This month I'm really excited to share some of the tools that I use. Mainly because I'm always happy to talk about process and to learn and hear what other people are doing so it's only fair that I share too. I had a hard time figuring out if I should put my writing and productivity tools in one post or two and alternately I decided to post them separately because I feel like they are two different things.
The tools that I use to be more productive help in my day job and my personal life too. But the writing tools are more specialized so I thought it would make more sense to have them as two separate posts. So here are my top writing tools right now.
I love this software. By far it is, aside from dictation, the one thing that has turbocharged my writing. Cold Turkey basically locks your computer into nothing but a single screen where you can type. You can set the amount of time, the number of words, or go with no restrictions. The only way I've found to get out of the fullscreen is to force my computer to shutdown and if you do that you lose everything that you've written in the software. When you've reached your time goal or word goal or decide you're done it will give you the option to save and quit. Everything is saved as a text file that I usually then copy and paste into Word and clean up a little bit. It seriously is amazing and keeps me focused on what I'm working on instead of being constantly distracted by checking Facebook or Instagram or twitter or reading another productivity article. It seriously has changed my life and you can get it for free.
This spreadsheet was introduced to me by Venessa when we talked on my podcast can bring monsters. It's amazing. You can input up to 10 projects and set your monthly goals for those projects with a little bit of work and making sure that you tracked them on a day-to-day basis you can actually keep track of everything you're doing for the year and then see how close you are to your goals for the year. For someone pretty obsessed with goalsetting this is absolutely amazing. It lets me see in very clear terms where I am with my writing and what I need to be working on next. And for $10 dollars it's honestly a complete steal.
3. 750 Words
I talked about this website before and I still love it. Now that I'm mainly writing in cold turkey it's not as helpful for keeping track of words per minute but it's a great way to keep a record. I'm not always great about logging my things in the amazing Excel spreadsheet and this helps me add it in even if I forgotten to put something in excel. It also let's me see what my track is for the month and how many days I wrote and how many days I missed. While I'm not using all of its features anymore I still really think it's a great website and it also way to track your writing over the years I can go back to when I very first started my account in 2015 and see how the many words I've written. It's a lot and really inspiring to see laid out.
3. Dictation
I am constantly shocked by how much dictation has change my writing. I never thought I would be any good at it, I thought it would be awkward or clunky or weird. But I love it. I don't know if I will ever go back to writing first draft by hand or keyboard rather. While it takes a bit of time to get used to it and figure out the mechanics of how to get the punctuation right it honestly makes my writing so much faster and smoother. And about 30 minutes I can usually dictate a out almost 3000 words. And while there are some ridiculous typos and occasional problems, overall it's so much faster than typing but I can't imagine going back. You don't have to buy the expensive Dragon Dictation software to be able to dictate. Most computers nowadays have a dictation option built into their accessibility menu. So check out what your computer has an give it a go you may be it surprised at how much you love it
So those are the writing tools that I love you. Seriously every single one of those is huge in my writing process and has helped in so many ways. It's only in this past year that I've really Felt like I got the handle on my writing process and how I operate and these tools have really been a huge factor In that. I really suggest that you take a little bit of time and play around with Helliar writing, especially if something feels clunky or weird or wrong. Writing processes don't have to stay the same. So explore a little bit you maybe surprised what happens.