Telephone interruptions

We hardly consider how much time we waste on telephonic conversations each day. Many of us are quite glued to our phones and don’t even realize how we waste a potent portion of the day conversing on phone. While working keep your phone either in silent mode or switch it off. It’s a big interruption while working.

Extended lunch breaks

While working at office, lunch is definitely not just a matter of eating, but also unwinding oneself. At the same time, extended lunch break filled with gossiping can actually prove to be a serious hazard. Keep lunch break relaxing, but not too addictive that you wish to carry it on and on for hours.

Frequent coffee or smoke breaks

At work place people are often seeing taking too frequent tea, coffee and smoke breaks. These are highly addictive and time wasters. You may think it’s a great way of unwinding yourself, but when done too frequently it’s more like a bad habit. You may end up socializing during these breaks and wasting lot of time.

Small naps are never small

People are often seeing taking small naps in-between work. But in reality they are hardly small ones get extended and definitely waste lot of time. They are addictive too, you may soon start regular naps. Rather than taking naps in between work, try to finish work first and then sleep with a relaxed mind.

Socializing on the job

People often socialize too much at work place, indulge into gossiping and waste big amount of time in a day.

Television watching

Television is one addictive medium, which results into severe time wastage. If you wish to watch something particularly on television, make sure you watch it only and don’t keep the television on for extended long hours. It results into huge time killing.

Social networking websites

These days a major chunk of the professionals, students, even home makers devote a large portion of their daily schedule in social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, MySpace and the like. They are highly addictive and cause serious damage to work schedule.

Poor planning
Ill planning of daily schedule or inability to set priority of work can land one into grave problem. Start planning your daily work, set a priority ladder of most important work towards least important ones. Work on the same, accordingly.

Multi tasking

Don’t try to juggle between too many works. Work on a specific job at a time. Too many works at a time can distract you from your goal and shared attention results into average quality work.

Here are some tips about minimizing television watching and not making it an addiction.

Calculate how many hours you can invest in it

Don’t watch television unconsciously, without worrying about time invested in it. If you don’t have any specific serious purpose like educational purpose or research intention for watching television, calculate how much time you can devote in a day for television watching. Remember, the time gone in television watching casually won’t come back to you and you could do much useful work in that time. Knowing what you wish to watch, fix the hours you can invest in this medium watching. Make sure you adhere to it and don’t extend it by anyhow.

Shortlist programs of your wish list

Don’t watch television casually, unconsciously watching whatever is displayed on screen. Such practice leads to addiction to the medium, if not specific programs. Rather shortlist few good television shows of your choice and watch them only. Know their time of telecast. Such program will make you start television only at the time of the show and close it immediately after it’s over.

Skip it at times

To genuinely overcome your television addiction, skip your favorite television show at times. Replace television watching habit with something else like – book reading, going for a walk, playing sports, gardening, playing with pets, cooking etc. This is a practice to ensure that television watching is something you like to do but not become obsessed with. It will slowly make you feel comfortable even when you miss your favorite programs. Soon you will find television watching doesn’t matter much to you.

Don’t fantasize about your favorite show

Often young viewers start fantasizing about their favorite television show, its characters and think about them all day along, even after the show is over. They talk about the same with friends, read about them on Internet and even watch video. Such practice is none other than addiction. Make sure you don’t dream about your favorite show. Treat it as a television show only.

Try these tips today.

As a writer (freelance, web or otherwise), are you doing it to yourself?

Are you stopping yourself from consuming those lovely shows and soaps that you always liked?
If you are doing this then it is a big mistake, a huge one. You need to stop at once and start indulging in movies, soaps, and plays.

Why?

A movie is a fertile ground for a writer to learn trick of the trade. It teaches you many things including:

• Character sketching
• Emotional responses
• Dialogue writing
• Scene creation
• Story telling

And along with these story mechanics, a good movie also tells you:

• How to engage an audience?
• How to make them wanting for more?
• What words to use to strike chord with the audience?
• What style of narrative to use for the problem at hand?

A movie also tells you about your market and about what words to use, what kind of sentences to construct, and how long or short sentences and paragraphs should be. One also learns the art of creating favorable ambience to get the emotional response sought by the article.

It is very important for you as a student of writing to watch movie and learn from it. Be a keen observer, and do not just consume a movie, observe it. In order to learn something from the movie, you have to dissect the various scene and emotional responses that led to the dramatic ending the movie had. You can then use it to create the experience you want in your audience.

How to avoid it?

Fortunately, there is a way out of it, which anyone of you can use to avoid distraction, regardless of your situation.

Assign yourself a place of work

This is the must-take action for any freelance writer. It is not good to carry your laptop and sit anywhere in your home to work, well occasional working-in-kitchen will not hurt but do not make it a routine. I know it sounds against the spirit of freelance writing—you can work from anywhere and anytime—but this is worth a deviation. Find a lonely corner in your house and turn it into a workplace.

Fix your work hours

I may sound like talking against the freedom of freelance writing, but my intention is not to drag you back into the 9-5 job that you left in the past, it is only to help you produce more. And as it is you can anytime pull the string and call it off.

Work, no matter what

Once you fix your work hour, you should stick to it, no matter what. Well, you can deviate from “no matter what” principle without any guilt feeling when you know you need to. Occasion deviation never hurts, at least not in our profession.

Talk to your family

At times, getting things write just need a word from us. Talk to your family and tell them that you are working around here, so not to create distraction. Well this might not work with a disgruntled spouse, but in most of the cases, this will be enough. Believe it or not, they understand the value of the work you are doing.

As you can see, fighting off distraction does not take so much of muscle power as much it takes discipline and tactics. What are your tactics to fight this monster off? Use the comment box and tell me your strategies.

Sometimes, instinct gives a good indication about what topic will get warm welcome from the readers, and what will be ignored as if it never existed, but instinct cannot be a reliable guide, if you have to write daily or regularly for any magazine, newspaper, online magazine or blog. You need a more reliable system then the instinct has to offer.

Before working on developing any idea into an article or a blog post, you should check how it does on the following parameter:

Do you have something new to offer?

The chances are quite high that the topic you are going to write about has already been covered by the magazine or blog you are writing for. Even if they have not covered it, their competitors must have done that. Do you have anything new to say about the weight-loss program you are going to write about? Any new development or a new angle? Even a fresh point of view can offer the required newness.

Does your writing flow?

If you want people to read what you write, your articles and blog posts need to flow. No one likes bumpy rides. Your words and sentences should help them glide through the paragraph after paragraphs. Do not use jargons, and keep the structure as simple as the writing idea permits. Always remember, your readers have limited time, and in this time, he can either read your article or do other things like, watching television, listening music, or write on Facebook walls.

How will it connect with the reader?

This is the most crucial point. You have a groundbreaking idea, and your writing style makes you hell of a charmer, but still your visitors are not falling over each other to read your piece, why? May be because you have targeted a wrong market, and the readers here are too smart or too stupid for your kind of articles. People will read only if you step up or step down (depending upon where you are) to their level. Can the reader connect with your article?

What’s the use?

Imagine this: you have come home after a long tiring day at office, and you turned on your laptop to read something, or picked a magazine to browse through. Your eyes happen to find an article that has a nice juicy headline, interesting sub-headlines, and even the first few lines are written wonderfully. You couldn’t resist but read it till the end, but here comes the bomb. The article has nothing to offer but a nice flowing style of writing. It doesn’t add even a single word, sentence or idea to your repertoire of the existing knowledge. You feel wastes. Your reader will feel the same, so make sure you are writing because you have something valuable to offer.

Will it entertain?

The entertainment value of any article should not be underrated. People do not read your article just because they feel you are going to redeem them. They do not think that way, nor are they here to get enlightened, though they will not mind it, if the redemption and enlightenment is offered sugar-coated in entertainment. You do not need to preach to send the serious message across. Do not think readers are so blunt.