As a writer and full time nurse, wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, friend, volunteer, aunt, and did I say grandmother ..... that my own writing performance might be improved by my own advice. The typical tips I offer parents are summed up in three points:
- Eat a healthy balanced diet
- Get enough sleep
- Don't over-schedule your child... allow your child to be a child.
When I am in the writing zone I may often just grab a few chips and a soda so I can keep at it. Would I not be more productive if I ate three times a day and had a fruit for a snack? It would get me moving so the muscle stiffness would improve and I can't believe that I might not actually have more energy.
And how about that sleep thingie? Working full time leaves me with many late hour nights to catch up on the writing. It is a five hour night of sleep more often than not. I am finding that working more hours with less sleep is not helping my productivity as much as one might think. Instead, I am rushing through some of the emails, social sites, or marketing items and calling it a night without finishing any productive writing because my mind is too tired to do anything more than flip through to see what others are doing and making a comment or two.
And the advice on over scheduling is a fact. If I am too busy with too many things, I truly don't do any of them well nor do I feel productive. If I am honest and look at my three major writing goals for the year many of the activities that I do online and otherwise may not be in my own best interest as a writer. Some of the social activities certainly don't always move my writing forward and that can be said for some of the volunteer jobs I do as well.
My new advice then must include these three things if I am to finish the year meeting some of my goals.
- Eat and exercise for overall health
- Get more sleep by doing less social media and marketing. After all if I never get those projects done there really is nothing to promote.
- Avoid overschuling, especially with the holiday season approaching. Less committments will hopefully leave me open to do more solid writing. More solid writing means more production and maybe a finished product to promote by the end of the year.
How about your writing goals for the rest of 2012? Are you following the advice you give to your students or your clients? Is your time being well spent on your writing goals or do you need to reconsider what is good for the goose?
Terri Forehand writes from her home in Nashville Indiana in the hills of Brown County. She is the author of a prayer book for those with cancer and a soon to be released picture book for kids with cancer. She does book reviews for kids and adults, and does a variety of editing tasks for several online sites. Visit her at http://www.terriforehand.webnode.com or http://terri-forehand.blogspot.com
5 comments:
I agree Terrie - the mind and body, as we are so often reminded, are one and the same and if we don't eat right and exercise, we can't produce.
So important, and yet we often put our own needs on the back burner or the bottom of the "to do" list. Thanks for the reminder!
Terri, you're so right. I also have a health site - seeing so many different doctors I get great information to post about. :) So, last week I asked my neurologist: What's the number one thing a person can do to be healthier? Without a moment's hesitation he said exercise.
I'll be asking the same question to my acupuncturist tomorrow and Ayurveda practitioner in a couple of weeks.
Terri, I have been working on those very goals, but it is been hard to stay on track this summer. Hopefully, I can refocus this fall.
I am glad to hear we are all struggling with the same things and our health should be the first thing on our to do list. Thanks for commenting. Here is to our health.
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