset? So when we don't believe it'll all really happen, why would we waste our time taking action to make it happen? You've gotta open up some possibility for that belief, Ann. Laura says, my mindset, who will ever want to read what I write so what's the point?
Yep. And I'm so heavy on mindset, you guys. Inside our Happily Ever author club, we have calls just dedicated to mindset. I make room for it on every single call we do, because I believe that if you don't shift to the story that you're telling yourself, you're not gonna be able to finish your book, you're not gonna be able to work on your marketing. You've gotta prioritize the story you tell yourself first.
Okay, this is very helpful. I also want you all to look at the chat and just take a little heart that you're not alone. You're not the only person who struggles with this kind of thing.
Just normalizing it a little bit can really help. And the fact is, for most of us, we were never properly taught during our formalized education how to handle any of the productivity stuff and certainly not how to handle the mindset stuff. Now we're adults, we can figure this out for ourselves. We can try stuff on, we have to take control of it, because our education system does not teach us this kind of thing.
All right, so let's talk a little bit about philosophy. For me, the goal is not to fill every minute with productive tasks. Now, there is a little part of me, which I'll talk about later, that does absolutely wanna do that, but I cannot put her in charge 'cause she would run me into the ground.
The goal is not to fill every waking hour with something productive. The goal is making time for what's important, which includes writing time and downtime, and time for family and time for other commitments. the goal is to have a balanced life. And balanced is a tricky word.
So if that's loaded for you, call it something else. I also believe that we need to say yes to priorities and eliminate the BS busy work. There are two things that happen with BS busy work. Sometimes it comes at us from other people, and we don't wanna say no. We're people pleasing, and it sucks up all of our time and energy.
And sometimes our inner saboteur wants to feel productive without actually doing the scary thing, so we'll do all of this busy work stuff without actually making progress on the big, scary thing that holds the most growth and the most potential for moving us forward in our writing life. I also think that working on your productivity is an amazing way to improve your relationship with yourself by building trust with yourself.
Speaking as the former procrastinator, who in my late teens, early twenties, was an absolute basket case and I had no trust in myself whatsoever. Building trust with yourself, delivering on what you say you're gonna do is a process where you build on each success and you keep on going.
But this is your opportunity to do that. I want you to think of this and not as a way of I'm gonna prove by value by what I put out into the world. No. I'm gonna build trust with myself by committing to what's important to me and following through on it for my own sake. I also believe it's a really important piece of productivity to be kind to yourself.
This goes back to not pushing yourself into burnout, and knowing that things happen and things don't always go according to plan,
and having a system that accounts for that. As writers, we have to do a lot of things. We've gotta develop our craft, constantly be getting better. We've gotta be writing, we've gotta be editing, we've gotta be marketing, we've gotta be having relationships with our family members and our friends. We may have a day job.
There are just life things. We may have health challenges. The news cycle may be sucking a lot of energy from us. This is why we need a system. A system will help you reduce your mental load. When you are just trying to keep track of everything between your ears, you get mentally exhausted before you even actually make progress on anything that's on the list in your head.
Both of the systems I'm gonna show you today will reduce your mental load, which is extremely helpful. It will help you make the most of the time you do have. A lot of you are having trouble making time. You do have some. We need to identify where those possibilities are and then even if it's just a little bit of time, how do we make the most of the time that we have?
We have to have a system to do that. And it will help you reach your goals. Finishing the book, building an audience for the book, whatever your goal is related to your book, a system is the only way to do that. A goal without a system is just a wish.
It is, I think, really important to choose a system, and there are a lot of productivity people out there who will tell you that this is the be-all-end-all system and you should definitely do this one and you should definitely do it to the letter or what a loser you are.
I do not subscribe to any of that theory. There are a lot of systems out there. A lot of them work really well, and a lot of them need a little bit of tweaking, and most of them aren't appropriate for everybody. If you're neurodivergent, if you have special circumstances in your life that didn't apply to the person who created the system, that's probably not the system for you, and that's totally fine. You didn't do anything wrong.
What's important to ask is how do I get things done? I wanna help you pinpoint how you get things done. What is your foundational style of getting things done? This is a framework which I think is absolute genius. It's called The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.
This is the major factor, I think, to helping you choose a productivity system. I'm gonna walk through these really quickly, but then I'll give you a link you can take after the webinar to determine your type. But my guess is you'll have a really pretty good idea of what your tendency is just from these descriptions.
So listen carefully and see if you can pinpoint which of these types you are.
First at this top of this little, if we lay this out like a clock face, we have Upholders. This is about whether you meet expectations, how do you meet them, internal or external expectations. An Upholder can meet outer expectations, no problem doing what the boss says, or doing what they're quote unquote told to do. And they can meet their inner expectations they set for themselves. These are people, they're a rockstar at work and they're training for a marathon, and they just seem to have all their shit together all the time. Thankfully this is only 19% of the population,?
So don't feel bad if you're not an Upholder. All of these have pros and cons too. Upholders can be a little type A, they can be a little rigid. They can follow rules just for the rules sake, even if the rules don't make any sense in a given context. And some of you are saying, what if you're all four and I don't really recognize myself in any of these?
Let me finish explaining each of them and it may be helpful. So that's the Upholder, training for the marathon or working out all the time, or whatever the external thing is that they wanna do because they have an inner expectation of themselves, and then can also easily meet all of those outer expectations.
Obligers are actually a really big category of people, and Obligers really are good at meeting those outer expectations, but resist the inner expectations. And by resist, if it doesn't impact somebody else, if it doesn't benefit somebody else, if you don't have outer accountability for it, it slides to the bottom of your list.
I am an Obliger, so if someone needs something from me, bam, it's done. I got you. If I wanna go to yoga, and I'm the only one who it impacts, it slides to the bottom of the list and does not happen as easily. So the trick to being an Obliger is you just create outer accountability for all the stuff that is an inner expectation that you do really wanna do, but you have a hard time doing.
You create meaningful outer accountability. Life changing. Gretchen Rubin says, Obligers have the most to gain by finding out their tendency. So if you have people pleasing tendencies, you may be an Obliger. There's a very good chance that you're an Obliger.
The next one is Questioner. Questioners will resist outer expectations because they have questions. I wanna make sure the person I'm talking to has thought this all the way through. So they might make a meeting go a little bit too long for some of us, because they're still asking questions.
They may have analysis paralysis when it comes to making a decision because they have questions. So they've gotta do the research, they've gotta do the analyzing. They can meet inner expectations very easily. Once all of their questions have been answered, they're like, okay, let's go. No problem. If I've internalized it, because all my questions have been answered, and now it's an inner expectation, not an issue.
And then we have Rebels. Rebels will resist outer expectations. So these are the people who are like, don't tell me what to do. They will resist inner expectations. Those shoulds like, oh, I should do this, they will push back against those as well.
The driving motivator for Rebels is freedom. They do not wanna be told what to do, they do not wanna be should upon. However, Rebels, once they have a passion for something, once they want to do it, watch out, they are on fire and it is absolutely done.
My husband is a Rebel. Both of my children are Rebels. I'm an Obliger in a house full of Rebels, friends, which actually isn't all bad 'cause Rebels will help Obligers say no to things. And Obligers will fill the vacuum that Rebels leave behind on things like taxes and bill pay, right?
So it is not good or bad to be any of these. You just want to have an awareness about it so you know how to work with yourself. You can also be more than one type. I was noticing in the chat like, what if I'm all four of them? We all of course have some of this in some areas of our life, but you're going to have one that's your leading style, but you can also have a secondary type which is adjacent to you on this little diagram.
I'm an Obliger and my secondary type is Upholder. My husband's a Rebel and his secondary type is Obliger. My son is a Rebel and his secondary typist Questioner. So you can have one that's adjacent on the wheel. You're very unlikely to be both a Rebel and an Upholder. That doesn't make sense.
There may be some topics, if you're a Rebel, but there's something you really love, you could feel like an Upholder for that thing just 'cause there's no friction for you whatsoever on that. That just means you're passionate and you're doing exactly what you wanna be doing.
There's also something called Obliger Rebellion that I wanted to make you aware of, and that is when Obligers say yes, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it.
And then they reach the freakout point and burn all the bridges. And say F you to everybody. Because we didn't do a good job of saying no. Before I was aware of this framework, I can point to things in my past where I went into Obliger Rebellion. It doesn't mean Rebel is my secondary type. It just means when you push your little Obliger self too far, you're gonna snap at some point.
Obligers are one of the biggest groups. Questioners are one of the biggest groups. The Rebels and the Upholders are a little less frequent. But I do find in my pseudoscientific sampling of my audience, there are a lot of Rebel writers.
All right. So at least having an idea, and again, you can take the quiz at quiz.gretchenrubin.com. Take it after this webinar, or your focus is gonna be a little divided.
At least basing on the little information that you gleaned and what your hunch is, you wanna look at these productivity systems through that lens.
Just a reminder, no system is perfect and neither are you. So this is not a magic wand and you're never gonna have any productivity issues again. This is a foundational system that you can lean on and develop habits around that will help you do what you need to do in the world with way less friction than you have now. That is my wish for you.
The first one that I wanna talk about is called the Autofocus System. I see this as being great for Rebels and for Questioners.
I can talk about why a little bit as we go into the description of what the system actually involves. The Autofocus System is basically you keep a running to-do list in a dedicated notebook. Sounds simple, right? There are some notations that you're gonna make in that book that will help you keep track of things and manage all the items that are gonna be in there.
This is why it's great for Rebels. You're gonna work on what you feel like working on, on a given day. You're gonna have this whole menu of options, Rebels, and then you can be like, nah, I don't feel like doing that one. I don't feel like doing that one. What do I feel like doing? Oh, boom, that one. Let's work on that.
You're gonna work on whatever you feel like working on a given day. Questioners, you're gonna work on whatever feels makes sense for that day where you have enough questions answered that you can work on it.
Special notations. I recommend, and I'll show you this again in a minute, it's a little notebook. You don't want like a huge fat notebook. It needs to be manageable enough, so you're gonna keep it in a little notebook. This was one that I used in 2018. So I used this methodology for over a year. I'm not using it anymore, and I'll tell you why again in a minute, but you're gonna use some notations.
And I'll send you a link to the original information on this system so that you can learn all the notations. But if there's more to come on a future page, you're gonna put a little plus in the corner. You're gonna strike through things that have actually been done. If you decide not to do something at all, you're gonna highlight it and put a strike through it so you at least know, Hey, I didn't actually do that.
If you ever wanna go back and look at that kind of thing, you'll have a record of it.
Once a page is totally done, you're gonna circle your little plus sign and you're gonna shade it in so your eyes can quickly skip over that page. There's just a series of simple notations that will make managing your notebook much, much easier.
Okay, so the pros of the system. It's very flexible and it's very simple. That is a pro. I really liked a lot about this system. Here's what the cons for me, they may not be a con for you based on who you are.
I told you I have a part of myself that just wants to work me into the ground. So for me, when I had this big list with no timing associated with it, I just wanted to work the list. Screw hanging out with family, screw doing all these other things. Like I just wanna work the list and keep getting that little dopamine hit of crossing things off the list.
So it wasn't healthy for me in that way, and I wanted something that was actually reminding me to carve out time for other things. And then the other con for me, it was harder to prioritize. I had to keep making prioritizing decisions day after day. Every day I had to look through the list and reprioritize in my head again. For me, it didn't help the most important stuff really rise to the top.
Again, my experience does not mean it's everybody's experience, but I'm sharing that so that if you can recognize a little bit of yourself in my description, it'll help you guide to the right system for you. We're gonna send out a link with more information on the Autofocus System, so that if you wanna give it a try, you absolutely can.
Analog tools, if you wanna do the Autofocus System. Get yourself just some little notebooks so it's more manageable. And then put a pen loop on it. I reused my pen loop, so I've stripped mine off long ago. Put a pen loop on it and have a pen or a pencil with it at all times, or you will be annoyed because you'll need to write something on the list and you won't be able to find a pen handy.
This is gonna work efficiently when it's a small notebook, which you can easily carry with you everywhere. And it has a pen loop built in already.
Digital tools if you wanted to do this. There are so many digital tools out there. These are just some that I am familiar with. There are lots more. So if you're already using something like this, just stick with what you've got.
Trello is one that works well for this. Evernote is one that works well for this. My favorite is Sunsama and I use it for both the Autofocus System. You could use it for that or the other system that I'm gonna show you. Sunsama is hands down my favorite digital tool that I've ever used.
The next system is called Monday Hour One, but really that is a fancy name for what is essentially time blocking. And I find this to be great for Obligers and Upholders and really Questioners too. Questioners can use either system with equal ease.
I think you might wanna lean on other factors to decide. And Rebels, I've occasionally had Rebel clients that just get all fired up when they see this and they wanna try it. So that's the key for a Rebel. If I start talking about this and you're like, oh yeah, go for it. Most Rebels I find, have the reaction of, oh, dear God, not with a 10 foot pole.
So bear that in mind, but listen with an open mind, everyone, and I will talk you through the system and then I'll talk you through the pros and cons. At the start of every work week, you're gonna spend one hour, thereabouts, planning out your week.
That means that you are dumping out your to-do list. You're gonna do this big brain dump of everything that needs to happen, and that includes dependencies. Like first I have to do this, and then I have to do that. And it includes sub tasks for a project. Oh, this website means I have to do this, and this. So you're gonna brain dump everything you can possibly think of.
And if you want, you can brain dove this. It's all my work stuff, it's all my writing stuff, it's all my home stuff. As big as you wanna go with this, you can absolutely do that. And that stands for both of these systems.
So you've made this huge list. Here's the part that most people miss. Once you have this huge list, you need to go through it. You need to cross off anything that you don't wanna do. This was popularized by Tim Ferris. He didn't invent it, but he popularized it. Eliminate, automate, delegate. So you're gonna go through anything that you're just not gonna do. You don't care if it gets done, you'll take the consequences. You're eliminating that item from your list.
Next is automate. Is there anything that you can automate so you don't have to keep the mental load of this, and you don't have to spend the time doing the actual task. We have AI now, so there's a lot of things you can potentially automate, but it can be even as simple as making sure your dishwasher pods are on auto ship, so you don't have to carry the mental load of remembering to reorder dishwasher pots. You could order your groceries. There are a lot of things that you can automate.
And then the last one is delegate. And the reason that's last you wanna do them in this order is 'cause you don't wanna delegate something that shouldn't be done at all. And you don't wanna delegate something that can just be done automatically. So eliminate, automate, delegate. You're gonna go through your list, you're gonna cross stuff off, or you're gonna automate it, or you're gonna assign it to somebody else.
Now you have a list that is smaller and you're gonna prioritize what's left and you're prioritizing once through the whole week, instead of with Autofocus, where you have to keep prioritizing over and over again.
Now you're gonna go over to your calendar, and it doesn't matter if this is digital or if it's physical. You're going to plug in your free time before you do any adding of work, even writing work, which you love, to your list. The first thing you're gonna do ,is plug in your free time.
If you are someone who has a really hard time carving out for writing, you're gonna plug your writing in first before you plug in all of the other tasks. And of course we know appointments and stuff. They have static times that are there.
So I usually start with, oh, my digital calendar. Here's when I'm seeing clients. Now I plug in my free time. Now I plug in all the work where it belongs.
Plug every task into your calendar, but leave yourself some room. This doesn't mean from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed you've got every single minute of the day accounted for. No, you've got your work time accounted for, and then you have your glorious free time where you can do whatever the heck you wanna do. I swear a lot, by the way. I try to clean it up a little bit for big webinars, but if you come into our Happily Ever Author club or a Goal Getter School, I swear, just be aware of that.
So you're gonna plug every task into your calendar, and then the hard part is you're gonna follow your plan. This is where a lot of the mindset work comes in. Your inner toddler is gonna be kicking and screaming when you open up your calendar on Tuesday, and you're like, I don't wanna do that. So you just allow yourself to have the little tantrum, but without giving in, without giving the inner toddler what she wants. You go, I know baby, but this is what we said we were gonna do. I understand you're upset about it, but you still gotta buckle in your car seat, right? You still gotta go to grandma's, whatever it is. You're going to follow your plan and learn to work with yourself in a compassionate and loving way to follow your plan.
The pros of this system. For me, I'm so much better at building in downtime when I've got it laid out on a calendar. And as I said, my downtime is I pick my kids up from school to the time I go to bed and I go to bed very early, so that's all my downtime. My weekends are downtime. I don't feel stressed and overwhelmed because I know when my breaks are coming.
It also helps you prioritize 'cause you're deciding once for the week, what are the most important things that are gonna happen. I'm gonna plug those into the calendar first. And the other stuff is fill in. It builds discipline, which I know the word discipline has a lot of baggage. I actually like the term "blissipline". I think it was Michael Beckworth, who I don't know that much about otherwise, but I know he coined that term. And for me as a former procrastinator, it felt like such shit to be a procrastinator and not be able to trust myself to do what needed to be done to live. It is blissipline. People underestimate the neurochemical deliciousness of honoring your word to yourself. It's huge. It's really huge.
Okay. Cons. At first glance it's regimented. A lot of us don't like that. This is why I'm not recommending it wholesale to Rebels. So at first glance I say, because actually I find it's the opposite. I find that this gives me so much more freedom in other parts of my life because my mental load is reduced. My brain isn't freaking out looking at this long list and saying, when is this gonna happen? I can't possibly do all this. It's plugged in. I know where it's gonna happen. I know it's possible. I know it can fit.
So while it seems regimented at first glance, I actually find that it's a system that helps me have the life that I wanna have.
Analog tools for Monday Hour One. Cal Newport, who's a really big time blocking aficionado, makes a time block planner that's very hard to see 'cause it's like black text on a blue book. I think the design might be different now 'cause I bought this a few years ago. I'm actually gonna stop sharing for a second so you can see what this looks like on the inside.
So this is Cal Newport's time Block Planner. And you can see when I use this, he's got a column here for your original time block plan. And then if something goes sideways, you cross it off and you have another column where you can replan the rest of your day based on that. So I really like this for an analog time blocking calendar.
The other one, this is what I actually use, is called Laurel Denise Calendars. This is great for if you are neurodivergent ADHD in particular. It's big. She makes smaller ones, but I like the big one. You can see both your week with these short pages. And you can see your month all in one view, because often with ADHD, if you don't see it, it doesn't exist.
So you're able to look at your month and your week all in the same view and it's got extra pages. When I am trying to really slow myself down, I will decorate and color code and things like that, but it can be as simple or as fancy as you want it to be. This is my current favorite Laurel Denise Planners.
You can also just use a Bullet Journal. So like your Bullet Journal or a Luke trim journal the ones that have the dot grid inside and you can make your own layouts for your calendar week. The big one, Laura, is laurel denise.com and we'll give you, again, links in the replay to everything that I'm showing you here today.
And of course you can use the Bullet Journal as well.
Digital tools for Monday Hour One. I love, love, love Sunsama. I know there are other tools out there. If you're using one, feel free to drop in the chat your recommendations if there's something that you love. And this is a screenshot, this is my old Sunsama from a couple of years ago 'cause I've been using this screenshot for a while.
But you can see I have the days laid out. I can color code what each of these categories is. The thing that I love the most about this to build my day I can pull in from all the places where work comes in for me. So you can click over here and bring in your emails.
I actually have a Zap set up on my Google email, if I check it and put it on the Google to-do list, it automatically pushes over to Sunsama. They have those kinds of integrations where you can make it very simple, but you can also just click on that button, look at all your emails, drag over the ones that actually need to be acted upon and build your day that way.
You can go to Asana or some other project management tool. Click on that. Grab the work from this project-based one and build your day. That is my favorite thing about it, is it allows me to pull in work from all over and it's very integrated. And then I can build a day.
Project management tools like Asana, they don't tell you what to do today. They just tell you everything that needs to happen for a project. This actually helps you build out what your day and your week is gonna look like. Someone's mentioning notion, yes, notion is great, but it's it's not as open the box and use it. Notion has a lot of templates, but a lot of people are die hard Notion fans. And I totally get it.
There is a cost for Sunsama. I am an ambassador and the way I became an ambassador is 'cause I was just talking about them on Instagram anyway and raving about how much I love them. And so they saw it and sent me a DM and said, do you wanna be in the ambassador program? And I very rarely do affiliate things, but I did do it for Sunsama because I'm like, damn, these people have it figured out. So you can get a 30 day trial of Sunsama.
Two week trial is not enough for something like this. You gotta be able to try it. So this is a 30 day trial on Sunsama and we will give you the link.
Alright, so those are the two systems. You have Monday Hour One, which is a time blocking system. You have the Autofocus System. If you are at sea and you don't know what to pick, you don't want to overwhelm yourself with shopping for all of the systems that are out there in the world. So if you're looking and you're at sea, if you have something that used to work for you, that's not one of these, go back and try that again.
Chances are if it worked for you once, it may work for you again. But these two systems, if you pick one or the other and you start working with it, it's a way just to get momentum and get your system set up. It's really important to remember that productivity is in service of our goals. That's what it's about.
What's the thing that we want to accomplish? Most of us wanna hold a book, our book, in our hands, and we want to make sure that other people are holding our book in their hands. So productivity is in service of goals, and it's in service of building that balanced life that you want, where you have time for all the things that are important to you.
Goal Getter School is an amazing way to do that. If you want to finish a draft, if you want to grow your email list so you can actually sell books-- my whole marketing system is based on growing an email list-- if you want to launch your book, if your book launch is coming up and you wanna do all that by the end of November, 2025, Goal Getter School for Authors is this proven program. This will be-- Ruth is at the eighth or the ninth cohort? I think it's the eighth, I could be wrong-- of this program. I've been doing it for a few years now. We've got dozens and dozens of writers who were able to get mindset coaching. Remember I said that's the biggest thing in a productivity is what is your mindset to work on it.
You get mindset coaching. You get me helping scope your goal appropriately, and then I build you a project plan customized for you. This is not a one size fits all. You're gonna go through my program and use my system, but you're gonna build a custom project plan and see it through and get coaching every week to get there.
So it's heavily mindset focused, but it's also extremely practical. I believe you can't be practical without having a good mindset. So the next session actually starts in, oops. This is an old slide. It starts in September. pagesandplatforms.com/goalgetter.
We have had students who have finished a draft of manuscripts that have literally been moldering for years. They've created and executed entire book launch plans. They have pitched and landed podcast tours to promote their books.
They have completed and launched audiobooks and more. It's very specific. I'm gonna help you scope your particular goal appropriately. The most common one is really doing another draft. Getting a revision done or getting the final revision done, are the most common activities in Goal Getter School, but it can be any manuscript related goal or we have agent searches, querying and marketing are the most common ones.
We actually have on the Write Anyway Podcast detailed case studies. We've got over a half a dozen podcast episodes with alumni from Goal Getter School. We'll be sending out those links as we go through up until September. So this is a three month goal-focused group coaching program with your specific goal.
It runs September through November. And the way we do this is a weekly group meeting. will rotate with a weekly private session, so you're meeting every week, but one week it's a group meeting and the next week it's a private session with me.
This was my most genius move for this program because I have been in group programs and I have been coached privately. And I'm like, why not bring these two together? Because they both have pros and cons, and when you have access to each of those methods, it just works way better. And that has been so proven by this particular program. So the first private session is an hour long session, and that's where we craft a particular custom project plan just for you.
You'll fill out a form beforehand. We'll be very informed going into the conversation and build you out your specific project plan.
The other private sessions will all be 20 minutes. It's mindset coaching, it's checking to make sure you're on track. It's troubleshooting anything that's going wrong, any obstacles that you have.
We can get a tremendous amount done in 20 minutes. I had a 20 minute call with someone yesterday and about 12 minutes in she's okay, I'm good. That's all I needed, right? We can get a lot done when you're on track, you'll have private community access and actually, I didn't used to talk about this, but I think it's important. After you finish Goal Getter School we have quarterly alumni calls that are just free and included once the program ends. So once a quarter until I stop doing this, God knows when, you'll be able to get on a call with me and I just check in and be like, Hey, how are your goals going now? I wanna make sure you're still on track. Is there anything I can do to help?
So it's a group call and everybody gets a little bit of coaching on wherever they are. So things we cover in Goal Getter School, we talk goal setting, both long and short term. We talk project planning. And again, I'm project planning with my professional project planner hat just for you, knowing what else you have going on in your life.
This project that you're doing doesn't exist in a vacuum and we expect things to go wrong in Goal Getter School in your life. We expect pets to get sick and cars to break and air conditioners to break and all of these things. So we want things to go wrong in Goal Getter School 'cause that's real life.
And I will show you how to work with any obstacles that are coming up. We talk about systems and habits, what we just talked about today. What is your system? What are your habits for getting this work done? We talk about anticipating obstacles and planning for obstacles. Embracing discomfort is a huge mindset piece of this.
You've got to be willing to experience a little bit of uncomfortableness, or you're never going to finish a book and get it out into the world. It just can't be done without some discomfort. So I'll teach you how to feel strong enough to do that. I'll teach you how to hold yourself accountable.
Because you've got you for the rest of your life. So you need to be able to hold yourself accountable. No one can actually do it for you.
And then one of the biggest things underlying the whole program is the story that you tell yourself. What are you going to tell yourself to keep going? Your story that you tell yourself creates feelings. And your feelings are emotional fuel to take action. And action is what gets you results. This is called Goal Getter School, but there's not a bunch of extra homework. Your homework is your personal project plan. I'm not gonna give you a ton of videos to watch unless whatever your plan is needs some videos to watch.
I'm gonna give you really targeted tools and resources on mindset, on craft, on marketing that you're gonna need to get to your goal. But I'm not gonna give you a bunch of busy work. 'Cause busy work bad, not helpful.
The result is that by the end of the three months, you'll have worked through your customized project plan to fulfill your big goal.
Best of all, you will have fundamentally changed the way that you're handling challenges and goals and what you now believe is possible for you. It's very powerful. I was about to say magic, but it's not magic. Anybody can do it. So the investment, we do have one-on-one coaching in this. So the fall session is $2,400.
There are payment plans available. This is an early bird price right now. So the price is going to go up. I believe it goes up to 2,800. But I actually, just this last cohort, I reduced the price. Because I was hearing writers say how it's not quite accessible.
So I dropped the price by $400 by reshaping the program a little bit. The other thing I did was eliminated applications. You used to have to apply not because I'm judging whether you're good enough to be in the program, but it was to make sure that it was a match and make sure that I could actually help you do the thing that you were asking.
Like sometimes someone basically just wanted me to use my connections to get him an agent. That's not what the program's for. I can't do that. So that application was denied. Now I've structured it so it's clear what the program is, what it helps with, what it doesn't. So I've eliminated the application process.
There is a call that you can get on with me if you don't know if you want in, and you wanna know if it's a good fit. So pagesandplatforms.com/goalgetter so you can learn more. If you know you are in and you want to enroll today, you can get an additional private call.
If you just book one private call with me out of the blue, it's $500 if you don't have a package or anything like that. So if you want to, yes, I'm for sure in if you enroll today, you get an additional hour session and you can use that whenever you want. You don't have to use it during the three month program.
You can keep it up your sleeve, or you can have it early. You can have it between now and the start of September if you want. Some alumni. There's more testimonials on the information page, but Claire said I'd been struggling to find the motivation and organization needed to revise a messy draft, one for almost a year. With Sue's guidance and support, I managed to complete the full draft two of my first novel in just three months. This was a total game changer.
Lori said, with the Goal Getter School, I was able to give myself permission to honor my why and what drives me to write. I was able to sit down and push everything else aside and focus on what is driving me for my writing.
And Lori would not be upset if I told you she's an Obliger like me. So that was really important part of her mindset work was to be able to make space for what she wanted.
Sarah said I was making my world so small because I was always giving away my power. With Goal Getter School, I was able to rewire my brain to take control over what's really important to me.
So that Goal Getter School. Best program I've ever created. I'm just going to say that. I've created a lot of good shit, but this is the best one. I wanna take questions and answers. We've got plenty of time to get through some questions.
Emily says, for the Autofocus System as a Rebel, I get the working on whatever I feel like on a given day. That's how I already function. But what about those things that need to be done regardless if there's a deadline or not? Whether we feel like it or not, that's what I'm struggling with.
Yes, and that's where I think the Autofocus System doesn't quite help as much. When you have the urgency of a deadline or you have something that's just important with a capital I that needs to be done, that is almost always a mindset thing.
I can just give you a really quick, simple tool that you can try out, emily. Emily also says how to develop that discipline, especially as a Rebel. I have my why. I know what I want to work on or write, yet still not doing it consistently enough.
This is very likely something that you just need some coaching on. One of the things you can do to do some self coaching is write down every single thought that you have about whatever the work in question is. I'm gonna assume for this purpose that it's about your writing, about working on your book. Do a thought download of every single thought that you have about the project.
There's gonna be some quote unquote good thoughts that are helpful and move you forward. And there's gonna be some quote unquote bad thoughts. But it's not good or bad. It's just what serves you actually working on the project and what doesn't.
You need to download absolutely everything and then identify those thoughts or the story that you tell yourself about those thoughts that aren't serving you and getting to the goal of finishing your project.
Now we've identified these are the things that are getting in my way. I've got some more specifics here. And then you're going through and you're asking, is this thought really true? This is some work of Byron Katie. She has four really powerful questions that you can ask.
It's, is it true? Do I absolutely know that it's true? How do I show up? What do I do when I think that thought, when I believe that thought? And then what would I be able to do if I couldn't think that thought? If you had a benevolent little mini stroke in the part of your brain where you had that thought and you literally couldn't think it anymore, but you were okay otherwise, how would you be able to show up in the world? What would you be doing?
Then you know where your work is, and you can work on loosening the grip of those thoughts. And I have a bunch of tools to do that, which we don't have time to go into. I wish we did. And choosing an intentional story to tell yourself based on what you already believe. 'cause that's gonna be in there too, that will ,help you move forward.
And sometimes we go even a step deeper into the woo and we have a conversation with the parts of you that are thinking those thoughts. I do shadow work and I also work with a modality called Internal Family Systems, where there's a part of you that is doing that for a reason that it thinks is a very good reason.
So we have to work with that part of you to unpack that and get you to the point where you're aligned, where all your parts are on the same page and moving forward. This is definitely a mindset thing. It's not gonna be solved by a system alone, and it's so worth doing.
Another Elizabeth says, I've really come to love and rely on Monday Hour One for work using a printout calendar divided by hour. It also helps for accountability in reverse.
Yes.
My boss asks, what did you do last week? But when I get home, everything goes out the window because my husband is home late, toddlers throw a temper tantrum and dinner is 20 minutes late, et cetera, et cetera. How do I make something structured but flexible? A hybrid, yeah, monday Hour One and Autofocus that I can use to at least get something done and not feel like my evening got away from me. Bonus points if it helps with the guilt of taking time from the family, spouse on writing.
Okay, I'm gonna spend a little time on this one 'cause I think a lot of people can relate whether they have toddlers or not. We have some version of this where we're like, yeah, but this is chaos. How do I work with this?
When you cannot rely on the timetable what you wanna do, especially when we have small children. I also, I have two kids of my own, they're older than yours, but I co-wrote a book on parental leave, so I'm very well familiar with this issue.
You're gonna pick your most important priorities. So it sounds like you wanna do some writing in the evenings. So literally, Elizabeth, I just want you to write one sentence. That's it. And maybe if you commute, it can be on your commute home or while you're still sitting in your car or whatever, you're just gonna write one sentence.
If you can write more, fantastic. That is gravy, but it's the same gold star, whether you write one sentence or whether you write 600 words, 800 words, I don't care. Same gold star. Same feeling of pride in yourself for getting that done. It lowers the bar. Your inner saboteur can't come in and say, that is totally unrealistic because you got kids to take care of and you shouldn't be taking away time from them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're telling baby, it's just one sentence. It's just one sentence. Perfectly reasonable request. So there's that piece of it. I really think if you just start there, it will shift your whole feeling around it.
Also, I'm a huge proponent for having a family rhythm as much as you can. It sounds like you already have one, you have a time for dinner, et cetera, et cetera. But if you're focusing on what your evenings feel like as opposed to the product that's spit out at the end of them, it will calm everything down. So pick your one thing that you wanna do, you're gonna write that one sentence, and then the rest of the time you're gonna focus on how you want that to feel.
Because one of the hardest things for parents, myself included, is that push pull, a feeling like you have to get something done and your kids are just not making that easy at all. And it's very frustrating. So it's, how do I want this evening with my kids to feel? And then the one thing that I wanna get done.
Hopefully that helps. I would love to coach you more on that. At some point.
Amy says, oblige, you're here and stay at home mom. Yes. Any advice on how to build outward accountability when your social life consists of a five-year-old and the odd interaction with neighbors. Struggling with a sense of anonymity from online writing groups when I thrive best with community accountability.
Okay. There's a little bit of a mindset thing here where you don't feel like online is the same as community. And if you are willing to open up to the possibility that you could get that from online, you're gonna have an easier time getting that need met.
Not that you have to. Certainly you could form an in-person writing group in your area, that can just be a little more difficult. It's a lot easier to do that online. We have a model for writing groups called the Super Hardcore Editing Group. And we have free information on how to start your own SHEG.
So yeah, your accountability is gonna come from not just telling a friend, Hey, text me and make sure I wrote today, when that friend does not actually care, doesn't impact them at all. Obligers, we need the accountability to be meaningful. So when you're in a writing group with two, three other people and you've got a meeting every other week-- that's how we do ours, we meet every other week-- where the group works best when everyone submits something and everybody critiques something. We all do our part. That creates that outward accountability that you might be looking for.
So I would say you definitely need a writing group, or you need a program like the Happily Ever Author Club, which we run, or Goal Getter School, where you can build in that accountability.
But you can create it for yourself with a writing group, and I think if you can be open to the fact that you could have a really meaningful connection online, it's just gonna take a little bit of work to figure out how that's going to happen for you. That could work really well.
Owner says, I signed up for Goal Getter School Open House in August 20th. Is there a separate signup for Goal Getter School? Yeah, so if you go to the Goal Getter School page, you can just sign up for a Goal Getter School, period. The open house, we're just gonna talk more about it and answer questions. But if you actually wanna sign up for the program, there's a place where you can do that on that sales page.
And if you have trouble finding that, Owner, just reach out to ruth@pagesinplatforms.com and she'll put her info in the chat.
Anonymous says, can you identify the particular Laurel Denise Planner that you recommend for ADHD? Yes. Again, this is the one that I use that works best for time blocking. She has a bunch of different layouts, so look through, see if there's one that appeals to you more. I've tried both the horizontal and the vertical, and the one that I have is the vertical planner.
So you can order different kinds of inserts, right? Your planner based on your inserts. The vertical works best for the time blocking, but there's also a horizontal version, which is more like just a diary style. This is the full size vertical planner. And if you look for her vertical layouts, you can find it.
So that's a great one. I really love that.
I will never go back, like now that I have that one, unless they really changed the project, that's the planner I'm gonna be using. And I've tried so many different things and sometimes it's like you do something for a while and you just get bored and you wanna mix it up. I'm like, no, that I've done that. But Laurel Denise is my gal.
Jill says, I have completed a middle grade novel that pushes the boundaries a little. I also need to complete the first draft of a historical middle grade of magical realism, which is new to me. How long should I give myself to publish my first novel? The second novel is emerging in my mind. I know the time period, but must adapt it to a boy protagonist.
So this is not a magical answer, of everybody's first novel should take a year to self-publish. There are some people who are like, 20 books to 50 K or something like that. And there I run a really aggressive timeline. It depends on what else is going on in your life. It depends on how fast of a writer you are. It depends on what your skillset is that is translatable to self-publishing.
If you were in Goal Getter School, we could totally unpack and figure out what is the realistic timeline here. I don't have quite enough information to do that. So I will tell you philosophically, you don't wanna give yourself endless amounts of time and you don't wanna give yourself too much time pressure.
Every person is different in what their sweet spot is. So you wanna think of what helps me feel a little bit of pressure and motivation and I get excited about getting it out, and that, but it's not so tight that it makes me freeze up. You wanna be like at your edge and feeling the challenge of it without locking up 'cause it's too much pressure and it's not a realistic timeline.
All right, we got to all of the questions pretty much within the time limit, so yay us. Thank you all for being here. I hope this was helpful. We're gonna send out a replay for all the links, come to the Goal Getter School open house, or you can book a private call with me for about 15, 20 minutes and we can talk over what are your questions about the program.
It is not a hard sell call. I'll make my best recommendation for what I think you should do but there's lots of options out there. Alright, everybody, take care. Thank you.
Anne Hawley: If you are excited to take advantage of Sue's upcoming Goal Getter school, be sure to visit pagesandplatforms.com/goalgetter to find out more and sign up. And if you'd like to stay in the loop on future offerings from Pages & Platforms, we send a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips straight to your inbox.
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And that's it for this episode of the Write anyway, podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.