Tag Archives: advice

Create Your OWN Writing Routine

May 3, 2014 Robin Leave a comment

One of the things that has always bugged me about writing advice is the inevitable “writing routine advice.” You know, the kind that starts with something like “you must wake up at 5:00 AM” and usually has advice similar to “you must write 4,000 words every day,” “you have to write with pencil and paper,” or whatever other “requirements” they want to stick in there.

My main problem with this? No matter what advice you get, it’s advice that worked for SOMEONE ELSE. This advice may not apply to you at all.

And yet, we budding writers are often expected to adopt routines that successful writers have created for themselves, simply because the writer was successful. We are not only encouraged to do this–in fact, if we dare to make up our own routine, we’re often brushed off with a discouraging remark: “well, you’ll never be successful doing it THAT way.” (Think it doesn’t happen? I’ve personally heard that one so many times I could quote it in my sleep.)

Why Others’ Writing Routines May or May Not Work for You

Writing routines are meant to encourage dedication and increase mental comfort. The motivation behind any routine, actually, is that over time it will become habit–thus, why many writers seek out a routine so that their writing becomes habitual and not done in unpredictable fits and spurts.

I understand that. But my routine, for instance, includes no early mornings, no coffee, and no set word goal for the day. In fact, I can’t actually hold myself to stringent “rules” about my writing, especially time-related rules, because I get wrapped up with anxiety about “not doing it right/not doing it on time” and consequently can’t even write one sentence. (See: my current issues with writing my blog entries ahead of schedule–I freak out about how much time I don’t have to write them, and end up depending on procrastination-driven adrenaline to write ’em all.)

My point? Sometimes, routines can actually hold you BACK when it comes to writing. If the routine is unnatural for you, too harsh, or even just too many steps to follow, you’ll end up defeating yourself over and over instead of actually getting any writing done, good or bad.

My Routine: Ridiculously Easy (Which Means I’ll Actually FOLLOW It)

In pursuit of my own writing routine, I’ve developed the following, relatively free-form one:

For every hour I’m on the computer, I take 15 minutes away from whatever task I’m doing and write.

Stupidly simple, right? It doesn’t have anything in there about getting up at a certain time to write, how much I have to write, or anything. It’s just asking me to take 15 minutes out of every hour that I’m already on the computer anyway to write a little more on my novel (which is also stored on my computer). All I have to do is go to the novel file, open it, and type. My routine doesn’t even tell me what parts of the story I’m supposed to write, or anything. It’s as free-form and low-pressure as you can get.

AND IT WORKS. Case in point: I just took 15 minutes off from writing this very blog post and instead wrote on my novel, simply because I felt like switching tasks. My ADD brain is happier with frequent switching of tasks, which is one reason I made my routine work this way. Also, since I’m not pressured to write a certain number of words or work within a certain time limit, all my brain resources are free for creativity instead of bound up in anxiety loops.

How to Make Your Own Writing Routine

First, know yourself. If you know you’re a night owl and won’t get anything productive done in the morning, don’t schedule your writing time for 6:00 AM. If you know you work better with a deadline and a specific word count goal, set those goals for yourself. Acknowledging and respecting how you naturally work best is the first key to a successful writing routine.
Make it easy to follow. However you define “easy,” make your writing routine so easy for you to follow that you enjoy it and actually WANT to do it. I don’t hold with writing advice that basically tells you to treat your writing routine like it’s an obligation–if I don’t like to do something, I just ain’t gonna do it. (Maybe that makes me a quitter, but if so, then how did I end up with 165,000 words of my novel written thus far? LOL)
Remember that “writing” time includes editing or even rereading your work. Even if you feel awful and have no desire to actually write, you can still edit or reread your own work as a lower-impact “writing” activity. In fact, sometimes I’ve started off not feeling like writing much of anything, and once I dig into my novel a little bit, either editing or rereading, I end up wanting to write more!

Tuesday on the Soapbox

The Curse of Unforgiveness

April 15, 2014 Robin Leave a comment

image source

When we refuse to forgive someone, usually we think we’re punishing them in some way. “They don’t deserve my forgiveness!” we might think. “They hurt me, they betrayed me–they deserve for me to shun them the rest of my life!” And in those angry, bitter moments, our feelings seem completely righteous; we are hurt, so they deserve to hurt, too, and the best way we can think of to hurt them is to take our friendship and common courtesy away.

Unforgiveness as a Personal, Long-Term Struggle

I struggle with unforgiveness myself, as a victim of severe school bullying from kindergarten through 9th grade. I often said I forgave the people who verbally and physically abused me, but I didn’t–I held the grudge for years, silently judging each former bully by their action, remaining angry with them long after they even forgot what they did to me. The fact that they forgot even stoked my anger more; I found myself thinking “How dare they forget, like it didn’t matter, when they HURT me?! They deserve to be hurt by my hatred!”

Unforgiveness as a Futile Exercise

But therein lies the problem, one that I wasn’t able to wrap my brain around until just the last few years. Who am I actually hurting when I refuse to forgive someone? I’m obviously not hurting the other person, if they can forget what they did. I’m obviously not teaching them a social lesson, when no one else remembers the hurt done to me. What good is it to refuse someone else forgiveness, when all it does is keep refreshing the hurt in my mind, and keep me angry? Anger causes stress, and stress is a KILLER, as I have discovered with my recent stress-related illnesses.

Unforgiveness feels right, feels like exactly the thing we ought to do, especially when our lives have been changed by someone else’s thoughtless words or actions. But it won’t help us in the long run–it will only dampen our own life enjoyment, and potentially even shorten our lives, with NO effect on the other person whatsoever.

I am the last person who needs to give advice on how to forgive, since I’m apparently awful at it, but I do recognize that it needs to happen–first because it’s the Christian thing to do, realizing I too am a sinner in need of forgiveness, and second because I am tired of living with the burden of my own rage and bitterness.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Makeup Box Spring Cleaning

April 1, 2014 Robin Leave a comment

As part of my (endless) organization/cleaning purge, I decided to tackle my makeup collection recently, with some very surprising results. (Bonus: tips for helping you spring-clean your own makeup collection are at the end of this article!)

I had thought my makeup collection was about as streamlined and simple as it could get, since I don’t wear much makeup these days anyway. But I noticed that there were a few products that I wasn’t using as much. So, I literally took the organizer that serves as my makeup storage and dumped it out on the bed to sort through it…and this is what happened next:

Products Before the Purge

Lip glosses (yes, yes, I know, one girl does not need so many! LOL)

Lipsticks (can you tell lip products are my favorite makeup yet?)

Face products (foundation powder, blush, bronzer)

Eye products (eyeshadow, liner)

The Purging Process

Once I had sorted each category, I took a long, hard look at each product. Was I using this? Was it still safe to use? Did it work like I wanted?

One thing I saw was that several of my lip glosses had begun to separate and change color slightly in the tube. Yuck! (The pictured lip gloss was bought in 2011–definitely wayyyyy too old to be using!)

This lip palette, for instance, was bought back in 2007, according to my note in Sharpie on the bottom of it. Yikes! (This is a really handy tip for keeping track of how old your makeup is–note the month and year on the bottom of it when you get it, and then you’ll know when it’s too old to use!)

Some of the products, like this mini-makeup kit, have been gifts–and gifts are especially hard for me to get rid of because I’m very sentimental. But in this case, this kit has been sitting in my box for at least the last 4 years…:/

I was REALLY tempted to quit in the middle of this purge, to just keep all of the makeup, but when I realized how old some of it was, I knew I couldn’t in good faith keep putting that on my face. Makeup definitely doesn’t last forever! So I set my mind to be ruthless about getting rid of the oldest products, the products I didn’t use, etc. (I don’t wear a lot of makeup, so I didn’t need all of them anyway.)

The Results

A MUCH-reduced gloss collection, taking out all the ones that were now too old to use…

And a little smaller lipstick collection to match 🙂

I pared down all the eyeshadow palettes to the one I really love and use the most…

…and I kept the one eyeliner I have (though I don’t break it out very often).

I took out the foundation powders that I haven’t used since I graduated college in 2007 (seriously!), but I swapped in a couple of the lip stains to see if I could use them as “cream blushes.” (Note: you can’t really blend them well enough to make them work, sadly.)

A couple of trusty tools round out my new, much lighter makeup collection.

What I Kept and What I Got Rid Of

Just to show you exactly how much I got rid of, here’s the “After” picture of my makeup organizer:

And here’s the basket of stuff that went away:

Yep, I got rid of about half my makeup collection in one fell swoop! Pretty amazing for this hoarder in rehab! LOL

To Purge Your Own Collection

Mark each makeup piece with the date you first used it so you know when to throw it out. (This is SO helpful!) Refer to this article for when to throw away various makeup products.
Check each product for changes in texture, smell, or application; if it looks “goopy,” smells weird, or doesn’t seem to have the same “oomph” that it used to, it’s probably gone bad.
Be ruthless when deciding whether to purge an item. Are you REALLY going to use that product if you keep it, or are you keeping it to justify the expense of it? (I kept falling into this trap during the makeup purge, and I had to keep thinking, “Is this something I REALLY love and use?”)

Saturday with the Spark

The 5-Minute Off Switch

March 22, 2014 Robin Leave a comment

My brain seems to have forgotten its “off switch” on occasion. Has yours?

I’m not only describing the next-to-impossible fight to go to sleep every night, when all my electronic devices are beckoning me to DO MORE THINGS on the Internet, etc. I’ve actually found myself disconnecting from my artistic side more and more as I have become involved with things on the Internet. There just seems to be less time for me to be creative when there’s one more article or video I haven’t seen yet. (This very blog post is late because I started out trying to write it and ended up wrapped up on Pinterest for an hour!) Because I get so thoroughly involved in what I’m doing on a screen, I end up locking out the outside world–and thus, my creativity sense is dulled. How can I write or sing about a world I’m no longer in direct contact with?

The “Off Switch:” An Abrupt but Necessary Change for Creativity

What if we all turned off our devices, our news feeds, our constant stream of data from the outside world, for 5 minutes? I don’t mean just locking the screens and putting the devices aside, but literally turning every device of distraction off and going to another room. What could we start to be aware of? Our own bodies? The tick-tick-tick of time passing? Our family members in the house? The feel of the seat we’re sitting in? The weather outside the window?

As connected to my devices as I am now (and I’d guess that most of us are like that), I think such a disconnect would be VERY difficult–almost impossible at first. We’re all Internet junkies these days, relying on constant connectivity to avoid being bored in line, to avoid difficult conversation, etc. A 5-minute “off switch” would force all of us to confront what’s truly in our minds, and perhaps an idea or two can begin to synthesize at last. Even if you don’t think of yourself as creative, simply not being bombarded with everyone else’s thoughts and worldly data can be incredibly freeing!

Give It a Try!

When you turn off all your devices and go to another room to sit quietly, allow your own thoughts to bubble to the surface. This is what makes the “off switch” different from meditation (I can never clear my head of ALL thoughts, so this is the next best thing). If you find yourself at a loss for what to think about (or are itching to get back to being connected), think about this: what are you missing in the world? What do you wish existed?

Take these 5 minutes and generate something from within your own head, instead of what you think about the daily headlines and that annoying person’s status message. Who knows, you may come up with something brilliant that would have never seen the light of day without the “off switch!”

Saturday with the Spark

The Journal: A Writer’s Sandbox

February 8, 2014 Robin Leave a comment

I used to think of “journals” as strictly diaries or classroom assignments; I was never very good at doing either of them for long because they both involved handwriting, which I hate doing because it’s horrifically slow and makes my hand cramp within seconds.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized there’s something actually quite magical about a journal, whether it’s an empty book of pages or a blank Word document–it’s YOUR space as a writer, YOUR space to create, transform, innovate, and revise as you see fit. No one else ever has to see it, but it’s as big as your brain needs it to be. It is your writing sandbox, and you are the kid with the shovels and the sand bucket.

How Do You Start a Writer’s Journal?

Very simple:

Choose your format–paper or digital document.
Write or type in anything you want to. Random character lines you thought up while out and about, blurbs and dribbles of stories you may or may not finish, brief character descriptions, feelings about topics, blasts of ARGGGGGHHHH I CAN’T WRITE ANYMORE, things that make you laugh, mocking a writing style you hate…this is your sandbox, so feel free to throw some words around and make it messy!

(Note: if you have a digital journal, it can definitely span more than one document if you want/need it to. No need to keep it all in one file, especially if you end up turning one or more blurbs into full-blown stories. My digital journal, for instance, takes up hundreds of files and multiple sorted folders!)

But I Don’t Have Anything to Write About!

If you’re absolutely stuck on what to write about, there are a few really good websites out there that give you journaling and writing prompts. Here are some to start with:

DavidRM.com: Journaling Prompts
WritingExercises: Random Subject Generator
Creative-Writing-Now: Journal Writing Prompts

Approach these prompts as fun challenges rather than drudgery. Can you write about the experience of skydiving by just imagining it? How much do you remember from that childhood memory–can you remember the scene, the smells, the sounds? Dig into each idea, sense it, and describe it.

Whatever you choose to write, try out all sorts of writing styles, plots, topics, opinions, and characters in your journal; shape your words like wet sand. You might be surprised what you end up sculpting with your words!

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Lifehack: Give Yourself Time Limits to Complete Tasks

February 4, 2014 Robin Leave a comment

This post seems counter-intuitive at first, especially for somebody who hates being timed as much as I do. But I tried this and it worked, when no other anti-procrastination tactic had. Read on to find out what I did!

The Situation: A Sunday School Lesson Left Undone

I teach Sunday School, and I like to have my lessons thoroughly researched and typed up–I do not strictly read out of the teacher’s guide, but combine elements from the the teacher’s guide, the students’ guide, and NIV translation text notes into a cohesive whole. I also write up my own real-life applications for each Bible passage we study…yeah, it’s a pretty involved process, but my OCD perfectionism demands nothing less. LOL

Unfortunately, once you factor in all the time I spend goofing off in between completing sections of the Sunday School lesson, the whole thing usually takes me about 3 hours. I was tired of that, and was frustrated with myself–but it didn’t come to a head until one Saturday evening a couple of weeks ago, when I had left my Sunday School lesson prep quite literally to the last minute.

Epiphany: Set a Deadline

“It’s 10:00 and I’m STILL not done!” I raged at myself. “I need to be in bed by 11 so I’m not a zombie tomorrow morning!” In that moment of frustration, I grabbed my phone and typed in a reminder for myself: “Get done with Sunday School lesson,” set for 11:00 pm. My goal: to be done with everything regarding the Sunday School lesson (writing, saving, putting it on my Kindle for easy reading the next morning) before the reminder bell rang.

Even as I did this, however, I was worried. I usually hate being timed–I hate feeling like I’m racing against the clock. Would this backfire and send me into a fit of anxiety, or worse, make my brain lock down and refuse to do anything?

I had already gathered my Sunday School lesson materials, and so once I hit the fateful “Set Reminder” button, I was ostensibly ready to go. I tapped the button…

…and go I certainly did–I began to read and type, revise and write, as if I was back in college and preparing a final paper for submission. I felt focused, somehow, energized by the clock, given a singular purpose to drive toward. The reminder bell rang an hour later, as I was copying the PDF of my lesson file over to my Kindle; I had made the deadline! What had usually taken 3 hours and involved a lot of unfocused “time off” had instead taken 1 hour of dedicated work, after which I could rest.

What Made the Difference?

This seems so simple it’s almost obvious. But it was something I had literally never considered doing, since I hated being timed so much. Several important factors made it possible, in hindsight:

The time limit (1 hour) was just enough time to complete the lesson without any goof-off time; thus I didn’t freak out but I knew I had to stay on task
The time limit was for one task’s completion only, so I didn’t feel overwhelmed
The time limit was a challenge and not a hard-and-fast “succeed or fail” mission; if I missed it by a couple of minutes, I wouldn’t be an awful horrible person.

Implementing This for Yourself

Set two reminders for really important tasks–one reminder to start and one reminder to end, so that your time limit is well-defined. (For instance, I now have “Start SS lesson” and “Be done with SS lesson” in my phone)
This works for just about every kind of task; I have done the same thing with my nightly “tidy-the-house” routine, as well as my “composing-blogs” routine.
Treat it as a challenge or game–can you clean this room in an hour? Can you finish cleaning out your inbox in 30 minutes?
Change the time limits as you see need–something you thought may take 20 minutes may actually take 40, so be ready to adapt your reminders accordingly.
This will take a little getting used to, so if you miss your deadline by a little at first, don’t worry.

Got Any More Time-Limit Ideas?

If you have your own anti-procrastination lifehacks, feel free to leave them in the comments! 🙂

Saturday with the Spark

Scraping the Bottom of the Ideas Pot? Try This!

January 25, 2014 Robin 1 Comment

Sometimes the flow of creativity just STOPS, for whatever reason. It feels suspiciously like scraping the bottom of the pot for the last bits of dinner (thus the title of this post)–you hope and hope you’ve got enough in there to feed you, but you fear you’ve run out.

For instance, I’m running into a lot of problems coming up with new topics for this blog, especially for my Monday and Saturday posts. For almost every idea I have, it feels like I’ve already done it (or I can look back through my posts and prove I’ve already done it).

So what’s a creative blogger girl to do, when it’s time to come up with a new week of posts but there’s no more ideas? Simple–revisit and revamp! And that’s what I suggest to you, if you’re stuck in a similar creativity rut:

#1: Look Back through Old Ideas

Whatever creative project you’re stuck on, look back through your completed projects, especially the ones you’re most proud of. This alone may be inspiration enough to start a new project or to get you going again on your “stuck” project, but if you’re still stuck, pick out 2 or 3 completed projects you’re not quite as proud of, and move on to step 2.

(Example: I’ve looked back through my old blog posts and found a few that, well, aren’t my best work.)

#2: Think: “How could I do this better?”

Study those completed projects. Even though they’re complete, is there anything you would like to go back and do differently? Are there any choices you regret making during the creative process last time? Review your creative project with a critical eye, and really try to see what could be done differently. You don’t have to tear up the completed project–just make notes about what you see that could be done better.

(Example: While reading through my not-so-awesome blogs, I started thinking, “Hmm, I could make that paragraph shorter and more expressive…ooh, I could add in a bit more research to make this point stronger.”)

#3: Make An Old Project New Again

Using your completed projects as guidelines, start reworking and reshaping those ideas. Like I said, don’t get rid of the completed work–use it as mental scaffolding to build your new creative project. Try new things with old ideas; the old dogs might just have a few new tricks you didn’t see before. Bring in some research or some other people’s opinions as well…whatever helps!

(Example: After discovering I could write these blog posts better, I drafted new versions of them and read them aloud to myself, seeing if the words flowed better this time, or if the posts were stronger this time.)

Result: Better Quality Work, Happier You!

Once you start grappling with actual ideas instead of having anxiety about not being creative, your mental creativity factory can begin to work again–or at least, mine has! You may not finish your revising/revamping work right away, especially if you get energized to work on your new project again, and that’s perfectly okay. Let the creativity flow as it will, and I promise you that you’ll be happier with it!

Saturday with the Spark

Don’t Let Anyone Kill Your Art

January 4, 2014 Robin Leave a comment

This post arose out of a conversation I had with my little cousin (who is now 19 and in her second semester of college, so I guess she’s not so “little” anymore, lol). Around Christmas I asked her how her art classes had gone, knowing that she had planned to major in Art and had likely faced a rocky transition into college art classes. Boy, I didn’t know the half of it.

“Oh, I changed my major,” she replied when I asked her. “I took an art class and the teacher basically killed my desire to do any more art.” She went on to describe how the art teacher had insisted on each student doing dozens of drawings each week, ostensibly to “practice their skills,” but then apparently had used the opportunity to harshly critique rather than build their skills up.

She seemed pretty buoyant about the whole thing, and about her future in her new major, but I was sad about it. While we spoke, I encouraged her to keep at her art, even if it was only a hobby, and not to let it go just because of one teacher, whose opinions were not fact (and whose art teaching methods seemed a bit suspect).

Now, my advice, while perfectly fine, is easier said than followed. How often has my enjoyment of my own art been tainted because I didn’t get the reaction I expected from my audience? How often have I doubted myself and my abilities because of an offhand judgmental comment from someone else? When I make art, I am literally displaying part of my soul…and when someone else finds it unworthy or is indifferent to it, I am wounded as a result, even if I gamely try to continue on.

This is a dangerous path for us artists to travel; once we start prioritizing others’ opinions of our works (especially the ones that seem meant to destroy our desire rather than perfect our skill), then we can easily lose the passion for our art that we began with. And yet, many of us fall victim to this specifically because our art is so close to our selves. We have to actively combat this problem, otherwise the creative fountain within us will be stilled–not by lack of ability, but by the anxiety that comes from wondering whether anyone else will like what we make.

I leave you with this point: art, in whatever form it takes, is a subjective thing–the beauty of a piece can’t be quantified completely. Thus, no one else’s opinion is more unbiased than your own opinion when it comes to your artworks. If you like your work, and other people like it, that’s great. If you like your work, and you’re the only person in the world who likes it, so what? Art is meant to soothe, to inspire, and to be enjoyed rather than to be cut apart and analyzed to death like a dissected frog in a lab. If it only soothes, inspires, and brings enjoyment to its creator, then it has done what it was designed to do already; other people’s positive opinions are just icing on the cake (and the critical people don’t deserve a slice of the cake).

…

(now I just have to follow these words of wisdom when it comes to this blog! LOL)

Tuesday on the Soapbox

3 Tips for Beating the Procrastination Bug

December 24, 2013 Robin Leave a comment

I admit it, I’m a full-blown procrastinator, even about things I actually want to accomplish (see: my novel). Sometimes, my brain just REFUSES to do anything, choosing instead to wallow in aimless thoughts, non-essential tasks…or more often, crippling worry about not getting things done. Often I rely on the sheer adrenaline rush of “THIS HAS TO BE DONE NOW” to complete the essential tasks.

I call this “getting bitten by the Procrastination Bug,” and my bug has a particularly venomous bite. The following meme I made over at Quickmeme describes it perfectly:

But there IS a way to conquer this bug! Actually, there are 3 ways I deal with the compulsion to procrastinate:

#1: Got Small Tasks? Good. Break Them Up Even Smaller

Nothing hurts my productivity worse than looking at my to-do list and feeling absolutely daunted by the enormity of my tasks. (And by “daunted” I mean “wanting to either cry or vomit.”) One trick that works: breaking up these huge tasks into itty-bitty sections.

Now, you’ve probably heard a variation of this tip before, but I mean taking it to the next level–break the huge task down into the tiniest pieces you can imagine. (Example: my procrastination on my novel got so bad that I finally set myself up a “100-word-a-day” goal. That’s right, ONE HUNDRED words a day. Not 500, not even 300. And it worked–it got me writing again!)

The logic behind this tip: if you break your task down into things you can do in 5-10 minutes, you’ll be exponentially more likely to do them because they “feel” easier to complete. Plus, if you’re having a “brain-doesn’t-want-to-focus” day, you can complete a couple of these teeny-tiny tasks and still feel productive, which may help reduce your anxiety about your to-do list.

#2: Take Frequent Breaks (With Rewards)

If an essential task on your list is really stalling your brain out, here’s another trick I try: taking a “reward break” for every set number of minutes of work/every part of the task completed. For instance, if I write on my novel for 15 minutes, I could allow myself 15 minutes of TV, aimless Internet surfing, or reading. Or, if I complete one blog post, I could allow myself 30 minutes of gaming time or Internet.

Using the standard “work before play” mindset in this way accomplishes two things at once. First, it trains my brain to like doing the essential task; second, it allows my brain to relax and regroup for a little while before settling back down to work. Having to work on one thing for long, unbroken hours drives me nuts, and makes me less likely to complete the task quickly the next time I have to do it. If it’s associated with rewards and breaks, it makes the work easier to bear.

However, the complete “brain rest” and rewards scenario sometimes just isn’t feasible with the amount of work you have to do in a short time. For those moments, I suggest the last tip…

#3: Have a Rotating List of Tasks

Sometimes, I procrastinate because my brain just doesn’t want to settle–I hop from TV to book to Internet to game to TV to book and so on, making it hard to focus on even things that I like, much less things I have to do. I would call it “boredom,” but it’s way beyond bored; I end up too bored to sleep, too bored to eat, etc. Yet the tasks are still piling up on my to-do list, even as I struggle to marshal my brain into adulthood for a few moments.

This is one reason I have a to-do list that includes all sorts of small tasks due within a typical week–I’ve got a few physical-labor tasks (like cleaning and straightening the house) mixed in with some mental-labor tasks (writing my novel and organizing my digital files), and they are all of various difficulty levels and require different amounts of time and effort to complete. Thus, I can hop from one task to another if the first one is getting too boring or time-consuming, and I can return to it at any point to complete it. Switching tasks gives me a form of brain rest, making my brain work in a different (read: non-bored) fashion.

You’d be surprised how well this works to combat procrastination; you’re actively working on new stuff every 5 minutes or so, give or take, and so you feel instantly more productive and less aimlessly energetic. Plus, you’re likely touching on all the tasks you need to do, so you’ll potentially be getting more work done in the long run even though you’re switching around a lot.

Summary

Procrastination can be a pain, especially when you’re trying to be an adult and get things done; anxiety and lack of focus can keep you from doing what needs to be done. These 3 tips got me through college and grad school (not to mention earlier grade levels!)–I think they’ll help you, too!

Monday in the HTMLab

3 Tips for Naming Site Folders

November 25, 2013 Robin Leave a comment

What I’m discussing today is nearly as important as designing and developing your site, yet it is often ignored: naming your site folders. The way we name our folders affects the efficiency of our site’s internal structure, the URLs we have to type in our code, and even the URLs that our visitors see (if you’re not using nifty PHP coding tricks to make your URLs pretty).

So, how do we name our site folders appropriately for all these scenarios? Read ahead!

Keep Site Folder Names Short

The shorter your folder names, the less you have to type in for every URL you code in on your site…and trust me, you will be glad you made this decision, no matter how big or small your site is. Less typing, especially on EVERY URL, is GOOD!

Don’t Capitalize Folder Names

Not only do partially capitalized folder names look amateurish to the user, but they also can pose coding problems, especially with lowercase Ls and uppercase Is in certain fonts. Misspelled URLs are broken URLs!

Don’t Nest a Ton of Folders Together

Nesting a lot of folders together looks clunky on the user’s end of things, plus it opens up a lot more opportunities to mistype a URL (and thus break it). Keeping your folder nests small (only two folders deep if at all possible) will save you a lot of time and trouble debugging later, and it will also look neater in the address bar. (Additional benefit: you don’t have to go digging around in hundreds of folders looking for ONE file!)

(Important caveat: Some web development software forces you to have tons of folders nested together for security purposes, like user passwords and information; if this is the case, leave those folder nests alone. But if you have total control over the site organization, make it as simple as possible for your own sanity.)

Summary

Making your folder names short and lowercase, plus simplifying them as much as possible, will save you time and effort coding. (Plus, anything that makes your site look more professional is definitely a good thing!)