One of the things it talked about was the fact that, if you want to do something, you need to make the processes easy or you won't do it, or if you start, you won't finish it.
And I thought that this was so true.
This idea not only applies to many things in life but also to writing for a living.
And I'll explain.
If you have a project you want to do, you need to make the steps to achieving it as easy as possible or you won't do it.
For instance, say you want to send out a weekly newsletter to your subscribers.
In your newsletter you want to include several things.
So if your newsletter is about dog training and you want to include the latest online articles about dog training, new dog training products, and so on, you'd have to look up these up online every week.
But if you had to start with a Google search for each item for your newsletter week after week, it could take you quite a while to put it together. Possibly a whole day of research and writing every week.
On the other hand, if you had already researched the best places to find this information and book-marked the sites that you needed, then it would make it easier to research and collate your information every week.
You might bookmark a news website about dogs and a website dedicated to the latest dog training products and subscribe to a few dog training newsletters so that other information is delivered to you instead of you having to search for it.
This way you'd be more inclined to get your newsletter written every week because it would be quick to gather your information and you could put it together in under an hour.
So instead of cringing at the thought of spending another whole day researching and writing, you could compile your newsletter and then get on with other things.
This idea also spills over into every area of life.
For instance, it's easier to make dinner for the family every day if you have a weekly menu plan written down and you buy the ingredients you need ahead of time as opposed to looking through the fridge and pantry for ideas at the end of every day only to find you don't have the ingredients you need.
It's also easier to do the washing if everyone throws their dirty clothes straight into the hamper as opposed to you having to search under every bed in every bedroom looking for dirty clothes every time you want to put a load of clothes in the machine.
And it's easier to mow the lawn if you do it weekly/fortnightly on a regular day of the week while the grass is still relatively short as opposed to staring at the lawn each weekend wondering if you should mow it and when you finally do it takes ages and is exhausting because the grass is so long.
In the book I was reading, Essentialism, it also said that non-essentialists think everything is essential while essentialists think that almost everything is non-essential, making it easy to discern the "vital few" from the "trivial many" things they should be doing.
And being able to discern the vital few things we should be doing, from the trivial many that often waste our time, makes it easy to get on with what we SHOULD be doing and leave behind what isn't really necessary.
According to Essentialism, "The pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure" because chasing success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce the success in the first place.
And this is why we need to make the process of doing something easy, so that we'll want do it.
Because, let's face it, no one wants to do something that's hard.
And it was this that made me realise I've been working incorrectly all these years.
I've been dividing every day up into chunks of time for things I have to do throughout the day.
For instance, I'd spend the morning writing, half the afternoon ironing and the other half gardening.
But that's not a great way for me to work. I realised that I was spending too much time on the "trivial many" things.
And although the family's clothes need ironing and my garden needs tending, my need to get my writing done is greater and I can't sit down and focus properly if I'm constantly thinking of the other things I have to do that day.
So now I give myself two full days a week to do nothing but writing so that I can devote the whole day to my work.
And it's amazing how much I can get done when I'm completely focused on the "vital few" things that I have to do.
I get far more writing done than when I was watching the clock every day, because I knew I had to get up and do other things.
And it helps me to concentrate completely on the other things too when it comes to their day for my attention.
Changing the way I work has made the process of doing it all, much easier.
Because as the book said, it's not about how to get more done, but how to get the right things done.
