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Hello, and welcome to this week’s WEN-zine nuggets.

Strange beginning of spring this past weekend, with over a foot of snow! But it’s 46^o F and raining today, so perhaps there will be crocuses in the second quarter after all ...

1. How to Have a More Productive Quarter

Full disclosure: Cal Newport’s January New Yorker article was on having a more productive year. However, as you will see, he starts with a “season” or quarter, so it does seem timely for this coming week. His strategy for planning:

What makes for an effective plan? One unconventional way to improve your plans is to create them on different timescales simultaneously. You can start with a seasonal plan, which describes your main objectives for the next three or four months.

You can then refer to your seasonal plan each Monday, when you outline a weekly plan for the days ahead. This weekly planning process is more tactical than its seasonal counterpart; the idea is to survey your calendar for the week, see what you’ve already scheduled, and then figure out how you can make progress on the goals in your seasonal plan with the time that remains.

In many cases, you’ll want to add the efforts identified in your weekly plan directly onto your calendar so that they’ll be protected like any other appointment. When you make your weekly plan, you can also review your structured collection of obligations, using your roles and statuses to identify a strategic set of tasks that will actually fit into your available time.

Finally, there’s the daily plan. Each morning, you can consult your weekly plan to quickly configure a plan for the current workday. Don’t simply write an abstract list of things you hope to accomplish. Instead, directly confront the time that’s actually available to you, assigning specific work to specific hours.

This time-blocking approach forces you to be more realistic about how much time you really have. It’s hard to perfectly predict how long everything will take, so it’s likely that your efforts will deviate from your plan. That’s O.K. Every so often, you can step back and fix the plan for the remaining hours in your day. The goal isn’t to be prescient about your time but to be intentional with it.

2. Ness Labs Best Books of March 2024

What should you read this month? (Guess we’re a little late to the March book club meeting.) This is your March 2024 guide to discovering the most insightful, inspiring, and transformative books on mindful productivity, creative growth, holistic ambition, and developing a healthier relationship with work. https://nesslabs.com/best-books-march-2024

(Shared by Smartr Daily, https://smartrdaily.mailerpage.io/)

3. Unlock the goldmine of your existing content! Discover proven strategies to repurpose and revitalize your work. #ContentMaximizer ... here’s the full info page

4. FYI items

▪ Strut is an AI tool for writers recommended by Diana Kelly Levy. “I create different workspaces for my brand and my clients, and I can keep track of style guides and tones while penning quick drafts. It’s an AI tool designed to help collaborate with writers, not write the whole damn thing for us. I’ve also been using Strut to take original content I’ve already written, like my newsletter, and turn it into something else, like a blog post or LinkedIn post.” There is a free tier plus subscription plans for different usage levels. – https://strut.so/

▪ The Economical Guide to Self-Publishing: How to Produce and Market Your Book on a Budget by Linda Radke. Kindle edition free today: https://amzn.to/4abItwP

▪ The great free tool Brain Bump App helps you have better retention of what you read in books, hear on podcasts, and learn in training – in only 2 seconds a day! – https://brainbumpapp.com/ – suggested by Susan Friedmann in SpeakerNet News

▪ Power Thesaurus does just what it says on the tin – this is a thesaurus on steroids: www.powerthesaurus.org (as recommended by Amanda Craven) – It’s crowdsourced by writers, for writers.

Enjoy!

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To Your Writing Success,

Dana K Cassell

Editor

(Dana Cassell is founder of Writers-Editors Network, and has been freelancing/creating full-time for 47 years. In addition to writing, editing, and fact-checking for numerous business clients, she has published more than 2,000 articles and has ghosted or authored more than a dozen books.)

Not a Network member? Join now: https://freelancekeys.com/join-now/ Temporary discount codes:

Save $10 on Basic options: use TESTING coupon code

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