Today’s to-do list:
- Collect info for a newsletter for a telephony and call center company (15 minutes)
- Meet with a regular client about a seminar we’re putting together (2 hours)
- Interview a board member about renewable energy sources for her monthly column from the chair (30 minutes)
- Interview a VP from a printing company about reducing paper handouts at educational events (15-30 minutes)
- Discuss an industry article about online job boards plus development of a company blog (15 minutes)
- Follow up with a dentist regarding an article about his charity work (5 minutes)
- Type up my notes for an article about new ideas for trade show sponsorship (30 minutes)
Six clients and seven tasks in one day — pretty typical.
Since I opened my doors as a freelance copywriter just about one year ago, I’ve developed a syndrome I call WADD — Writing Attention Deficit Disorder. I work on multiple projects from multiple clients every day… sometimes for 15 minutes, an hour, two hours…. I don’t think I’ve ever dedicated a full day to one project except at the very beginning, when all I had was one project at a time. Even an uninterrupted 4-hour block is rare, except on the weekends, when I tend to knock out my “chunky” projects.
This kind of schedule suits me because I love the variety and get a little bored if all I’m doing is writing one paper for three days. I’m definitely a little ADD in everything I do, so switching from one project to another rapidly and often actually keeps me more productive than working for hours and hours on one project.
But this doesn’t bode well for my plans to write a book. I get up every morning and post to this blog, with entries taking 15 minutes to a full hour. When I’m ready to pull all this stuff into a book, it’ll be tough for me to sit for 6-8 hours at a time and cobble all these pieces together. In addition, I tend to put off big projects like the book or a big writing project, even if someone’s paying me for it. If I am looking at 6 hours of work without any back and forth with the client, I keep hitting the snooze button on the due date alarm.
I admire people like copyeditors who can spend hours, days, weeks on one project, meticulously reading chapter after chapter for hours at a time. I guess I could do it if I forced myself, but I think I’d find too many distractions to take me away from the computer.
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