Ten-Minute Tasks I Fit into the Gaps in My Writing Day

Because sometimes ten minutes is all I get

Photo by Brigitte Tohm on Unsplash

I’m a full-time writer, and a full-time carer. This means I’m up at death o’clock every morning to get the deep work done. But it also means I get lots of ten-minute pockets of time throughout the day to fit writing-related tasks into.

I’ve found I can write at least 200 (and sometimes 400) words in ten minutes, which can be a mini article like this one, or this. Here are some other things I can do in ten minutes.

• Outline an article, blog post or a chapter of a book

• Jot down the basic idea for a short story, article or even a novel

• Draw a mind map around a topic I want to write about

• Read a couple of blog posts about writing or publishing

• Read a few pages of a book about writing or publishing

• Do some online research and throw everything I find into Notion

• Find (and bookmark) some writers’ guidelines for a market I’d like to pitch.

• Read an article in a magazine I’d like to pitch.

• Read one or two writing related newsletters

• Do a quick edit of the first draft of a short article or blog post

• Do a final proofread of a very short article or blog post

• Send an email to someone I want to collaborate with

• Share a link to an article, a product or my digital storefront

You can’t achieve a huge amount in ten minutes but you can achieve something.

Which means you can be somewhat productive while waiting for the kids to finish sports practice, or the supermarket cashier to process the 57 coupons the shopper in front of you clipped. Or the person you care for to wake up from their nap.

What do you do when you know you only have ten minutes to do it in?

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Some thoughts from others I’ve been enjoying this week

• 6 tiny adjustments that transformed my mediocre writing by

  Alex Mathers

• How to Craft Your First Draft With Substack by

  J.R. Heimbigner

• If I Had To Start Over As A Writer, Here’s What I'd Do by

  Matt Lillywhite

What else I’ve been up to this week

Reading: The Lemon Tree Mindset by

Veronica Llorca-Smith

(free on Kindle Unlimited)

Watching: This video from

Kristina God

about getting organised on Substack

Learning: About a new-to-me curation & affiliate platform Benable (got my first list up - still don’t know what I’m doing over there)

This week’s Medium posts

(It’s been a slow week on Medium, so here are a couple from the archives. Friend links, as always, so you can read for free.)

• It Took Nine Months For One Article to Earn $2,000: Passive income on Medium — How passive is it?

• Dumb Questions I Get Asked about Writing Online, with Answers

That’s all for this week. If you’re reading this online and you’re not subscribed yet, feel free to subscribe to get future posts straight to your inbox.

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