Episode 46: Turning Minutes into Manuscripts:

Recap & Takeaways

• 01:21 Meet Sheila Hawkins
• 03:03 The four Productivity Personas
• 06:59 Can you be more than one?
• 10:54 What are the challenges the different personas face as authors?
• 14:30 How does an author manage time?
• 16:49 Persona-based tips

Transcript for Episode 46: Turning Minutes into Manuscripts: Efficient Time Management Tips for Authors (With guest Sheila Hawkins)

CARMA SPENCE:

Did you know that your personality affects your productivity? Guess what? It’s true. And that is why I invited my guest, Sheila Hawkins, to talk about tonight, because she has an interesting viewpoint on productivity and productivity personas. Hi, my name is Carma Spence, and I am your host of The Author Switch Podcast.

And before we go into the meat of the matter, I’ll give you a quick intro to myself, just in case you’re new to my world. I have been an author for 16 years. And I have 30 plus years of experience in marketing and PR. I graduated from what US News & World Report called the number one graduate program in public relations.

I’m certified in author marketing, and I am a bestselling and award-winning author. My friend, Sheila Hawkins is the queen of productivity, but I think I will let her Introduce herself. Welcome to the podcast, Sheila.

SHEILA HAWKINS:

Thank you, Carma. Thank you. Well, I will say about myself that I have for over 22 years now, I have helped service-based women, business owners find the time and the freedom that is missing from their lives.

And I’ve built my business from having seen the need for what I now offer around me time and time again, previous work environments. Friendships. All those different places and I use my holistic personalized approach to productivity to help women business owners stop spinning their wheels during their chaotic days and start focusing, and, and get productive and create that time and that freedom that they really want in their days. Because they’re not, they’re not getting it and I’m, I’m quite sure that a lot of your listeners can totally relate to that.

CS:

Well, one of the top complaints I hear from my prospects, my potential clients, my audience in general is I just don’t have the time, or I don’t know how to find the time.

In fact, time is often the biggest stopping point that like it is, they might have the book idea. But they don’t have the time to write the outline or write the book or publish a book or market the book or whatever part of the book they haven’t gotten to yet. It’s time. So that’s why I thought your unique take on productivity with your productivity personas, I thought would really, really help them.

So first, why don’t you kind of give us an overview of what the productivity personas are? So we all are on the same page.

SH:

Yeah, so we get, we get some, some clarity here. So initially, what I will say is that my, my perspective, my, my take on time is that it doesn’t exist. It just, it’s, and so here we have people trying to manage time.

And so there’s this, this, this cycle that’s created and what I learned. From stepping on a die cast car is that personalization is what works. And so the personas, there are four of them. And, they are the Deep Thinker, the Wild Child, Easy Breezy, and the Sergeant. And each of them has their own challenges, their own strengths, their own tools that work for them, tools that they should stay away from, and strategies, too, that actually work for them, along with a host of other things.

And your productivity persona identifies who you are in your relationship with time. And we use that, like in my work with my clients, I use that to define how you best work, what helps you to stay productive and take those challenges that you have, and turn them into stepping stones because your challenges can be used to actually get things done.

So for Deep Thinker, Deep Thinker is very logical, very organized and methodical and able to really break things down into the smaller pieces. But Deep Thinker can struggle with creativity. So it’s possible, the way that they write. Say as an author looking at it from an author perspective, it’s possible that they’re writing may not look so creative or, entertaining without some real effort.

Then there is the Wild Child. Now Wild Child is actually my favorite of the four because they are very creative. They’re very spontaneous. They have great imagination. So perfect, right? For, for writing. But they can be all over the place, so they lack focus, and they have a hard time staying on track, following. They tend to follow new ideas that come up instead of actually focusing and staying the course. That’s where they’re challenged at.

And then there’s the Sergeant. The Sergeant is a bit rigid, not so flexible, and writing can be something that They don’t make time for because work is up front and center for them. And everything else is pretty much secondary.

And then there is Easy Breezy. Now Easy Breezy and can be very flighty and, tend to take a long time getting started. Just can’t get those juices flowing and finds it hard to get into say that right space when it comes to writing or work in general for that matter. And they tend to think and say that they have writer’s block. And now we’ve had a conversation too about, your take on writer’s block. And I totally agree with that, but they think they have it. And they are, they’re too generally very creative people, but they don’t always trust themselves. So those things about their persona, their personality tend to impact their writing and their productivity just in general.

CS:

Now have you found that some people can be more than one? Because just listening to your description, it’s like I know when I took the persona quiz, I came out as a Deep Thinker, but when you were talking about the Wild Child, that sounds like me too. ‘Cause I’m very creative. I’m all over the map, but I also am very organized.

SH:

Yeah. And you, you are, I see that. I see that in you. And I think, what I have found to just from when I, when I created them, I could see the different, just even in myself and people that I knew, I could see that, oh, okay, there’s a little bit here of this and this, in this persona, and you can be, you can have aspects of more than one persona.

And you can also be a combination of. Personas. And again, it’s, it’s because it, it boils down to personality. It boils down to who we are, each of us, so unique. But I have found that that people are that combination. I found that after like, I am the Deep Thinker and I found that after having, a TBI traumatic brain injury, I was the Wild Child when I finally felt like, okay, I’m ready to, to try to come back to work. I was Wild Child all day and it was kind of disturbing to me in a sense because I couldn’t really, I didn’t feel like me. And not being able to stay focused just kind of drove me nuts. But it, it took a while, but I’m, I’m back there, but still, every once in a while there’s that Wild Child showing up.

So I think that as we, as we grow, as life circumstances happen, maybe, you’re single one minute and then all of two years later you’re married, and you have children. Lifestyle changes will impact your, your work, it’ll impact everything. So I think it’s important to always revisit where we’re at, how we’re evolving, and especially when those changes come into play.

CS:

And it seems to me, because I’ve worked with a lot of different archetype frameworks, and most of them usually do concede you’ve got your dominant archetype and then you’ve got your secondary and tertiary ones. I mean, it’s kind of like with my writer’s block monsters, the glitches in your Author Switch.

You have the one, the main cause that’s blocking you right now, but you usually have secondary or tertiary ones. And often I’ve found that if you can get rid of those minor ones. It alleviates the predominant ones and there are other systems of archetypes, and it seems to me that there’s always your go to.

That’s the one that you gravitate towards but because we’re human and we are complex individuals, we can pull in, we can decide to pull in other archetypes and sometimes we even just have them in our back pocket.

SH:

Yeah, that’s true. I think that’s true with what I’ve seen too. And I think that it’s really important to, to actually pay attention to that.

And those, those secondary things, and the temporary ones, right. Or the ones that you just, like, okay, this is in my back pocket. I know I can go there. So I’m going to go there and, be able to knock something out and get things done. I think it’s really important. And those are just.

Say parts of who we are, or as I like to say, who we be that we can rely on when we need to, we don’t have to necessarily embrace that way of being all the time because it may not be who we truly are, but still, it’s a part of us. And I think it’s important to pay attention to those things and make sure we know who we are so we can embrace those different pieces of ourselves.

CS:

So now that we’ve got a foundational thing of what your four personas are. What do you think are the main challenges that writers and authors experience when it comes to productivity and time, other than believing that there is time?

SH:

Right. So I, I think that, and I’m, I’m going off what I see, I know a number of authors and have for quite some time. So I’ve seen these things and I think that in general, there are the psychological barriers, right? So, the imposter syndrome, the perfectionism, the analysis paralysis, that’s a big one. And of course also procrastination. comes into play.

And they’re also more tangible or say, more concrete barriers. And those also apply to authors. You mentioned no time to write, right? Like no time to write. And that’s because of course, there are so many other responsibilities. Given that most of us, we wear a lot of hats, especially us women, we’re wearing five different hats at one time, so it makes it really hard.

And, so finding that, that dedicated time to write is often a difficult thing because we’ve also got the overloaded to do list I see,

CS:

This is why people think they need to go get a cabin in the woods to write their book.

SH:

Yes. Yes. And that doesn’t necessarily work. Right?

CS:

I know, it doesn’t.

SH:

It doesn’t necessarily work. It really doesn’t. I mean, if it’s something that you find that, okay, yes, this is a fit for me, then knock yourself out. But it doesn’t always work.

CS:

A great example is an episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show where he like literally goes to a cabin in the woods. And so he could, so he can write his book and then all the, the mental shenanigans that prevent him from doing it. It’s hilarious. It’s a great episode.

SH:

 And that, that’s exactly what happens though. It’s exactly what happens, and I think, I think I can say for sure that that is probably the biggest thing. Like my own son, uh, is a writer, not an author yet, but he’s a writer and it’s, that’s his biggest thing. Cut that time and it’s like, you, you just, you gotta, you gotta do what works for you to, to make sure that you carve out that time.

I also see that, prioritization, is, is an issue and that, that ties in with, say finding the time. I think that people, when, when they look at, okay, so where am I finding the time? They kind of look at, okay, so where’s my balance? And there is no balance. There is harmony, but there’s no balance.

CS:

Right.

SH:

And so, and so, and that, that whole shift that you can make in the mindset is what makes that different. So it’s important to understand that. Say balance is static. Whereas harmony is dynamic, right? We had a whole conversation about that.

CS:

Yes. We did. We did. Yes.

 I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Okay, great. I’ll go look it up. That was a great conversation.

SH:

Yeah. Yeah it was. So what is an author or aspiring author to do? How do you find the time to do the thing you want to do, to get that message into a book so it’s out of your head and into reader’s hands while harmonizing with the rest of your life?

Well, I, the biggest thing is the personalization because again, we’re each, we’re wired differently, like even if you have that same, say productivity persona, you’re still, you still have so many differences. So personalization is, is really the key and being able to, to really find what works for you.

Like I noticed I think it was last week you had one of your, uh, Coffee with Carma chats, where you talked about some of the quirky things that worked for some, some famous authors. And I had heard about Maya Angelou, reserving the hotel room, right?

CS:

Yeah. And apparently with, along with a bottle of…

SH:

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

CS:

 …an alcoholic beverage.

SH:

Yes, you can’t forget about that. It’s a very important thing.

CS:

Yes. Because there’s nothing like writing when you’re tipsy.

SH:

Yeah. But hey, but it’s, it seemed to work for her. Right.

CS:

Yeah.

SH:

And then, Victor Hugo, that whole mistake about, Oh, well, he wrote in the nude. Well, no, actually he didn’t.

CS:

Yeah. He just wrote his indoor clothes.

SH:

Exactly. But it worked for him. And then Steinbeck now Steinbeck I can relate to not, I don’t, I don’t write in pencil. I prefer pen but having. That favorite writing instrument that I can relate to. And those, some of those quirky things work, but. It’s, it’s important, like if you got quirky stuff that works for you, work it, but you’ve also got to think about some practical things and again, it goes back to the personalization. And when we look at personalization and those, those challenges, like the ones we talked about, and then there are some others too that I want to talk about, but let’s, let’s, let’s look at, for instance, finding that time to write. Again, it’s about…

CS:

Like, maybe like take each persona and say, okay, a typical, juicy tip for a Deep Thinker is and then go to the next, I mean, because I think if once they take the quiz and I’ll, I’ll drop the link to the quiz in the show notes as well. Once you understand what your productivity type, you can try out what the, the dominant tips for that archetype are and see what, if it works for you.

SH:

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So when we look at, okay, let’s take prioritization for instance. There’s a process for that, right? And making sure that you, that you prioritize and typically Deep Thinker and the Sergeant, no issues with that. Like none. I mean, we’re typically able to break things down in our sleep, literally, right? We can, we can do that, and we’ve got it.

But say Wild Child. This is, this is a really good example to use Wild Child. Wild Child has that overloaded list and same thing on the author side, right? That overloaded list and that because they’re, they’re creative, it seems that sometimes structure because structure looks a particular way, right? It doesn’t look like a creative person would necessarily need for it to look. That’s a problem that I find my creative clients have, right? It’s like, okay, well that doesn’t work for me. Okay, fine. Let’s find the structure that works for you because it doesn’t have to look that way.

But the prioritization for them is, is about making sure that the book is there, that the writing is there, because if it’s not, it’s always over here for Wild Child. So getting it front and center. And this is a really funny example, but it works. Talk about quirky things that works. I had a Wild Child client and she, she’s an author and she was having a very difficult time staying on track, getting the things done. When we touched base, it was like, nope, sorry, it’s not done. So she said, okay, money motivates me. Money motivates me. So we set the thing or the things that were to be done and a “by when” date. And then she picked an amount of money, not anything huge or anything, 20 bucks, 30 bucks.

So if she hadn’t finished it, then she owed me 30 bucks.

CS:

I’ve heard of that kind of accountability. I actually offered a program for a while. It’s like, if you don’t do what you say, then you pay me. If you do it, then you don’t pay me. Right. And it works. It works. When you’re, when you’re motivated by money, it works.

SH:

And I think out of all the times we did that while she was writing this one particular novel, I think maybe I got 30 books. Which is great because she got it done, she’s like, she said, I don’t want to do this, I really don’t want to do this, but I know for a fact that it’s the thing that’s going to help me.

But to get the structure in place for her, it was really easy, like whiteboard worked really well because she’s very visual, Wild Child is a very visual persona.

So putting that outline up on the whiteboard, at least what she was working on that week or that day, that really helped her to focus. And then she could come back to the bigger outline and relate, she relates to that kind of stuff in a different way, but being able to have that whiteboard and then the money motivation that tends to work really well for Wild Child.

Anything visual works for Wild Child more so, say pictures, words work too. But…

CS:

I love stickies.

SH:

Yes, stickies work too. And then, the other, say creative persona, we have,  Easy Breezy, now Easy Breezy. Easy Breezy, tends to have that challenge with prioritization because they have this like laid back, I’ll get to it, kind of, vibe going on. People might think that they’re lazy. They’re not lazy at all. They know what has to be done. And they’ve got that, I’ll get to it attitude and they get it done. Maybe not always on time, but they get it done. And I find that, that the whole visual thing works very well for, for Easy Breezy too, just in being able to, to have a different kind of structure because they’re really wired very, very differently, very differently? And, and, as I said, when it comes to the prioritization, Deep Thinker, and the Sergeant, we’ve got that handled, it’s, it’s not a problem.

But for Wild Child and Easy Breezy, it’s a problem. It’s a problem.

CS:

I mean, like, like I said, I’m a mix of, of Deep Thinker and, uh, The creative Wild Child ’cause like, I know how to prioritize. But then there’s actually doing it. Sometimes I get distracted. It’s like, Oh, squirrel.

SH:

Yes. Oh, gosh. Yes. Like how many squirrels run across your desk and,

CS:

Oh yeah. This very  weekend I had to get stuff done, but I had to do it in less time than I normally because I was celebrating my anniversary and I kept going down rabbit holes. They’re really interesting rabbit holes, very creative rabbit holes, but they weren’t getting what needed to be done, done.

SH:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s very, especially when you’re in that creative space. Like Wild Child gets distracted with those squirrels,   those ideas, and your awesome ideas, but coming up with a way to say, okay, I really want to run with that, but I don’t want to segue way from what I’m doing, so you find a way to capture what that thought is, right?

So a quick voice note on phone, your computer. Nowadays, you can talk to almost any piece of software, right? And make that voice note and then make the point of coming back to those notes to record it, plug it in where it needs to get plugged in. So you actually do go back to it. You don’t lose those great ideas.

CS:

Exactly.

SH:

That, that’s important too, especially, when you’re talking about, your masterpiece, your bestseller.

CS:

Now it seems to me like a Sergeant and a Deep Thinker would be really all over tools, like to do lists and things like that. But are there tools that the, the more creative people, I mean, are there tools that work for this persona and not that persona and …

SH:

Yes.

CS:

And what do you recommend?

SH:

And so, when it comes to the more creative personas, the Wild Child and, an Easy Breezy, it’s, I find that sometimes, sometimes the Pomodoro technique works really well and…

CS:

Yeah. I hate that.

SH:

It’s a great, great, great strategy, but here’s my but. It does not work for everyone. And in case you don’t know, in case you’re not familiar with Pomodoro technique, it was developed in the late 80s where, and so it’s, it’s the situation where you use a timer.

And you break your work into intervals, intervals, typically 25 minutes at a time. And those, those intervals are separated by short breaks. Now for me as a Deep Thinker, that drives me nuts.

CS:

Oh my gosh. Totally drives me nuts.

SH:

No, I just, I, I can’t, I can’t, the timer would end up out the window somewhere. It’s like.

Be quiet. I’m, I’m here. I’m focused. I’m getting things done, but for Wild Child and for Easy Breezy, it can work. Because Easy Breezy is one of those personas that has that hard time. I mean, we all can, but has that hard time getting things started. So Pomodoro, just that 25 minutes, just, okay, pick one thing, 25 minutes.

Here’s what you’re going to do. And it works really well for Wild Child too. But I recommend that Deep Thinker and Sergeant stay away from that.

CS:

Oh, I’m so glad. I thought maybe I was weird because everyone’s like Pomodoro this, Pomodoro that, and I’m like what?

SH:

No, and that’s, that’s what I found like early on.

It’s like, okay, that doesn’t work for everybody. It’s great. But it doesn’t, it’s like, your shoes, your shoes have to fit you. They have to be your size. And it’s the same thing with your tools. Now there’s a tool that I discovered…

CS:

Don’t get me started on shoes.

SH:

There’s a tool that I learned of through my son called a Scrivener.

CS:

Oh, yes, I’ve heard of that.

SH:

Yeah. Now that tool. Is actually really good for all the personas because it’s when it comes to, it’s, it’s considered to be a powerhouse when it comes to focus and, being able to line things up. So, when it comes to Wild Child and Easy Breezy, the focus is right there because of the way the platform is laid out.

It doesn’t allow for distracting things to come in. So the way that it’s designed, it’s perfect for Wild Child and Easy Breezy. And then, also, because of the way that it’s designed and its capabilities, it’s right in line with the way that Deep Thinker and the Sargent would work because we love that kind of structure.

Wild Child and Easy Breezy, different kind of structure. It kind of keeps them here instead of chasing those squirrels  because they can’t really see anything else. So it’s, it’s perfect for them the way that it’s, that it’s designed. You don’t have to have, multiple things open in different tabs and all of that. It’s all just right there. So your, your chances of getting sidetracked are really, really reduced. And that one I think is great for any persona, just simply because of what it does offer. And that’s, that’s pretty unusual, pretty unusual.

CS:

And it’s fairly reasonably priced the last time I looked at it.

SH:

Yes, it is, it is, it is very reasonably priced.

And I think also Trello can work really well too, for even Wild Child, because it’s very visual. You can add pictures, you can add your, your images in there. And it’s a great way to share things like that’s my way of outlining my chapters and capturing all my ideas to make sure I don’t lose anything.

And I can actually share it with my literary coach. So we can be right on the same page the document sharing and whatnot. So that’s another one that I think is good for Easy Breezy, Wild Child, but also the Deep Thinker because of the focus. And Sergeant tends to be into the more techie stuff. Like the more stuff, the happier they are.

CS:

Right. Right.

SH:

But yeah.

CS:

So where, I mean, I am going to put it in a link on the show notes, but not everyone listening to this episode is going to be on my page. So where does someone go to identify their productivity persona?

SH:

Well, there is a 60-second quiz literally takes you 60 seconds to learn your productivity persona.

And the actual link is a shortened link, it is bit.ly/productivitypersona

CS:

All together? Or with a hyphen?

SH:

Yeah, all together. No hyphen. Yep. No hyphen, no capitalization, all lowercase. So it’s easy to get to. But 60 seconds and you learn your productivity persona. So at least you have that ground floor, where you’re starting, and then you can utilize what we talked about here for your persona.

And I think it gives you a great start to actually maybe being able to get some stuff off your to do list when it comes to your writing.

CS:

Exactly. Exactly.  So, this is the end of this episode of The Author Switch. This is Carma Spence, your host, saying ciao for now.

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