The Focused Author: Simple Shifts to Reclaim Your Time and Energy

For many authors, productivity is a dirty word. It conjures images of assembly-line writing, "hustle culture," and the eventual, inevitable burnout of the creative soul. We often treat our Muse as a fickle deity who visits only when the lighting is right and the coffee is perfect. But if you are building a writing business that is profitable, scalable, and designed to last decades you can't rely on atmospheric conditions. You need an infrastructure. I am in the weeds of planning an episode of The Writing Biz on this very thing!

The transition from a hobbyist to a CEO-author requires a fundamental shift in how you view your time and energy. You don't want to fall into the trap of randomly finding time to write; you should manage your mind and your systems to ensure that output is a reliable byproduct of your daily operations. Being productive doesn’t mean you must work more hours, You need a system and the tools to get more done, giving you time to write.

The traditional approach to productivity is time management—squeezing more tasks into the ticking clock. However, for a writer, a calendar full of blocks is useless if your brain is too fogged to fill them. Creative work requires specific mental states that can’t be forced, but they can be invited. This can be even more difficult for those of us who have ADHD.

Instead of fighting your internal biology, you should audit your "creative peaks." Are you most sharp at 5:00 AM before the world wakes up, or does your imagination catch fire at midnight? A CEO-author protects these windows of high-leverage work fiercely. When you treat your brain as your primary business asset, you stop filling your best hours with "shallow work" like answering emails or tweaking your website. You save the "bullet-dodging" of administrative tasks for when your creative energy is naturally lower.

To truly master your creative peaks, you must first unmask the invisible leaks in your schedule. I spent two weeks practicing interstitial journaling—a technique where you write a few lines of description and record the timestamp every time you transition between tasks. Personally, I only allow myself one line for each task. By documenting the exact moment I finished a writing session and the actual time on client work and podcast tasks I gained a data-driven look at how my time was spent.  I discovered I spent a lot of time on repetitive tasks, organizing emails, and, because I waited until the end of the day, I struggled with creating social media content for my podcast. My creative well had run dry. This two-week audit allowed me to stop guessing and start engineering my workday around my actual energy patterns, rather than an idealized version of them.

It is dangerously easy to feel productive while doing nothing that moves the needle. Cal Newport often highlights that busyness is not productivity; in fact, being constantly "busy" with frantic multitasking is often a sign of a lack of priority. I couldn’t agree more. I find myself chasing down tasks that I easily could hand off to someone else. For authors, pseudo-work often looks like endlessly researching a niche, obsessing over social media vanity metrics, or "organizing" a scrivener file for the tenth time.

I didn't know what to do. I chatted with a friend and she suggested finding an intern to help with at least the podcasting production. While this is a great idea, I still would have to find time to look for the right person, and then teach them my system. I was so completely underwater I could not see how I would make it happen.

Consistency is the bedrock of any professional career, but the energy to handle all that comes at you in a day is a finite resource. To bypass the daily struggle of "starting," you need On the Rachel in Theory YouTube channel she posted a great video on how to build a command center—a documented recipe for your planning and execution. This isn't just a planner; it’s a system that tells you exactly what to do the moment you sit down so you don’t waste mental bandwidth deciding where to begin.

A robust command center includes:

• A Capture Tool: A place to dump every idea so it doesn't clog your working memory.
• A Task Manager: Moving from "I should write more" to "Draft 2,000 words of Chapter 4."
• A Calendar: A single source of truth for your time commitments.

When you have a system that works even when your motivation fails, you stop being a victim of your moods. We often discuss these structural foundations on The Writing Biz Podcast, emphasizing that a business is only as strong as its repeatable processes. But I didn’t stop here. Now that I designed my “system”, I had to face the issue that I still needed help. I refused to take away time from my clients to write or build a podcast. 

Life doesn't care about your word count goals. Concussions, family emergencies, and global shifts happen. Writers who burn out often do so because they have "rigid" schedules that shatter at the first sign of friction.  I watched Claire Fishback explain how a sustainable writing business can follow the  "Plan for Anything" approach, building flexibility into the schedule.

Instead of a binary "I wrote/I failed" mindset, successful authors should create tiers of productivity. If you have a full two-hour block, you do deep work. If you only have fifteen minutes in a doctor’s waiting room, you dictate notes, catch up on emails, or brainstorm your next marketing hook. By having a plan for your "scraps of time," you ensure that the momentum of your business never fully grinds to a halt, regardless of external chaos.

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In 2026, a writer who refuses to use technology is like a carpenter who refuses to use a power drill. Understand that you never want to let AI write your books. But I now understand that I can have AI tools to help me run my writing business. Automation allows you to "work smarter, not harder" by handling the repetitive tasks that steal your creative joy and suck up hours of your day. 

Now I use the suite of AI Agents in Marblism. Here I can automate my guest research and receive a list of qualified people that I can then vet and decide if they would be a terrific source for my podcast. My social media scheduling is handled at the end of the day when my brain is mush. And holy emails, Batman! I found help organizing, tagging and creating drafts for my inbox.  The first week I saved 15 hours! Imagine having 15 hours a week to write, read, or to watch the clouds go by.

But that’s not all. I save resources I come across in NotebookLM so when I am ready to write on a subject for a blog post I can ask the questions I know my audience would ask and get some ideas that I can use to outline a blog post. I use Descript’s AI to help edit my podcast. I also use Canva to create images for all of my content. Every minute you save through automations is a minute you can reinvest into your writing biz. I am not saying AI agents and tools are for everybody, but they work for me and millions of other people. I want to add that to set up Marblism was easy and straightforward, every day the agents learn more about my system and how I like to handle my business and podcast.

We often treat writing as a purely intellectual pursuit, but your brain is a biological organ. If you aren't managing your physical health, your productivity will eventually crater. Experts like Andrew Huberman emphasize that sleep and light exposure are the primary levers for focus and cognitive function.

A CEO-author doesn't view a walk or a solid eight hours of sleep as "time away from work." They view it as maintenance on their most valuable piece of equipment. If you are sluggish, no amount of "productivity hacks" will save your word count. I recommend reading Joanna Penn’s book , Productivity For Authors: Find Time to Write, Organize your Author Life, and Decide what Really Matters. Especially if you are taking a more analog approach to time management.

The more successful your writing business becomes, the more opportunities will come your way. Paradoxically, the very things that made you successful—saying "yes" to everything early on—will become the things that stall your growth later. As Tim Ferriss famously notes, if you don't have time, you don't have priorities. When you wear as many hats as I do, being able to prioritize is a must. 

To maintain long-term sustainability, you must become an Essentialist. This means saying no to "good" opportunities to make room for "great" ones. It means choosing your focus and eliminating everything else. Whether it’s declining a meeting that doesn't feel necessary or cutting out a social media platform that yields no ROI, every "no" is a "yes" to your core mission: building a profitable, lasting career.

We often treat writing as a purely intellectual pursuit, but your brain is a biological organ. If you aren't managing your physical health, your productivity will eventually crater. Experts like Andrew Huberman emphasize that sleep and light exposure are the primary levers for focus and cognitive function.

A CEO-author doesn't view a walk or a solid eight hours of sleep as "time away from work." They view it as maintenance on their most valuable piece of equipment. If you are sluggish, no amount of "productivity hacks" will save your word count. I recommend reading Joanna Penn’s book , Productivity For Authors: Find Time to Write, Organize your Author Life, and Decide what Really Matters. Especially if you are taking a more analog approach to time management.

Productivity in the writing business is not about the frantic pursuit of more. It is about the disciplined pursuit of less—less noise, less friction, and less pseudo-work. By shifting from a hobbyist mindset to a CEO mindset, you recognize that your writing is an asset and your time is your capital.

Building a sustainable career requires you to own your systems, value your energy, and protect your creative space. When you stop chasing short-term hacks and start building long-term infrastructure, you move from the stress of the "starving artist" to the stability of a professional author. The goal isn't just to finish the book; the goal is to build a life where finishing books is simply what you do.

Below are some tools I've used to help run my business. I currently don’t use all of these but I have in the past and recommend them. Honestly, since I started using Marblism I was able to quit some tools, which saved me a ton of money. (* indicates an affiliate link is included)

Marblism* Get an AI Team who run your inbox, socials, SEO, lead generation, calls, and support. Love! Love! Love! New users get 10% off for their lifetime

Notion  Notion is an AI-powered all-in-one workspace that helps individuals and teams write notes, manage tasks, organize projects, and collaborate in one place. I use this to organize my podcast.

Projectbook: A modern digital planner for your business and your life. The easiest way to organize your projects, customers, and services online. I've tried many digital planners and this one is the winner. Not only is it easy to use, but it gives me a minimalist, clean view of my tasks and projects, which my helps with my ADHD.

Content360* Content360 is the only content automation platform with a focus on the entire content lifecycle — helps you plan, create, and schedule your content across every major platform — in one clean dashboard. I love how easy and fast this is to use.

Zebracat* Zebracat is a video creation platform that quickly turns a single prompt, script, or blog post into a high-impact marketing video. It supports text-to-video and text-to-speech using professional-grade AI voices. Zebracat will lower video costs by producing content in-house instead of outsourcing to freelancers and agencies. I haven't used this as much as I would like, but so far I'm impressed.  CLICK HERE:15% off all payments withing the first 6 months!

Descript Turn recordings Into polished videos in minutes. Make videos, podcasts & short clips for social fast with powerful AI tools! This makes editing my podcast recordings a breeze. It offers a lot of valuable features that can truly power your video creation.

Canva Your all-in-one creative platform for stunning graphic design, photo editing, and video creation. I used Photoshop for decades. I made the decision to ditch Adobe products last year because of the cost and Photoshop, in particular became very cluttered and the learning curve became unrealistic. Canva not only saves me money, but it's easy to use interface and features sped up my work flow and operated more intuitively than Photoshop. I can even build videos for social media in Canva!

Rella* Rella combines the automation of content planning with the power of project management. Powered by Ella, your smart AI content partner. This was recommended to me but I have not tested it. 

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