A Slam-dunk (if Counterintuitive) Strategy to Simultaneously Accelerate, Limber Up, and Steady the Writing Process

This blog posts on Mondays. Second Mondays of the month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!

> For the archive of workshop posts click here.

Those of you who follow me here know that I am fascinated by attentional management and the creative process. Of late I have posted here on my advances in email management; finding time for writing (gimungous swaths of it!); and most recently, my distraction-free smartphone (which post includes an app evaluation flowchart to tailor-make your own, should you feel so inclined).

That last post about the smartphone appeared on the eve of the publication of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. Because I am a fan of Newport’s books, especially Deep Work, which I recommend as vital reading for writers, of any age and any level of experience, I expected Digital Minimalism to be good. As I noted in that post, if nothing else, in broadening our ability to think about the technology we use, Newport’s term “digital minimalism” is an important contribution in itself.

Reader, Digital Minimalism is beyond superb. It is a healing book, on many and profound levels, and I believe that it is not only vital reading for writers, but for anyone who finds themselves staring at a screen more often and for longer than they know is good for them– and, alas, these days, that would be just about everybody. (Including parents.)

In Digital Minimalism Newport says much of what I have said here at Madam Mayo (I found myself nodding, yes, yes, at almost every page), but he goes thirty miles higher and a loop-de-loop beyond.

And perhaps most importantly, for the general reader looking for something in the burgeoning self-help genre addressing the behavioral addictions of our Digital Age, as a tenured professor of Computer Science at an elite university, Cal Newport has authority rarer than an orchid in the Sahara.

My intention in this week’s post is not to provide a full review of Digital Minimalism, but rather to focus on one chapter, “Reclaim Lesiure,” and, more generally, the importance for writers of quality leisure.

QUALITY LEISURE

Writes Newport:

“The more I study this topic, the more it becomes clear to me that low-quality digital distractions play a more important role in people’s lives than they imagine. In recent years, as the boundary between work and life blends, jobs become more demanding, and community traditions degrade, more and more people are failing to cultivate the high-quality leisure lives …crucial for human happiness. This leaves a void that would be near unbearable if confronted, but that can be ignored wih the help of digital noise. It’s now easy to fill the gaps between work and caring for your family and sleep by pulling out a smartphone or tablet, and numbing yourself with mindless swiping and tapping. Erecting barriers against the existential is not new–before YouTube we had (and still have) mindless television and heavy drinking to help avoid deeper questions–but the advanced technologies of the twenty-first century attention economy are particularly effective at this task.” (p.168)

I think that bears repeating.

“Erecting barriers against the existential is not new–before YouTube we had (and still have) mindless television and heavy drinking to help avoid deeper questions–but the advanced technologies of the twenty-first century attention economy are particularly effective at this task.” — Cal Newport

Newports recounts the experience of a writer who tried to go cold turkey from digital distractions. As that writer summed it up, it was “Torture.” Writes Newport:

“[He] felt uncomfortable, in other words, not because he was craving a particular digital habit, but because he didn’t know what to do with himself once his general access to the world of connected screens was removed.” (p.168)

Then:

“If you want to succeed with digital minimalism, you cannot ignore this reality… The most successful digital minimalists, therefore, tend to start their conversion by renovating what they do with their free time–cultivating high-quality leisure before culling the worst of their digital habits… When the void is filled, you no longer need distractions to help you avoid it.” (pp.168-169)

NOT THE DREAMTIME OF A CHARTREUSE MOON
OR,
THE PERILS OF PROCRASTINATION

As anyone who has taken on writing a book or three knows, only in the dreamtime of a chartreuse moon do they “write themselves.” It happens. But the experience is more often one of initial enthusiasm soon weighted down by one frustration and then twenty-nine others, delays for good reasons, for stupid reasons, more frustrations, distractions galore… and so, slowly, or quickly, a slide into the warmly inviting moist sand of procrastination.

Some books escape this trap. Most do not because the writer soon feels bad about having procrastinated–oh, very bad– and on top of this, in march the clanking, hammering, pounding round-n-round of woulda-coulda-shouldas… which makes the mere thought of the book so disagreeable that… eventually… it sinks deeper into the quicksand… and deeper…. And there it dies.

So how did I manage to write so many books, including the epic historical novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire? A novel, moreover, that deals with Mexico’s most complex transnational episode and recounts it by means of a Jamesian roving omniscient point of view? Whatever you may think of my novel, were you to read it, I am sure you could agree that it was not a modest undertaking. I won’t tote up all my challenges and frustrations over the eight years I needed to research and write it. For purposes of this blog post, the answer to the question is that, apart from a perhaps unusual streak of tenaciousness in my personality, when the going got really funky with The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I happened upon the lifesaver–I grabbed it!– of psychologist Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit.

And now here I am in the midst of another multi-year book project– multi-year by its nature–but also one that, alas, has been interrupted by two other books, a death in the family, and two household moves… I was starting to sense a bit of dampness there in the encroaching sand, as it were. But then, in one of the boxes I opened after my latest move, I found again my dog-eared copy of The Now Habit. I reread it, and I can report that Fiore’s advice is as consolingly golden as ever.

And then, after reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, in the light and freshness of that, I sat down and went through The Now Habit yet again.

It was eerie to be reading Fiore’s The Now Habit in 2019, for it appeared in 1989, before anyone, outside a coterie of high-tech scientists and miltary people, had more than a notion, if that, of the Internet.

When I first read The Now Habit in the early 2000s, email had become a thing, but only a few writers had one of those newfangled things called “websites.” I did not yet know of a single one with a blog (I don’t think I’d yet heard of blogs). Cell phones were just phones. To get to school, we walked a mile in the snow without shoes (just kidding). For mindless procrastination there were trashy fiction, newspapers, magazines, and TV on tap, ever and always. In short, writers have always had to battle procrastination, albeit relatively low-octane stuff compared to the engineered-to-be-addictive apps of today.

But back to the question of quality leisure.

Of immense value for me in Fiore’s The Now Habit was the chapter “Guilt-Free Play, Quality Work.” Speaking to us from a time essentially free from “digital distractions,” Fiore says much the same thing as does Newport: for health, happiness, and productivity, we need quality leisure– or, as Fiore calls it, “guilt-free play.”

Writes Fiore:

“Attempting to skimp on holidays, rest, and exercise leads to suppression of the spirit and motivation as life begins to look like all spinach and no dessert… we need guilt-free play to provide us with periods of physical and mental renewal.”

It’s counterintuitive: when we seriously, urgently want and need to get work done, why first schedule play?!

Writes Fiore:

“Enjoying guilt-free play is part of a cycle that will lead you to higher levels of quality, creative work. The cycle follows a pattern that usually begins with guilt-free play, or at least the scheduling of it. That gives you a sense of freedom about your life that enables you to more easily settle into a short period of quality work. Having completed some quality work on your project, your feeling of self-control increases, as does your confidence in your ability to concentrate and to creatively resolve problems. In turn your capacity to enjoy quality, guilt-free play grows.” (p.82)

Play and work enhance one another in this cycle:

“…You are now well-rested, inspired, and ready for greater quality work. Guilt-free, creative play excites you with motivation to return to work.” (p.82)

I would urge anyone who wants to overcome procrastination to carefully read Fiore’s The Now Habit; he has much to say about the ways over-work can lead to procrastination, and the precise way to schedule guilt-free play with what he calls an “unschedule,” and how to overcome blocks to action. (Much of this good old-fashioned, yet oft overlooked, common sense, for example, what he calls “Grandma’s Principle,” that your scheduled guilt-free play should come after a good, solid half hour of quality work– “your ice cream always comes after you eat your spinach”.) My purpose here is not to review Fiore’s book however, but to focus on the counterintuitive importance for writers of quality leisure.

“GUILT FREE PLAY” AND “QUALITY LEISURE”

First, it should be triple-underlined that the “quality” of leisure is not necessarily related to its cost. Golf resorts, wide-screen TV manufacturers, purveyors of recreational vehicles, time-shares, sports equipment, Princess Cruises, et al would like you to imagine that what they’re selling is “quality leisure,” and the more expensive the upgrades the better!

But “quality leisure” could be an activity as pennywise as sitting in a chair in your livingroom and knitting a scarf from a ball of yarn that had been stashed in your closet for the past 20 years. Or, say, baking peanutbutter cookies; playing with your dog; walking out to the park and tossing around a frisbee with a friend. Biking to your public library to read War & Peace. Or playing baseball, curling, taking a yoga class, doing yoga on your own in your backyard, or on the beach at dawn! Scottish country dancing, baking bread, watching Casablanca at your local film school’s movie festival. Learning to play the guitar or the kazoo. Baking lasagne. Casting bronze sculpture! Or squishing together a super weird alien head the size of your fist out of papier mache!

In sum, “quality leisure” can be pretty much any activity that you truly enjoy doing and that you find energizing. (Hint: TV watching and pecking at the smartphone don’t count. Neither does bar-hopping or sitting around toking weed.) Newport has more to say about identifying and pursuing quality leisure. Before I return to that, a brief note about the “artist date.”

THE ARTIST’S WAY

By this point I imagine that many of you writerly readers may be thinking, didn’t Julia Cameron say something like this in The Artist’s Way?

Indeed she did. Cameron’s concept, a potent one, is what she calls “the artist date.” The idea is that this is scheduled quality leisure (to use Newport’s term) / guilt-free play (to use Fiore’s) but you go alone— absolutely not with someone else–and do something that nurtures your artist self. For me it might be something like a visit to a museum, reading a Willa Cather novel for an hour in a favorite coffee shop, or attending an organ concert. (In one of my most challenging moments in writing The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, one “artist date” I made for myself was to attend a planetarium show. Of all things.) Some people might like to get out the crayons or the Play-Dough. Of course, there’s no formula; what nurtures one artist, or writer, might not another.

So, advises Cameron, if you want to get some good writing done, go forth, by yourself, at a scheduled time, and do some fun and possibly wacky-nerdy thing!

Cameron’s The Artist’s Way was originally published in 1991, before the tsunami of digital technologies swept over our world, and yet like Fiore’s The Now Habit, it offers wise and timeless advice for writers. Cameron has a New Age spiritual slant, however, and that isn’t every Atheist’s slug of coffee. With that caveat, I warmly recommend The Artist’s Way.

CAL NEWPORT’S LEISURE LESSONS

Back to our computer professor and attentional focus expert Cal Newport and his latest, Digital Minimalism. In the chapter “Reclaim Lesiure,” Newport offers specific insights into which types of leisure are most effective for filling the void otherwise taken by low-quality digital distractions, and for enhancing well-being and productivity. These are those endeavors that:

(1) “prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption”;

(2) “use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world”; and

(3) tend to be those “that require real world, structured social interactions.”

Newport is not talking about eliminating digital technology, and in fact he points out ways in which websites, email, social media and more digital technologies can assist us in engaging in more and higher quality leisure. There is, Newport concedes, “a complex relationship between high-quality leisure and digital technology.” In my own case, I recently found out about and registered for a university extension course (which I attended in person) on a website. Many similar examples of how texting, social media, and YouTube, can assist and enhance real world meetings and activities no doubt pop into your mind. Newport stresses: “The state I’m helping you escape is one in which passive interaction with your screens is your primary leisure.”

“The state I’m helping you escape is one in which passive interaction with your screens is your primary leisure.”
— Cal Newport

Newport concludes his chapter “Reclaim Leisure” with four practices, each amply explained, argued, and with illuminating examples:

  1. Fix or build something every week;
  2. Schedule your low-quality leisure;
  3. Join something;
  4. Follow leisure plans, both seasonal and weekly, stating both the objectives and the habits you aim to establish.

AND TO CONCLUDE WITH FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT

Here is an example of one writer’s quality leisure activity: Swiss writer, playwright and artist Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) painted the bathroom adjacent to his office. This is a partial view, of side wall, back wall, and ceiling. I decline to publish here the principal appurtenance.

Thanks to poet Joseph Hutchison, who recommended Dürrenmatt’s work to me, as I am temporarly living in the area, I made it, shall we say, one of my “quality leisure” activities to visit the house / museum, now the Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel. (I would also call this visit “guilt-free play,” to use Neil Fiore’s term, but not an “artist’s date,” as Julia Cameron defines it, because I did not go alone.)

In the museum:

In English: “I can play with this world: that is my freedom as an artist.”– Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Here is the writer at his desk, as shown on the cover of this book (which I would translate as Dürrenmatt: His Life in Pictures):

The view of Lake Neuchâtel from his terrace:

More anon.

Remembering Ann L. McLaughlin

Meteor, Influences, Ambiance

Marfa Mondays Podcast #8: A Spell at Chinati Hotsprings

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.


30 Deadly-Effective Ways to Free Up Bits, Drips & Gimungously Vast Swaths of Time for Writing: A Menu of Possibilities to Consider

Where do you find the time? (Was it hiding in the crawlspace?) It’s not so much finding time as it is prying your physical presence and attention away, either permanently or for a spell, from someone, something, someplace less valuable to you—if you really do want to write, that is, not just pretend and fantasize and gripe. Herewith, 30 ideas— some of which might make you shake your head, but some just might work for you. For me, most of these have always been no-brainers, but I confess, a number of them took me awhile to recognize and/or fully appreciate.

Possibility 1. Give up TV and social media. 
Just give them up, deep-freeze turkey & freakin’ forever and oceans of time, vast and sparkling, shall spread before ye.
> Adiós, Facebook! The Six Reasons Why I Deactivated My Account

Possibility 2. Cut the digital leash, the crackberry, whatever you want to call that soul-sucking hypnotic thumb-twiddler. That’s right, I am suggesting that you turn off all notifications and do not “text.”The price of this is that you must therefore continually combat tidal waves of exasperation from loved ones and others that you are not instantly and always available to them. Find the humor in this. Because really, how blazingly ridiculous.
> This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (Plus an App Evaluation Flowchart to Tailor-Make Your Own)

Possibility 3. No drugs. 
Duh. And I include prescription drugs here, too. Exercise, eat lots of vegetables, drink raw juice, meditate… do whatever you possibly can to avoid adult onset diabetes and joint issues and so having to take drugs, for aside from suffering from lousy side effects, you’ll waste countless hours waiting for doctors to write prescriptions, then getting them filled at the pharmacy, dealing with insurance, and complications, and so on & so forth. Ah! But I am not a medical professional, so I have no idea what you should do.

Possibility 4. Reduce, better yet eliminate, or at least make use of your commute. 
If you can possibly live closer to where you need to be during the day, even if you have to sell half your furniture to fit into a smaller place, do that. Otherwise, try to get into the habit of writing while commuting. I hear some people have been able to do that. I admire them genuinely.

Possibility 5. No drama. 
Mantra: not my circus, not my monkeys. If you relish fighting / debating / gossiping because you find it entertaining, that’s your writing mojo leaking like water onto the asphalt. Incessant worrying about other people’s problems that are not yours to solve is also silly. You can be aware, you can be concerned, you can be compassionate, and when they are your problems, then they are your problems.

Possibility 6. No ruminating over the past. 
Regrets, nostalgia, whatever, writing gets done in the now.

Possibility 7. Less fantasizing about the future. 
Again, writing gets done in the now.

Possibility 8. Quit nursing grudges against editors / agents / other writers / reviewers / readers. 
Oh, the injustices of the literary world! These can vacuum up untold hours with yammering in workshops, at conferences, and over sad and grumbly cups of coffee. But listen here: the so-called gatekeepers and the clueless readers and half-literate kids glued to their handheld devices, they’re just doing the best they can, too. So are the peasants wading through their rice paddies in Burma. You are luckier than a lottery-winner to even be able to write at all. So strive to always improve and write for those who appreciate what you do, knowing that, of course, even if you one day win the Nobel Prize, only the teensiest portion of the population of Planet Earth will have heard of you, never mind actually read anything you wrote. Bottom line: If you can’t stay focused on doing your own best work, you’re not writing, you’re back to ruminating.

Possibility 9. Stop picking up the telephone. 
As Marie Antoinette might have put it, Let them send email. If you can, pay for an unlisted number and caller ID and change your telephone number at least every other year. If that little click to voice mail distracts you, why, just unplug it! And, pourquoi pas? Plunk it in the oven!

Possibility 10. Eliminate recreational shopping, aka “retail therapy.” 
Whew, this one adds up over a season, a year, two years. So never, ever shop in stores or on-line or in fact anywhere anytime without your list. If an item is not on your list, do not buy it. Shopping malls are time- and money-gobbling maws and believe it, the marketers, watching your every move on their cameras, are more sophisticated than you think you are. Not only does recreational shopping squander prime writing time, but it tends to fill up your house with clutter– a time-suck in itself. Go to a park, a museum, a library, the seashore, a basketball court, have fun and refresh yourself as necessary, but stay way away from the maw. I mean, mall.

Possibility 11. Do not accumulate a large and varied wardrobe based on navy, brown and/or beige. 
And better yet, give all that away to Goodwill. If you wear clothing that is black and/or coordinates with black, you’ll be able to make fewer shopping trips, pack faster, and do far less laundry and dry cleaning. And since black makes colors “pop,” your blue sweater, say, will appear brighter. Yet another advantage: black makes you look slimmer. (Ha, maybe I was a Jesuit in my last life.)

Possibility 12. Cancel the manicure. 
Horrendous time sink there. Plus, the polish is toxic and it flakes. (Nobody notices or cares about your fingernails anyway except manicurists, I guess, and those who get manicures themselves. Last I checked, they aren’t getting much writing done.)

Possibility 13. Quit following the stock market on a daily basis. 
This is a tick-like habit that achieves nothing but a heightened sense of anxiety. On par with spectator sports.

Possibility 14. Quit playing computer games. 
On par with drugs. Or any other addiction. Including following the stock market on a daily basis.

Possibility 15. Do not color your hair. 
Depending on how often you feel you must cover up the roots… for most people who color their hair this is about once a month. If you add highlights or lowlights (which, my dears, if you do color, you probably should lest you sport that “helmet look”), you’re talking about two hours-plus in the salon chair. You might be able to read something fluffy but you probably cannot write while someone is poking and pulling at and washing and blowdrying your hair. Go au naturel for as many as 30 hours a year, free and clear.

Possibility 16. Ignore spectator sports. 
Do not attend games, do not watch or listen to or otherwise follow games, do not discuss games, and whole weekends for writing will emerge from the sea of froth. 

Possibility 17. Do not indulge in expensive, time- and space-consuming activities such as, oh, say, collecting and expounding upon various types of fermented grape juice. 
Come on, folks, once it goes into a carafe, 99% of your guests won’t know the difference between one chablis and the next chardonnay. Pick a reasonable brand and stick with it, white and red. For me, it’s Monte Xanic— or else it goes into the pot for coq au vin.

Possibility 18. No more hauling laundry. 
You’ve got to get your clothes clean so, failing a maid to do it for you, get a washer / dryer for your house or apartment. If you do not have space, if it’s not allowed, or you cannot afford this, then consider a portable washer/dryer because hauling bags to the laundro-mat or down to the basement only to find the machines full, that is one woolly mammoth of a time suck. (If you’re paying for each load at a landro-mat, you might find it cheaper in the long run to use your own portable washer. I wouldn’t know, since I’m fortunate enough to have a washer/dryer, but a little bird told me…)

Possibility 19. Never hunt for your keys / wallet / purse / cell phone. 
This is an easy fix. The moment you step in the door, you always, always put them in the same place, a designated hook or a bowl or a basket. This might seem minor, but those two to ten minutes of running around with your hair on fire add up.

Possibility 20. Never hunt for Internet passwords (or wait for the “resend password” email). 
Keep track of passwords, some way, somehow. I use Grandma’s recipe box, which was deemed seriously uncool on the Cool Tools blog, but it works beautifully for me and, so they tell me after reading that infamous blog post, many of my friends. (So there.)

Possibility 21. No boat. 
Do not ever even shop for a boat. Do not even think about shopping for a boat. Unless you plan to sell your house and live in the boat. Ditto RV, camping equipment, or motorcycle. And anyway, you cannot live in your motorcycle. If you like to go out overnight into nature, check out Mike Clelland’s Ultralight Backpacking Tips. (Watch out, though, he features a link to his UFO page.)

Possibility 22. No second home. 
On par with the boat. No, worse.

Possibility 23. Stop buying loads of soft drinks and bottled water. 
Take into account the time it takes to shop for them, carry them to the car, lug them out of the car, store them somewhere in the pantry or the fridge, then recycle the bottles and cans… Drip, drip, drip goes your time (and money). A good water filter will pay for itself and quickly. (See also #3, above. Whoa, just read the list of contents on those soft drinks. Ick.)

Possibility 24. Prepare your meals with mis-en-place. 
Even when making a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, it sure does help to do mis-en-place. If you hate cooking, you probably never heard of the mis. Check it out. (If you want to keep it easy by microwaving everything or relying on take-out, see #3 above.)

Possibility 25. Take email seriously. 
In other words, stop letting it pile up and become a giant, throbbing source of lost opportunities, embarrassment and guilt. Email is vital for a writer— as vital as letter writing in days of yore, so do it well. This also means get quick-on-the-draw to delete spam.
> Email Ninjerie in the Theater of Space-Time

Possibility 26. Use a metaphorical “bucket” for all your to do lists and ideas. In other words, quit trying to keep everything from next week’s dentist appointment to the ideas for your novel in your head. I use David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system and thereby free up yottabytes of short term memory for more creative work. (One day I may set up a little altar in a corner of my office to St. Allen.) For me, a Filofax is an indispensable tool for implementing GTD.
> Why I Am a Mega-Fan of the Filofax.
> Listen to this podcast of November 6, 2013 about the GDT method for creative people. (I couldn’t find the direct link; you may need to scroll down for it once you land on that page.)

Possibility 27. Keep your closet decluttered and organized. 
Clutter not only makes it difficult to find things when you need them, it pulls and yanks and pinches your attention to decisions you haven’t made (like, whether to get rid of that old mustard-colored shirt, but which might maybe go with something, or sew back on the two missing buttons?) So you’re rushed and addled, right at the start of the day. It all adds up over a week, a month…

Possibility 28. Fie to piles. 
Piles are sinkholes of chaos and, to pile on another mongrel of a metaphor, they tend to sprout and ooze all over the place like fungi. (Yeah, did that need an editor.) Any time you need to do anything important, pay taxes, file a claim, send out a manuscript, if you have to paw and dig through piles to find what you need you will add possibly hours, possibly days, possibly weeks or even months to the process— not to mention a walloping dollop of time-sucking anxiety. So get a filing cabinet, even if it has to be a cardboard box, and make proper, labeled files, and dagnabbit, file things.

Possibility 29. Let go of things you won’t use but someone else might. 
This might sound strange as a source of time for writing, but think about it: any clutter, anywhere, becomes a drag on your time and attention. So all those old winter coats, faded towels, mismatched dishes, clothes than haven’t fit for 10 years, overflows of flower vases, toys… For heavenssakes, sell that stuff, gift it, and/or make regular runs to Goodwill or the like. (But remember, trying to sell it will take up your time.) As my favorite estate lady Julie Hall puts it, “the hearse doesn’t have a trailer hitch.”

Update— on Cool Tools 12/12/14:

“My top recommendation for the holidays is the Kindle of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing ($10). A one-time Shinto shrine maiden, Kondo bases her “KonMari” method on the assumption that one’s house and all the objects in it have consciousness but, boy howdy, even if you’re a die-hard materialist, follow her method and you’ll zoom to a wiggy new oxygen-rich level of tidy.” — C.M. Mayo

And last but far from least:

Possibility 30. Remember your pen and notebook. 
Always, except in, say, a swimming pool, keep these on your person; you never know when the muse may whisper. What I’m saying is, some of the most valuable writing time arrives in snatches— while you’re standing in the dog park, about to get out of the car, riding an elevator, etc. In other words, you might not have been planning to write, but write you do because write you can.

Conjecture: The Powerful, Upfront, Fair and Square Technique 
to Blend Fiction into Your Nonfiction

On Seeing as an Artist or, Five Techniques for a Journey to Einfühlung

The Book As Thoughtform, the Book As Object: 
A Book Rescued, a Book Attacked, and 
Katherine Dunn’s Beautiful Book White Dog Arrives

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.



Why I Am a Mega-Fan of the Filofax

It was wicked fun doing a post a for Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools blog on my seriously uncool Internet password management system, so I just had to write again for Cool Tools about my other favorite paper-based organizing tool, the Filofax Personal Organizer. (Note: I have no connection whatsoever with this company except as a delighted customer.)

Sturdy, Customizable, Portable Paper-Based Organizing System: The Filofax Personal Organizer

Why a paper-based organizing system in this digital age? First, as Get Things Done guru David Allen puts it, “low-tech is oftentimes better because it is in your face.” Second, last I checked (channeling Jaron Lanier here), I am not a gadget. I cherish the tools that help me stay organized, yet allow me to abide within generous swaths of Internet-free time—formally known as normal life (you know, when you didn’t see everyone doing the thumb-twiddling zombie shuffle). The Filofax personal organizer is one of them. 

I got my first Filofax over 25 years ago and it has been a love story ever since. Part of this English company’s century-old line of organizers originally developed for engineers, it is a beautifully made 6-ring loose leaf binder. With the Filofax diary, address book, paper inserts and other items that get tucked in there, for most users, it fattens up to the size of a paperback edition of Anna Karenina. Or, say, a Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich. Right, it does not fit in a coat pocket.

Depending on the model, the Filofax personal organizer comes with an assortment of pockets on both the inside and outside flaps. Mine also includes a pen holder on the right and a highlighter holder on the left, and it closes securely, so no loose items (such as that drycleaner’s ticket) can fall out.

Filofax sells a cornucopia of inserts for the 6 ring binder, from a wide variety of configurations for the diary refill, to a personal ruler/ page marker, maps of most major cities, a pad for assorted sticky notes, checkbook holder, business card holder, super-thin calculator, extra paper in a rainbow of colors, index tabs, a portable hole punch, and an address book, among other items.

Countless are the ways to configure one’s Filofax personal organizer. I’ve evolved into using the Week on Two Pages diary for noting appointments, birthdays, and any time-sensitive to-dos; two rulers/ page markers; the assorted sticky notes pad (though now with my own, more economical, Post-Its); the address book at the back; plus a “page” of plastic sleeves for business cards. I stash items such as stamps and paperclips in the front inner pocket (especially handy when traveling). Tickets (drycleaners, concerts) go in another pocket.

In addition, I made up several tabbed sections to index my personal, financial, business, and other to do / might one day do lists, to which I slap on ideas scribbled on Post-Its as they occur to me. The tabbed sections follow my personal interpretation of David Allen’s Get Things Done  (GTD) system—his basic idea being, capture all your to dos in one “bucket” you regularly revisit, and thereby can clear your mind for more clarity and creativity in the present moment. (To track more complex medium and long-term projects, I use the Projecteze system of a Word.doc table which relies on the sorting feature—that’s another post.)

As for address book, it’s not my main nor my only address book, just the addresses I like to keep handy in this particular system—so, in part, it serves as a paper backup for the most vital addresses, and those I regularly consult when making appointments or sending birthday cards and such.

Usually the Filofax stays open on my desk– which works for me, but clearly that won’t be ideal for those who work in less private and/or mobile situations. I take it with me when I travel or attend meetings where I might need to review my schedule or consult the to do lists and/or address book. 

High-end stationary, luggage, and department stores often carry the Filofax line of organizers and inserts—as does amazon.com— but to ensure that I get exactly what I want when I want it, I order the refill for the following year from the Filofax USA’s on-line shop on September 1st. At year’s end—following the advice of my tax accountant who says it could be handy in case of an audit—I file the diary with the rest of that year’s tax documents.

There are four major disadvantages to this system. None of them torpedo it for me, but they might for you:

(1) It’s a paper-based system, and for those who want their hand-held and/or laptop to be their all, and the many bells-and-whistles of a cloud-based system, clearly, it’s a head-shaker.

(2) High cost. You get what you pay for, however, and I have been happy to pay for the refills and other accessories because their simple and elegant design inspires me to stay better organized. For those who bristle at such prices, however, it would certainly be possible to make a homemade version of many of the inserts.

(3) Security risk. One’s office or house could burn down or someone could steal the Filofax—but then again, they couldn’t hack into it at 3 in the morning from Uzbekistan, either. 

(4) Bulk and weight. I can easily toss my Filofax into a briefcase or shoulderbag, but without an on-call chiropractor, I wouldn’t want to haul it around on a walk. That said, when I go for a walk, I go for a walk. 

It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (Plus an App Evaluation Flowchart to Tailor-Make Your Own)

Consider the Typewriter (Am I Kidding? No, I Am Not Kidding)

The Strangely Beautiful Sierra Madera Astrobleme

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.