Tuesday Tips: Hackpad: Share the Load
I frequently tell clients who are trying to get something started–that sounds like a bad 1980s song lyric, but you know what I mean–to keep a diary of positive actions. Now, despite my fondness for free love, I am not a hippie. By “positive actions,” I mean actions, whether large or small, that get you out of your (un)comfort zone, and make you start thinking and acting differently, eventually leading to a sea-change within you, that allows you to one day look around and say, “Hey!” You have to think and act differently to create the opportunities you need.
If, for example, you want to write a book, you need to–wait for it–START WRITING. Today. Right now. You need to commit to even one solid paragraph a day, before you start daydreaming how you and Junot Diaz, for example, are going to trade snappy one-liners at Yaddo. And so a client could write in his positive actions diary, ” wrote in my diary, about how irritating Carlota is. Yet hot. Strangely hot. Hmm….” (Wait, I’m sorry, that’d be a line from my diary…ha! Oh if you can’t laugh at your own jokes, what’s the point?) A lot of people think there’s some mystical to success and there is: GET. STARTED. It’s called, less whining, more doing.
Anyways. I’m including here, as part of this week’s “Tuesday Tips,” a link to hackpad (https://hackpad.com/) because it’s a great collaborative document, that allows you to create, instantly, on-line documents for writing, that you can share or keep public. So, if you and your best friend have, for example, decided to write novels together, planning to keep each other honest and motivated…awesome. You both could start a Hackpad together, and challenge each other to write the 5 actions you both took every day, on your path to publication. That makes it less lonely, more fun, and can keep you on track when you’re sick of writing, which will be in about 5 minutes.
You can use Hackpad on your own; use it for motivation to find a better job, start a small business, become a cook, learn a foreign language…whatever. And if it doesn’t work for you, if you’re already using good old Microsoft Word, then stick with what works and just keep going. That’s what counts: getting started, and moving forward.