The Productivity Hack You've Been Looking For

Where Fleur realizes there is no spoon and loves a fat bear named Chunk.

It’s fall, y’all. Here in Colorado, that means we’re rushing to get the last fun in before winter, and we’re one-upping each other with leaf-peeping pictures. It was a mad dash on the roads into the mountain yesterday, so I aborted my plan to drive to Victor, which was clearly also the plan of the rest of Colorado. As it happens, there are aspen trees in Pike National Forest too.

Stay tuned for the winter snow pictures contest, starting in November, I expect…

In the meantime, I’ve been the kind of busy that can be called too much, so I’ve been experimenting with productivity hacks (I dislike that word as everything has become a hack, but I can’t think of a better word). I made checklists, scheduled blocks, did the pomodoro thing… But I wasn’t really gaining any traction, other than that the search for a productivity hack was starting to stress me out.

Now, I’m a fairly organized person, or organized-ish. I like to jot down to-do lists (oh, the joy of ticking a task off it!), make plans, study my calendar. And this has worked well for me. I can plan out a book on my calendar as well as I can plot one—I’ll save you that hack for the time being.

But I’ve been drowning in those smaller tasks, the emails that require attention, that form that needs to be filed, the grocery pickup that must be scheduled. I’d love a hack for that…

So, I picked up this book, Meditation for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, a great book. I was looking forward to reading his take on time management. I should’ve guessed from the title that this wasn’t a hack type of book…

His point is that you’re never getting it all done. Your search for a productivity hack is pointless, because your email inbox will just fill up again and again—better to embrace it than to think you can outrun life somehow.

In short: there is no spoon.

I’m about halfway into Oliver Burkeman’s latest book, but already found that particular mindset quite liberating. If you are also feeling snowed under by life sometimes, I recommend this book. Let’s just cut out an hour early on a Friday and have a beer. That email inbox will wait.

What I’m Writing

Despite my time crunch, I’ve been plugging away at new words. Pay yourself first, creative friends. I finished a draft of the WWII historical I’ve been working on all summer, but it needs major revision (more like an overhaul, actually), so it goes to cool on the shelf for a while. As much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, it’s a darker topic I’m glad to leave behind for a while.

In the meantime, I’ve also been tinkering with that non-fiction book on writing MG and YA mysteries, the one that keeps simmering on the backburner… It’s a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race project. More soon, like maybe a cover…

Where I’m Going

I’ll be part of the faculty at Rocky Mountain SCBWI’s Letters and Lines conference, one of my favorite events of the year. It’s a smaller conference full of my children’s books writer and illustrator friends who are just the best people, and I’m excited to share my knowledge and gain some, too. If you are there, say howdy! I believe today is the last day to registering, if you’re thinking of joining the fun.

Good News

Good news for Daybreak on Raven Island! It was just picked up for not one but two one-book-one-school events (where a whole school reads the same book). Huzzah for this little engine that could, as it’s been trucking along, right along with its sibling Midnight at the Barclay Hotel. Cake is in order.

What I’m Reading

These past few weeks have been full of new releases by author friends, and I’m loving it. This book, The Many Misfortunes of Eugenia Wang has been on my to-read list FOREVER, and Stan Yan is just about the coolest dude to have his graphic novel come out, after a lot of waiting and a ton of hard work. Let’s all buy this book, friends.

Another author friend with a bookbirthday is Lindsay Currie, who knows how to write a solid mystery for kids. The House with No Keys is such a good book; if you haven’t read the first in this series, be sure to pick up The Mystery of Locked Rooms.

On the books-for-grownups side, I just finished The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke (which is a pseudonym for the duo Cat Clarke and V.E. Schwab). I was lucky enough to pick up an advanced copy at Bouchercon in New Orleans last month. I highly recommend this book, especially for anyone in the writing/publishing field. The Ending Writes Itself is not out until April of next year, but you can preorder it. It’s like buying future you a present.

Something That Made Me Smile

The world is such a dumpsterfire right now, and lately it feels like I can only take the news in thirty-second increments… For some reason, the news that Jane Goodall passed away made me infinitely sad, as she did so much to encourage us all to save the environment. If you are also a fan, I recommend Famous Last Words on Netflix, an interview with Jane Goodall intended to be released after she died.

I loved this quote:

But in the interest of some much-needed levity, I thought I would share something that made me smile, with hopes I can leave you with a happy thing.

It was just Fat Bear Week, which means (you guessed it) we in the wilder parts of the world can expect to see a big fluffy out and about, on the hunt for food. Our friends at the National Parks Service (whom I love) put on a contest every year for the fattest bear. They even show a before and after picture of the competing bears, so show how much weight they gained that summer (a kind of reverse Biggest Loser). You can vote, apparently, though I just enjoy watching fat bears.

This is Chunk, the winner of this year’s Fat Bear Week contest. He lives in Alaska, weighs 1,200 pounds, and he made me smile this week.

Fosterkittens Ahoy!

Speaking of making weight: the latest batch of fosterfloofs is fully cooked and is off to the mothership (that would be my local Humane Society in Colorado Springs) for adoption. They are fluffy and cute, so something tells me this will not be a problem.

In case you were worried that I am without kittens: there is a new group of three fosterfloof friends taking up residence at the cottage, but they’re not quite camera-ready yet. They’re fighting a mysterious kitten crud, but expect pictures soon. Rest assured, they are floofy.