I’m talking about all those unanswered emails sitting in your inbox. If you just felt a tinge of guilt when I brought up this issue, no worries. I’m here to help.

Let’s cut right to the chase: when you have a lot of unanswered emails, it causes you stress. Why? Because those are “open loops” of communication.

It’s like having a bunch of open tabs on your internet browser. Every time you see them, you feel guilty because you haven’t dealt with it… but you’re too overwhelmed to do anything about it. So, the problem keeps getting worse and worse.

The result is that you have people who are expecting a response from you. But you’re avoiding their messages, which causes you stress and makes you look unprofessional.

Here’s a little business secret: the most successful professionals are not necessarily the most talented. They are the ones who take action. A lot of deals are made, and a lot of business is done, just because people followed up in a timely way.

You might be the greatest writer in the world. But if you can’t answer your email in a timely way, you will frustrate people who need a response. You will also lose out to other writers who are more responsive and build better relationships with their readers, clients, or customers.

I want you to have GREAT relationships with people and be highly responsive. Here are nine simple tips for getting through all those unanswered emails.

1. Set a timer.

I do this frequently. I’ll set a timer for thirty and sixty minutes and rush like mad to get through my emails for the day. If you have a huge, undefined block of time when you’re working on email, it will take a lot longer than it should.

2. Make decisions quickly.

If an email requires you to decide something, make the decision and move on.

3. Don’t use your inbox as a task list.

If an email requires you to do something, move that action item to a separate list where you can prioritize those tasks. Then get rid of the email.

4. Keep emails short.

My friend David Hancock, founder of Morgan James Publishing, is a master at keeping emails short. You will be amazed at how much more efficient you become when you limit yourself to five sentences per email reply.

5. Set up a call for longer conversations.

I have noticed that many writers send very long, detailed emails. I also do this sometimes but I’m a lot better at it than I used to be. Email is not a very good tool for in-depth conversations.

6. Don’t be everybody’s hero.

We get sucked into email sometimes because people ask for solutions and answers. Use this opportunity to create a lead magnet, blog post, book, coaching package, or resource that answers people’s common questions on your topic. Point people to that instead of answering the same questions over and over again.

7. Reply within 48 hours.

Or better yet, within 24 hours. You can also use the genius technique that my friend Honorée Corder uses, which is setting up an autoresponder that gets sent to people automatically, letting them know you have received their email.

8. Make a video instead of sending an email reply.

I do this often. Instead of sending a long and drawn-out email, I use the Loom app to send a personal video. It’s a nice personal touch that requires less time than writing.

9. Don’t respond to every email.

If someone is critical, out of line, or just plain weird, you don’t have to respond. The email police are not going to arrest you. There is a lot of power in taking control of whom you let into your life, and whom you ignore.

There you have it: nine tips for dealing with those unanswered messages. If you find your email inbox constantly growing and causing you stress, these tips will help you make more mental space for other more important activities.

Today’s Challenge: Choose one of the tips I’ve mentioned and use it immediately. If I had to pick JUST ONE tip, I’d recommend keeping your emails short. That alone will drastically cut down on your email time.

The post Clear the Clutter: Unanswered Emails appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

• Stop committing to extra activities.
• Stop feeling guilty for not doing more
• Stop answering your email 15 times a day
• Stop helping everybody for free
• Stop starting new projects until you publish the current one
• Stop comparing yourself to other writers
• Stop watching the news
• Stop holding grudges
• Stop listening to people who don’t believe in you
• Stop following people on social media who irritate you

Success as a writer and creative person isn’t really a matter of doing more. It’s also a matter of eliminating the negative and unproductive things in your life so the good things can naturally start sprouting up.

Today’s Challenge: Choose one of the items I just listed and stop doing it today.

The post The Productive Writer: Create a “Stop Doing” List appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Opportunities are wonderful! You can write for more outlets or reach more readers with your own writing. With this expanded influence and connection also comes the need the limit your activities to the few things that produce the most results.

It’s hard to run a YouTube channel, host a podcast, write books, maintain a blog or newsletter, speak at conferences, and do all the other things you see influencers doing… unless it’s your full-time job and you have a staff. You need to pick and choose what to focus on.

The best filter is to focus on those activities that you enjoy, and that you will do consistently. You can grow a platform and writing career in many different ways. But as you grow in your career, you will have more options, and you will need to prune the ones that don’t serve your vision and direction.

As they say, you can be whatever you want, but you can’t be everything. Focus on just a few activities that will get you the biggest results in your writing life.

Pruning is not easy. At times it can be downright painful. But after you have prepared the soil of your mind, and planted and watered the seeds, you must cut back all the dead weight so the growth process can continue.

Question: Are there some activities in your life you should prune so you can focus on the bigger priorities?

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However, I decided to end it after a few dozen episodes because it wasn’t helping me reach my creative goals at the time. I went back to podcasting later on when I had more time and it was clear that podcasting fit into my business and creative goals.

You can say “no” to something right now but it doesn’t mean you’re saying “no” forever. In times of high stress, you have to focus on what matters most right now. You might disappoint some people, or even disappoint yourself, but you can’t do everything. You have to choose.

Daily Question: If you are feeling stressed right now, what can you eliminate or postpone on your schedule?

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Writers want lots of things. We want to have successful books. We want to be acknowledged for our creative work. We want to make a difference in people’s lives through our writing. We probably want to make a little money if we can… or even a writing-based business that supports our family.

There is another thing that many writers want, especially the introverts who have a limited amount of emotional energy to go around.

What is it? We want a day where we don’t have to talk to anyone. A day when we can get lost in our thoughts without the distractions of conversations. A day we can devote to making great progress in our current writing project. A day when we can recharge our emotional batteries instead of seeing them drained by the needs of friends, connections, clients, or family.

We love and respect those people, of course. But in our hearts, sometimes we just want a day to ourselves.

Here is how to get it: make a cardinal rule for yourself that one day per week, you don’t do any calls or social media. Now this may be easier said than done depending on your schedule, family situation, and business. But it’s helpful to make a rule that there are certain times of the week that you block out for yourself.

After all, YOU are the first client. You deserve your best time. Without taking care of yourself first, without giving attention to your emotional, mental, and physical energy, you can’t serve anyone else very well.

Personally, I block out Fridays as my “no call” days. I don’t do any calls for connections, clients, or even friends. Now I occasionally break this rule if it’s really needed, but for the most part, I set and keep this rule. When I wake up on Fridays, I can do so with a big smile on my face because I have devoted the whole day to work and writing with no distractions or conversations.

No one is going to set this rule for you. You may not even have a whole day when you can do this. Maybe it’s just a couple of hours. But if you’re an introvert and feel the pressure to constantly connect with people, maybe it’s time for a no-connection rule once a week.

Daily Question:  How would your writing and emotional life benefit from having a set time of “no connection” once each week?

The post What Every Writer Wants appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Most people, including myself, create a task list each day. We also call this a “to do” list. These are things we must do. And in a world that increasingly demands our attention every second—in a world filled with ever-increasing opportunities and connections—this list seems to get longer all the time.

The antidote to all this is to create a “stop doing” list. These are things you are NOT going to do.

Some examples:

– Stop committing to extra activities.

– Stop feeling guilty for not doing more

– Stop answering email 15 times a day

– Stop starting new projects until you publish the current one

– Stop comparing yourself to other writers

– Stop watching the news

– Stop holding grudges

– Stop following people on social media who irritate you

Success as a writer and creative person isn’t really a matter of doing more. It’s mostly a matter of eliminating the negative and unproductive things in your life so the good things can naturally start sprouting up.

Daily Question: What item from the list above should you stop doing?

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The most common complaint about writing is that it takes time. There is nothing that keeps people from writing more than the idea that they simply don’t have the time to write. That’s why so many writing resources—including this podcast—focus on helping people be more productive with their writing.

Everyone knows that we in the modern world are busy. It’s hard to squeeze in writing time. But maybe it’s good to stop and ask what has us so busy these days.

Is it too many obligations and commitments? Lots of movies, YouTube, and TV? Other hobbies or projects? Several small kids in the house or maybe a spouse or parent who requires lots of time and care? Maybe an extra job to help make ends meet?

Certainly, some of these are legitimate things that keep us busy. But not all of them. The vast majority of people have more control over their schedule than they realize.

Take a look at all the things that are keeping you busy—all the activities that take up your time each day and week. Are they really necessary? Are they contributing to your quality of life? Are they helping you reach your long-term goals as a writer?

If not, it’s probably time to re-evaluate how you are spending your time. So much of our lives are spent doing things others expect us to do. Maybe it’s time to stop focusing so much on what others want from you, and spend more time on the things YOU want.

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One of the most important concepts that every writer today must embrace is the idea of a “personal brand business.”

But what does it mean to have a personal brand? It comes down to the fact that your brand equals you. What you do and say in your business is a reflection of who you are personally. When people think of your brand, they think of you. And when they think of you, they think of your brand.

This is a challenging concept because the lines get blurry at times. If you have a personal brand, as I do and you probably do as well, you care about your clients or customers on a personal level. You are emotionally involved in your business at a deep level. You spend a lot of time thinking about your business and working on it.

Therefore, it’s a challenge to keep our business and personal lives separate. In a world of personal brand business and increased transparency on social media, it might even be impossible. But we still need to remember that at the end of the day, we are running a BUSINESS, not a hobby.

I’m a huge movie buff. In fact, I love movies and storytelling so much that I used to teach several college courses related to those topics. Movies are stories are a great lens into human nature and psychology.

One of my favorite movies is The Godfather, from 1972. It’s a classic movie with so many great quotes and scenes. Although it’s a great piece of entertainment, there are many business lessons to be learned from The Godfather. There is a reason that many men cite The Godfather as their favorite movie. It has so much to teach us about business, manhood, fatherhood, family, and so much else.

(Note that I didn’t say all the lessons were positive. Sometimes we learn from negative examples.)

One of my favorite scenes from The Godfather happens close to halfway through the film. Let me give you a little context first. The story centers around a mafia family who is facing off against several other New York crime families in the 1940’s. The father, Vito Corleone, was shot by a rival family because he refused to enter the drug business, which he regards as too dangerous. The mafia man who orchestrated the drug business proposal is Virgil Sollozzo, who wanted his revenge since he needed the Corleone family’s cash and political influence to get his drug business off the ground.

Are you with me so far? Good.

While Vito is in the hospital recovering, his youngest son Michael visits and discovers that the rival family is planning to kill his father. He stands in front of the hospital and manages to ward off the would-be assassins, but the police show up. Remember that in the world of The Godfather, the police are corrupt.

The police captain is angry with Michael because his plans are messed up, and he proceeds to rough up Michael. This angers Vito’s oldest son, named Sonny, and he orders a hit on the rival family in the middle of the night. As a result, the rival family wants to have a meeting with the Corleone family to reach an agreement before things get really out of hand.

This brings us to the scene I mentioned. The next day, all Vito’s sons have a meeting and Sonny is thrilled because he’s put his rivals in a corner. Sonny has a bad temper and he wants to destroy them. He’s responding to the situation emotionally and insists on starting an all-out war with his rivals.

One of the other sons, Tom, has a different response. He is the family consigliere, which is an advisory role. He’s looking at the situation with logic and reason, and as Sonny is insisting on an all-out war, Tom says, “It’s business, not personal.”

I want you to think about that phrase very carefully. “It’s business, not personal.” What does that mean, and how does it apply to our business?

It means that even though we may have friendships with clients (or prospective clients) … even though we want to maintain great relationships … even though we may offer great services or products … even though sometimes people don’t rise to our expectations … we must remember that at the end of the day, this is a BUSINESS.

It’s hard sometimes not to take things personally, but it’s vital if we want to be emotionally healthy and have a lasting business.

I can think of many times the last two years when I have personally liked a client, or a potential client, but have been disappointed in a result. For example, I remember a time when I sent a proposal to a potential client who had indicated she was very interested in working with me. I had even done some sample work to prove my value, and she raved about it to others.

However, when I sent the proposal she decided not to follow through. Of course, I was disappointed and wanted the work. But it had nothing to do with me personally. It was simply a business decision on their part.

It’s easy to take rejection personally. Sometimes people don’t answer our emails. Sometimes they don’t reciprocate or express appreciation when we promote their stuff on social media. Sometimes we make a proposal or pitch an idea and we don’t get the response we want.

In fact, I can think of a situation right now where a high-level author has agreed to consider writing a foreword for one of my client books, but I’ve had an extraordinarily hard time getting them to engage with me on social media or email. They have a very successful business they’re running, so I get it, but it still amounts to being rejected because answering my messages is not their priority right now, and that’s okay.

If you want to have a real business, you’re going to get rejected. That’s just part of the game of business. In fact, that’s how I’ve begun to think of this whole thing: as a game. I love games, and thinking of business as a sort of game takes the emotion out of it.

And it’s helpful to look at this from the other point of view, as well. How many times has someone proposed something to you, but you didn’t accept it? We seem to constantly have people in our neighborhood who are selling siding, lawn services, and other stuff. It’s rare that I say “yes” because most of the time, it’s not something we want or need. It’s not personal—it’s just a business decision.

This is a challenge to you and me to not take things personally when things don’t go our way. Remember that every reaction gets you closer to the next “yes.”

So remember: It’s business. It’s not personal.

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What is the core value of your life? What is the “center”?

For some writers, it’s their writing. Meaning, everything else is a sort of support system for their writing. Family, health, social life, rest and other important elements of their life always come second because they see their main task as answering their creative calling.

Stephen King said, “It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

What sits in the center of the room for you? If it is your writing, then other people’s reactions, your book sales, or other factors will influence whether you feel successful in life or not.

If other more important things lie at the center, such as your family or faith or health, then you can live a more balanced life. There is no need to become an “artist” who achieves greatness in their craft while everything else in their life is crumbling.

Is writing important? Yes. But don’t let it consume your life. Don’t let it become the center.

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We all know that perfectionism can be debilitating. It can rob you of the joy of writing and cause you to waste endless amounts of time fidgeting with your material.

Just like a rainbow, perfection is an illusion. You can chase a rainbow but you will never find the end of it. In the same way, you can chase perfection but you’ll never reach it. As author Neil Gaiman said, “Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.”

Here is a simple cure: pretend you have one year to live. With this knowledge, would you continue to work on this piece or would you move on to the next thing?

Perfectionism tells us the lie that we have all the time in the world. The reality is, you don’t. Your life has an expiration date. But unlike the food products in your house that have an expiration date, you don’t know when yours is.

It’s never a bad thing to maintain a sense of urgency about life. If it were all over a year from now, how would that change your writing?

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