Productivity Tips: 5 Writer's Block Tips

Writer's block. Usually, it's just a temporary inability to write. The key to getting out of a slump is understanding why you're in the slump. Determine the underlying cause.

You may feel out of ideas. Maybe you're having trouble getting started. Or not interested enough in your current project. Or you're distracted by external issues. Or you're stuck on your project, unsure what the next step is. Once you understand the cause, usually addressing that cause directly can push you forward.

Here are five tips to help you get writing again:

10 Great Notes Quotes

Anyone who follows my Twitter account or browses this website knows that I'm an inveterate quote collector. Even my earliest teenage journals are full of quotations.

Nowadays, I'm especially drawn to quotations that speak to Personal Knowbase — quotes that address the importance of taking notes, sharing knowledge, and recording thoughts and ideas.

Creating an Idea Dump with Personal Knowbase

Whether you're an entrepreneur, a writer, an artist, an inventor, a programmer, or anyone doing creative work, your ideas are your first step toward developing your projects. Your ideas are a valuable resource and critical to your productivity. Treat them as they deserve — with loving care.

Using Personal Knowbase notes management software as a central repository for your ideas keeps them together, makes it easy to find related ideas, and provides a structure for browsing your undeveloped ideas. Collect and organize all of your inspirations into PK articles and index them with keywords so that you can retrieve related ideas later.

Productivity Tips: 5 Tips for Building Your Writing Skills

Previously, we posted with 5 Writing Tips for Everyone. Here are 5 more tips for building your writing skills. Exercise your writing muscles.

Productivity Tips: More Tips for Avoiding Interruptions

Some tasks, like creative work, writing, and research, require blocks of uninterrupted time when you can concentrate exclusively on one topic. Interruptions can especially be a problem if you have multiple people working from home at the same time.

Previously, we outlined five tips for preventing interruptions while you work. Here are six more interruption-busting ideas to help you work more effectively:

Organize Your Home Office Day

Today is Organize Your Home Office Day, which falls on the second Tuesday in March every year. Whether you're a self-employed contractor, run a home-based business, work at home regularly for your day job, or use a home office for your personal business, you need to keep it organized to use your time efficiently.

Here are some ways that Personal Knowbase can help you get your home office organized:

Information Overload Awareness Day

Today, October 19, is Information Overload Awareness Day 2021. These days, we have more information flowing into our lives than at any former time in history. The Internet has accelerated the flow of information exponentially.

“Information overload has become a well-known problem: pieces of knowledge pile up too fast for people to sort and make sense of them.” ~ K. Eric Drexler

Productivity Tip: Bridging Between Sessions

Often the hardest part of making progress on a project is... getting started. Or re-started after a break. When you sit down to start a writing session, you're facing a blank page. When you set up your easel to paint, you face a blank canvas. When you start a planning effort, it's a blank calendar. When you're cleaning the garage, it's the opposite: complete overwhelm.

Whatever type of project you're working on, getting yourself going on each session can be a challenge.

Productivity Tips: Setting Goals

Happy New Year!

It's that time of the year again. We sit down and review the past year and map out a path for the next year. How are we doing on long-term goals? Is it time to discard some old ones? What short term goals should we attack for next year? Entire books have been written on goal-setting. But a few basic tips can help you set better goals for your resolutions for the New Year:

Creating a Writing Snippets File with Personal Knowbase

Do you regularly delete perfectly good pieces of writing while editing? Do you have frequent "false starts" when you begin a writing project and stall? Do you have old unfinished attempts accumulating on your computer or in notebooks?

Consider keeping a writing snippets file where you can store miscellaneous pieces that don't have a home. You never know when these writings may be exactly what you need for a future project. And storing them away is less painful than deleting them.