I’m not a fast writer, nor am I a multi-tasker, and I find it takes me a while to get into the swing of things each day. The more things I have on my mind, the harder it is for me to focus on my writing. When I first quit my day job to write full time, I’d find my time was easily consumed by the minutiae of running my business and day-to-day life. Sometimes, I wouldn’t get a chance to sit down and focus on my book until late afternoon, and by then, I’d have too many other concerns on my mind.

And then my dear friend Kelly made a suggestion, and it changed my life. Fifteen minutes, she said. Set your alarm fifteen minutes early. Get up, maybe go to the bathroom and put the kettle on, but don’t do anything else. Don’t check your email, don’t pick up the newspaper, don’t read a blog. For fifteen minutes, stare at the blinking cursor on the end of your document. Maybe you write, maybe you don’t, and even if you do, you might not get much done in fifteen minutes.

But what you do is set your mind in story mode, when it’s blank and unconcerned with anything else. Then, later, as you visit the drycleaners or fight rush hour traffic or work at your cubicle — your head is still in the place of your book. Maybe you jot down notes on the subway or write a page or two at lunch. Even if all you write is a few hundred words, even if it’s total garbage that you delete later when you have a chance to concentrate, you’ve programmed your head to think about your book.

I don’t know why this works, but it does. I find that on days I do this fifteen minutes, it sometimes turns into two hours. And even if it is fifteen minutes, I find those two hours later in the day are twice as productive as on days where I don’t get fifteen minutes in. Kelly theorizes it might be because, when I sit down with my book at 2 pm or 5 pm or 10 pm, I’m not looking at a blank for the day. I’m looking at a few hundred words. It’s a jump start. I thin it’s more. I think if I do my book first, when my mind is still forming itself for the day, it gets the idea that, on a basic level, Book=First.

Try it today, or this weekend. Let me know how it goes.