or not)Īside from Evernote I really like the following little plug ins and apps for getting notes down somewhere. Best apps for quick note taking (while writing. I don't think I can overestimate how much this helps me focus on work. If I'm working to a deadline or on client work, the phone then stays up there until my work is done. ![]() It's not an app, but when I get up in the morning I leave my phone in the bedroom and don't check it again until lunchtime. If you want to find out what all the fuss about Evernote is, I highly recommend this book which although a chunky read will simplify and speed up how efficiently you use Evernote and how, in return, the app will save you SO MUCH TIME in many, many ways. Plus it's easy to search when you lose a crucial scene. The reason it's so good is that with your own account you can have all your notes saved and synced across multiple platforms. I often use Evernote to get a quick scene down on my phone and I definitely rely on it to keep track of my story ideas as they pop into my brain and cause me to say "Oh!" out loud and reach for my phone. While it certainly isn't necessarily distraction-free (though you can change the view mode so you only see the note you are working on) in my opinion it is just as valuable for storing and syncing notes, and for getting all those ad-hoc, on-the-go, I-must-write-this-down thoughts. My second favourite app which supports my writing (after Scrivener) is Evernote. I've been using it for over a year now and will never go back. I highly recommend you check it out for Windows ( or for Mac) if you're serious about writing now and in the future. There are numerous different ways to store research, chapter breakdowns, scenes, character notes, progress journals and more. It's the industry-leading writing software and was built by a writer so is geared to assisting authors from the earliest planning stages to the very last steps of converting your book into an ebook. Scrivener for Windows or Scrivener for Mac)Īside from the odd notes and scenes, I write my stories in Scrivener and will do so for this year's NaNoWriMo. I look forward to being shamed and shamed again into doing more work! Best apps for building your book (and writing) or not, maybe! If you don't believe this is a useful tool, I recommend you check out your web browser history for the last few hours and be prepared to be shocked and a little disappointed in yourself. ![]() Essentially it's a browser plug-in that once activated will monitor everything you do on your computer and then breaks it down into a daily report so you can basically be shamed into realising how much time you waste. ![]() I've only recently started to use Rescue Time after I suffered a bit of a dip in my productivity recently. Alternatively you can go cold turkey - geddit - and just block out the whole Internet. You can specify which websites you want to block, for how long (you can pick certain hours of the day on any day in the future) and hours don't have to be consecutive so you can get your dopamine fix at lunch. My go-to distraction destroying tool is Cold Turkey (or Freedom if you have a Mac). One day I'll spend a bit more time figuring out why this is, but in the meantime I'll blame it on dopamine and a chronic case of FOMO, though I really know it has a lot more to do with my weak will power.įor this reason I've tried a number of different apps and tools to try and limit my distractions and also help me focus, structure and save all my work as efficiently as possible.Ĭold Turkey for Windows (or Freedom for Mac) Even when I'm 99% full of giddy happiness that I'm nearly at the end of writing a difficult scene or that I've finally figured out how to solve a nagging plot hole, there's still 1% of me that wonders: "Hey, I wonder what's going on on Facebook?" or "It's been a while* since I last checked Twitter." (*Note to self: a few hours does not a while make.) Distractions have the potential to disrupt even my most productive, full-flowing, 2000-words-an-hour writing sessions.
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