A fantastic trick how to get started with your academic text

You probably know it: you had planned to write, you were totally ready. You were mentally prepared….. Nothing was in the way of writing.

It doesn’t work….

And still, it doesn’t work. Before you know it, all the hours you had reserved are gone and you have to do other things. And what has absorbed all these valuable hours? Well, that’s the question.

There is a big chance that your email has distracted you. That you were lost on the Internet for a while. That reading a specific article led to reading another one and another one. The meeting you had with your colleague took longer than you thought. Then Facebook distracted you. And suddenly the time is gone and you really had to do something else.

How to become more productive

In such cases is it very valuable to find out how other writers are solving these issues. How do they become more productive?

Raymond Chandler – an American writer of novels and detectives – has a fantastic trick. Every morning he reserved 3 hours of writing time and he had only two rules to abide by:

1 You don’t have to write

2 You are not allowed to do anything else

The great thing about these rules? One: there is no pressure: you don’t have to write. That creates space. Second: because you probably don’t want to sit for three hours doing nothing – as you are not allowed to do anything else – the chances are that you will start to write.

Chandler claims the trick really works: he was a very productive writer.

Of course, you can use this trick not only for writing but also for other matters you tend to delay.