How to be more productive and creative

I write for a living and being creative is fun. I work full-time, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Well… mostly. Like most professional writers, my job has been transformed thanks to the interweb. I can now send in work at all sorts of weird hours, often from the comfort of my couch, a coffee shop, or barstool.

I have recently read some old diary entries and noticed that I have become a lot more productive and creative than I used to be. I have been writing more fiction in my free time, getting all my work done at my day job, and editing some stuff at the weekend. Plus some other stuff that I won’t go into here.

I started my websites when I worked in TV, was doing a degree, and every now and then wrote some freelance pieces for magazines. I wrote very little fiction, which is a shame as that has actually been my ambition since I was ten. It is the whole reason I became a writer, although doing travel writing and computer game reviews was pretty good fun too.

However, being creative and productive can be tough. I have been doing this a long time and there are some things that have helped me that I just developed over the years. I don’t know if they will work for you – and you may know all this already – but if it helps one person, I am happy.

I can boil my gradual creative rise down to a few key factors:

1/ Don’t wait till you are inspired – write all the time. I write for my job all day, and then I unwind at night by writing fiction and websites. If I only wrote when inspired, I would barely get started. (I would also get fired.) This is true of nearly all creative work – you need to be consistently productive rather than inspired. Aim for a little bit a day, rather than wait burst of prolific genius. The inspiration will still happen, and then it’s just a bonus.

2/ Set goals and targets – Many writers set targets for the day/week. I try and do 1000 words of fiction a day. Some days that is a piece of piss; others, it is almost painful and has me doubting my ability to write anything at all, ever again. This ties in to the first point. Being creative and finishing stuff requires consistency.

3/ Use apps to help hit targets and stay on track – This works for me, anyway. I use a combination of Notion and Ticktick to help me keep track of all my various schemes and projects. One of my problems is that I feel guilty when not writing but I feel even worse if I haven’t hit a target and ticked a little box. I also timeblock my day using Notion, Grammarly for checking typos, Brain.fm for brain enhancing sounds, and an app called Flow for pomodoro timing. I am a bit of a tech nerd, so like all my various programs.

4/ Do something you really want to do – I know this sounds kind of obvious, but a huge amount of people attempt to write or create stuff with an audience in mind. My work is done with an audience in mind, but my websites, books, and fiction are all the result of personal interest. If you can find a way to monetize something you really enjoy doing, then it is no longer work and is completely sustainable. Certain creative jobs, like writing, acting, creating art or music, seem to have a higher percentage of people doing them until the day they die. This is because they love what they are doing.

I know bills have to be paid, so you have to do these creative endeavours in your free time. At first, anyway. You might soon be a millionaire.

5/ Ignore the critics. This ties in with the point above about doing what you want to do. Create and then suck up the courage to put it out there. You will then get criticised. Seriously, everyone who has ever made anything, will get someone feeling the need to express how they didn’t really like it. Go on Amazon and look up what you think is a brilliant book. There will be people slagging it off. People are dicks, just ignore them. As Ricky Gervais once said: ‘It’s better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing & criticise others. Go create!’

So there you go. Pretty basic points I guess, but these are creative tips that have helped me be productive. If you have a criticism of any points made here – comments are turned off. I just don’t care.