Productivity Tips: 5 More Writer's Block Tips

“I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations.” ~ Mary Shelley

In a previous post, we offered five tips for conquering writer's block. Here are five more tips for helping you get your writing flowing:

Creating a Writer's Idea Bank with Personal Knowbase

Do you have more ideas than you know what to do with? A common problem for writers is that new ideas occur when you're already involved with a work-in-progress (WIP). Rather than distracting yourself with each shiny new inspiration, bank your ideas away for later. Rest assured knowing that you've stored the new idea safely and can get back to your WIP without losing your creative flow.

Personal Knowbase is a great software option for saving your ideas.

PK Tip: Combining Multiple Articles into One Article

If you need to merge the information from several Personal Knowbase articles into a single article, you can do this:

Productivity Tips: The Multi-Tasking Question

Multi-tasking is doing multiple tasks at the same time. Most sources do not recommend multi-tasking as a time management tactic. I would agree when the tasks in question require detail-oriented concentration or creative work. Many activities require your full attention to avoid mistakes and produce the best results. Quality suffers when you don't give your work your complete attention. If you're distracted, you may end up doing a poor job on both tasks.

But much (perhaps most) of our time is occupied with routine tasks that don't require much mental focus.

PK Tip: Using Relative File Link Locations in Portable Mode

When you move your Personal Knowbase notes between computers using the software's portability feature with a USB thumb drive or other removable media, the drive letter of the removable drive can vary from one computer to another. If you use absolute path names for the targets of file links and attachments, the links may become incorrect.

Productivity Tips: Using Pro/Con Lists

Making a pro/con list is an age-old decision-making aid. If you have a decision to make and are having trouble getting your head around what path to take, consider making a pro/con list.

To make a pro/con list the old-fashioned way, divide a single sheet of paper into two halves with a line down the middle of the sheet. Of course, instead you could use two separate sheets of paper. Or you could simply type your list into a text editor on your computer.

Simulating Index Card "Stacks" with Personal Knowbase

While using Personal Knowbase, at times you may want to keep track of an arbitrary set of working articles. For example, you may want to save the results of a Find or Build Query operation that you want to use as a starting point for some other work. Or perhaps they're a group of articles that you've imported that require further processing. These articles may not already share any keywords, but you want to do more work with them.

If you view your Personal Knowbase articles as index cards, the idea is to sort out a "stack" of index cards that you want to continue to work with.

Computer Basics: Securing Your Website

If you maintain a website for yourself or your business, you're responsible for keeping it safe and running. That includes keeping it secure from hackers and other intrusions. If your site gets hacked, it could becomes useless or worse. Customers may not be able to find you and think you're out of business. You can be penalized by search engines, losing valuable traffic. You may even put site visitors at risk if the hacker installs malware on your site.

Here are five essential practices to follow to help keep your site running safely:

PK Tip: Finding Articles Related to an Entire Keyword Group

Taken literally, keyword groups contain keywords, not articles. However, you can easily locate all articles which are associated with any keywords which are members of an entire keyword group.

Productivity Tips: 5 Tips for Reading More Efficiently

With access to a virtually infinite amount of reading material online, in addition to the paper-based reading most of us still have to dig through, we spend more and more time reading. You can easily feel overwhelmed by keeping up with your professional reading, plus staying informed about news and current events.

Here are 5 tips for maximizing the efficiency of your reading time.