Even while drafting this, I have broken off to tweak something on the description for Aegyir Rises, answer a message on Facebook, fiddle with something else, and check my royalties (someone is currently inhaling Aegyir Rises on Kindle, if my sudden spike in Kindle Unlimited Pages Read tally is anything to go by... thank you, whoever you are! Hope you enjoy it enough to read the rest of the series.)
Busy brain.
Alongside all that, last week I was helping my mum sort out some things and we found a load of old photos taken by my great uncle, which led to us chatting about him, and now my brain is also interested in doing more research on him. And other members of my family.
Busy brain.
I've been doing a 5-day Ad Challenge (now ended) which means I've been setting up lots of Amazon Ads. Something else to keep looking at (even though I know I won't be doing anything with them for a while and certainly not right this second).
Busy brain...
And I haven't even mentioned book #10 or writing. Or all of the other books I have swirling around my head, demanding to be written.
With all that going on, you'd think that focusing on one project would be the smart thing to do. And you'd be right. Except my brain isn't playing nicely.
Two things that help me enormously are morning pages and the Smiling Mind mindfulness app. Morning Pages are free-writing - you write whatever is in your head until 3 pages are written. I tend to make it 3 pages or 15 minutes as sometimes I'm nowhere near 3 pages after 15 minutes and I'm just wasting time trying to clear an already clear head.
Once I've emptied my head, I do one of the mindfulness sessions with Smiling Mind. It depends on what I'm feeling like, but I often do "Study" which is a 7 minute session designed to prepare you for starting a task. It helps me get into a flow-state where I'm focused on the task ahead and can quiet the chatter from all the other things vying for my attention. That chatter is why I need to do the morning pages first! Once it's on paper, it seems to be out of my head.
What do you use to quiet the chatter and keep the focus?
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