\tA few years ago I had a weekend speaking engagement where I’d be giving about five hours of lectures on a Saturday. At the same time, I was under deadline for one of my books. So I spent every available hour that I wasn’t speaking locked in my hotel room writing. In fact, on the Friday before the lectures, I spent my time from breakfast until the evening dinner party sitting at a desk. During the slightly more than eight hours I had available, until my wife told me, \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to stop,\u201d I pumped out about 10,000 words\u2014that\u2019s about forty pages worth of double-spaced, typed manuscript pages. It was far above my average rate of production for a day.<\/p>\n
\tWhich I found rather interesting. I normally write in an office I have in my home, an office that I use exclusively for work. My walls are lined with books, I have a large desk on which sits a wide screen monitor allowing me to see two full pages side by side at once. It is where I normally sit for eight or more hours, five days a week, except for the occasional break to go fill up my coffee mug.<\/p>\n
\tBut once in a while, I\u2019ll venture forth from my cubical, tote my notebook computer to the coffee shop a mere block from my home, and work there. And I have discovered consistently, on those rare occasions I\u2019m not in my office, that my productivity jumps. Sometimes\u2014as in the case with the hotel room\u2014to epic proportions.<\/p>\n
\tDoes this mean I should ditch my home office and always work in a hotel room or coffee shop?<\/p>\n
\tI don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n
\tI believe what it indicates is that the occasional change of pace can do me a lot of good. But if I were to always work in the coffee shop, or always worked in a hotel room, my productivity would soon drop to the level I normally see on a day-to-day basis. In fact, I believe if I were to change my work venue daily, the same thing would happen: I\u2019d revert to the normal level of productivity, which is usually about a third of what I did in that hotel room\u2014on a good day.<\/p>\n
\tDid I feel unusually inspired that Friday? Not really. It\u2019s just that for whatever reason I was able to focus completely and utterly on my task; the things that would normally distract me, pull my attention away from the task at hand didn\u2019t happen. How come? The change interrupted my normal rhythm\u2014the normal distractions were not there, and new interruption routines had not been added to my repertoire to get in my way.<\/p>\n
\tAlthough writing is a job like any other, there are some odd psychological aspects to it, not least being the simple fact that I have to motivate myself. There is no time clock to punch, no coworkers to compete against, no one looking over my shoulder. Aside from the deadlines, no one makes me work. If I spent the whole day in bed, no one would be the wiser\u2014at least until a deadline passed without anything having been written.<\/p>\n
\tSo every day, I have to talk myself into sitting down in my chair. I have to convince myself to stare at the blank page and start my fingers tapping, rather than clicking on an interesting webpage. I have to tell myself to ignore my emails until lunch time and then again until after supper.<\/p>\n
\tI like the occasional change in my routine. But it has to be infrequent enough, and different enough, that it doesn\u2019t turn into a new routine. <\/p>\n
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