What Are Your Productivity Tips? How Do You Save Time For #WhatMatters? [Part 2]

Last week I wrote about the importance of getting productive this year and my best tips for getting their in your own life.  Recently I sorted through over 5,000 emails in my inbox and it took me a very long time but after a while I started to realize how important it was for me to cut back on the crap in my inbox. Clutter really disorients my thinking in terms of productivity.

So, on this line of thinking, I decided to reach out to a few blogging friends to see what they had to say and of course this posed a challenge to many!

April Hammond over at Faith 'n Pixie Dust said, "Having a clean workspace helps me."

Jenn Decker over at More Than a Mom of Three said, "Having a to do list is the only way I stay on track!"

Cole Martinez said, "Don't try to multitask. It only slows you down."

And then of course a confessed they were terrible at being productive!

So I wanted to reach out to all of my readers and see what you had to say -

How do you save time for what matters the most in your day to day? What are your productivity tips? 

I want to hear what you have to say! Leave a comment and be featured in next week's post!

If you are struggling with getting productive and unclogging that email inbox of yours, take advantage of this opportunity to sign up for early access to the newest productivity software called GoBoxi. Click this link to learn more and sign up!

This post is part of a sponsored campaign for which I will receive compensation. My opinions are my own.

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Do You Want to Get More Productive? #WhatMatters

Does this look like your office? Photo via Flickr.

I am balancing a lot these days and I think a lot of times I can be overwhelmed with how much I want to do and the time that I have to do it. Anyone else feel this way?

Last week though, I knew one thing that was clogging up my brain and making me lose track of things that I wanted to get done - my email! I use my email for a lot of blogging tasks, and because I'm usually managing multiple blogs, a lot of this can get confusing (which can lead me to get disorganized).

I don't know about anyone else, but I tend to use my personal email as a "to do" list (which serves me better than just writing things down; I lose things when I'm stressed and what's the point of a to do list if you LOSE it?). So, I started in one my own email (which 5,000 emails and several hours later is organized) and it took me a long time to get things sorted and figure out what I missed, what still needs to get done, and what is coming up.

Then, this made me think about productivity overall and what works best for me.

One key factor into getting me productive is to get organized!

This is rough for me to even cheer lead about because I'm definitely NOT the most organized person in the whole world. But once I organized my email and got things sorted and archived things (properly labelled), my overall productivity improved greatly. I got more things done and followed up on projects much easier. My brain wasn't as clogged anymore!

Also, setting goals for myself as well as even small deadlines or tasks, can give me the energy to be productive. I often times will just look at the overall project in general without setting small goals and I will feel overwhelmed.

If I can meet a small tasks or deadline each day or each week, I will feel much more inclined to get myself going for the next hurdle.

Next week I will be reaching out across my social networks and my blog readers for some of your productivity tips! So be sure to follow me @BeingTheWriter or on Google Plus by circling me to be featured in next week's post! Or just come back by next week to comment!

But first, before you go away, I want to introduce you to this amazing new service that will help you with all of your productivity troubles. It's called GoBoxi. And it's a tool that balances everything you need to do in your life, including managing social media AND your email all at the same time by using hashtags to organize things for you.

Best of all, and this is my favorite part, it actually gets to know the things most important to you. Talk about some mind reading. So writers and authors, those publishing projects you have to get done will suddenly get done a lot easier with this tool. And bloggers and virtual assistants out there, you know how you like to organize projects and clients and contacts, this tool is the one you would want to use to organize all of these things.

It also creates tasks for you based on it's automatic learning software or by organizing things by hashtag. Can you imagine the things you could get done? This is sort of like the best assistant you can get out there!

Make sure to watch the video below for details:




So how do you get signed up for this amazing tool? Sign up here for information on when this gets launched!

This post is part of a paid campaign for which I will receive compensation. My opinions are my own.

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Happy News for Me! [On My Recent Publishing Success!]

I am so excited to announce that the other day I heard that I will be getting published on the website The Voices Project, a non-judgmental community for women to share their poetry. 

The first poem will be published this fall and the next one will be published soon after. This is unbelievable and my first real time ever getting published.

This year has been very hard and to have this type of recognition means a lot. It's funny, though, one of these poems is over SEVEN YEARS OLD. But I rewrote it earlier in the year and I am really happy I did, because look what happened!

Anyways, the journey continues as I continue to submit, write, edit, rinse and repeat. I will be sure to update again once I can share the link with everyone.

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A Writer's Blog Hop - On My Writing Process and Current Projects

It's almost as if someone read my mind, because I've been stumped for blog content lately and when one of my writing peeps Jessica Samuels sent me a message asking if I wanted to join in a writing blog hop this week, I couldn't wait to join in!

Make sure you check out her answers too over at her blog.

1) What am I working on?

I've given up the burden of a novel at the moment and I've turned my attention to short stories. I've gotten about three or four done done so far this year and this is a major MAJOR record for me. It's funny though as I write more of these stories each one gets weirder and weirder and it makes me look at the world differently to see if I can twist it around into a bizarre little tale.

I'm having a lot of fun with short stories this year, but that doesn't mean that a novel idea isn't brewing in the background. I do have one that is more science fiction/dystopian than I've ever attempted before. I don't think I'm ready to work on it yet but it's developing in the back of my mind.

2) How does my work differ from others its genre?

I was once asked by someone critiquing my stories whether I would consider turning into a humor piece or, they wondered, whether I intended to have that comical tone to it. As I continue to write, I guess you can say that the humor or comical quality to the stories are laced with the bizarre and twisted worlds I've placed my characters in. For this, I stand out in the horror genre.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I used to associate myself as a fantasy writer, but as I've gotten older I don't read as much high fantasy as I used to as a kid. Nowadays, I like when one foot is in reality and one foot is in the bizarre. That's why I like horror stories, because it allows me to use this world we live in the most fanastic, horrific way. 

4) How does my writing process work?

I write a lot at night as well as on my bus ride home. I handwrite my stories usually into a notebook. My editing process needs a massive amount of work, but when I'm my most ambitious, I edit on the weekends (I work on first drafts during the week). Handwriting has been the best thing for my first drafts, although it sort of makes the editing process more difficult as typing up my stories gives me this high definition view into what I've written, which isn't always pretty.

I'm specifically tagging RD Meyers who I know must be dying to talk about his newest project in this prompt, but I would love everyone to join in on this! Let me know if you do and I'd love to read what you have to say!

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Attention College Students! Rent Out Your Text Books & Earn Money

Summer is just around the corner, and if you are planning on returning to school to take on a few summer classes, you will want to take advantage of some amazing money saving opportunities with CampusBookRentals.com!

First of all, they have partnered up with Operation Smile and every textbook rented, CampusBookRentals.com makes a donation. Operation Smile is a medical charity that performs cleft surgery on children from low and middle-income countries. They do some amazing work and so not only will you get to save money with CampusBookRentals, you also get to help an amazing cause.

But why else should you go with CampusBookRentals? There are some incredible perks -

You save 40 - 90% off of regular bookstore prices.

Free shipping both ways.

You can highlight the textbook.

Flexible renting periods.

Not to mention, they also have a great program for those of you who already forked over the big bucks for your textbooks. It's called RenetBack and it allows you to rent the textbooks you own to other students. This allows you to make twice as much money and even more than usual campus buy back programs (I remember getting like $15 back on a book I spent $75 on at my campus bookstore buy back program, so this is an incredible benefit!).

Check out this video about the RentBack program!

For further information, visit RentBack.com or visit CampusBookRentals.com. Also visit OperationSmile.org for information on this charity. 

This is a sponsored post and all opinions expressed are 100% my own.

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