This is a guest post from Ben, top commenter on this site and one of the best writers I have ever come across, Ben over to you;

I’m Ben, a blogger from the UK who writes about self development at 6aliens.com. Why not connect with me on Twitter @benlumley6 or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to my RSS Feed?

So we all know what it’s like. You sit down at your computer to write an amazing post for your blog and have a limited time in which to do it.

To start with, eveything is going really well. You’ve got the introduction written but then all of a sudden things grind to a halt as an email comes in. It’s a notification that someone has replied to a comment you left on one of those 20 sites you regularly comment on.

So off you go to leave your reply. 10 minutes later reply posted, you find yourself on Twitter or Facebook updating a status or seeing what everyone else is up to. You won’t be long you tell yourself ; so it’s all ok.

You finally get back to what you were originally doing a little while later, having checked the results of last night game but now your train of thought has gone. The introduction to that post was good but now you can’t remember how you were going to continue your point. Your next sentence lost into the ether of information in your brain that your memory has trouble accessing on a regular basis. (The next time you’ll remember it, it will probably be at around 4am in the morning.)

You feel like you’ll never complete this post in the time you’ve got left.

Get yourself in the zone!

Most times when we’re working ,we’re fighting an ongoing battle of distractions and concentration issues. On the very rare occassions, though, we are able to get to a place where we just seem to fly through the work and completely lose track of time. But just as quickly as it arrived, the feeling of being in the zone is gone and you’re back to fighting off distractions.

So how to you get into this zone?

The tips I’m about to give, I’m going to apply to writing posts and articles as that’s the bulk of what many of us here do with our blogs. But you can apply these tips to any kind of work, not just post writing.

1. Get excited

There is nothing harder than when you’re trying write a post you’re not 100% excited about. Maybe it’s a topic that’s really as real SOB and you’re struggling to effectively get your point across. Maybe you’re writing a guest post for another blogger who has set you a really difficult topic to write on. Whatever the cause, you’re going to find it hard to get really stuck into it and work through it effectively if the topic doesn’t excite you.

So write posts that DO excite you. You should be writing about topics that you can speak about for hours and hours without ever running out of ideas or opinions. It might take you a while to write it all up with all the research and editing of phrases and sentences you might need to do to make it perfect, but you should be able to write the basics out in a few minutes.

If you’re struggling to start iftoff and aren’t really sure how you’re going to finish it, then why are you bothering to write it?

If you’re writing a guest post with a really tricky topic or title that you’ve been given, then keep looking at the problem from different angles until you can see a way to put your spin on it. That’s what your guest editor is essentially wanting you to do, so write it from your point of view rather than theirs. That what I did for How a Geek becomes cool. James set me a really tough challenge with that post as it could have been answered in so many different ways but I just kept approaching it from different points of views until I could see a way to put my spin on it.

2. Write it down

If you have an idea then write it down. It’s far more productive to work from a large list of potential ideas than sitting there scratching your head trying to remember what it was you were going to write about.

Take a few minutes to plan out your post on paper before you sit down to write it. Trying to remember those little points or phrases that your brain had cleverly thrown out while you were intially thinking about what you were writing about is just not productive. If you plan it all out and add phrases and points to your plan as and when you think of them, you’ll save yourself a lot of time.

Take a notepad EVERYWHERE! You need some kind of capture device that will allow you to save all of those amazing and important ideas when you’re not writing. Don’t like having a notepad with you all the time? Store it on your smartphone, call your phone and leave yourself a message or even send yourself a text. Anything that you can store your ideas and thoughts into will save you so much time later on.

3. Shut off everything that won’t help you write (work)

You can’t work productively and get lots of things done if your email is constantly vying for your attention. With the phone ringing and text messages making your phone vibrate next to you, you’re never going to get that post written. You’ll never write anything if you’re constantly reading every link that your Tweeples tweet out.

Turn off your email, turn off your phone, close your internet browser down, close the door to your office or the room you’re working in and allow yourself to focus on the task in hand.

For example right now, I’m writing this with everything but my text editor open so the only thing I can focus on is this post. Eliminate your distractions, whatever they may be and you’ll see your productivity soar.

So…

When you’re working, you need to create an atmosphere that’s suitable to do that. Being unable to remember what you were going to do and being distracted every few minutes is not a constructive way to create amazing content for your blog. So get productive today and watch how much more you can accomplish.

What producitivity tricks and tips do you use?

6 January 2010
Creative Commons License photo credit: dougbelshaw


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Filed under: Articles • Guest Post • Motivation • Useful

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