I’m writing the first half this post on campus at UQ. It’s approximately 7:03 in the morning, and the cleaner is working their way through the offices. I’m here early because I teach a class at 8:00 AM, because it’s the first week and I still don’t know exactly how to find the room, and because I like to get on campus an hour early for classes. That’s my buffer, should there be traffic problems or train delays, and on the days when there are no such problems, it leaves me with approximately 47 minutes of time to fill once I arrive. Occasionally I have a plan for this time: going to the library, for example. Catching up with friends before class. Today — and for most of the coming semester — my plan is this: Do not give this time to Facebook or Twitter without a damn good reason. Instead, I’m making a conscious decisions about the way you’ll use the little slices of time to advance the writing projects that matter to me. # I often think of the period between 2005 and 2009 as my most productive years as a writer. Part of that is invariably hindsight

So, back on Monday, I was all thou shalt not be a dude who learns to play the opening of Stairway to Heaven. Go forth and finish your shit. That was in response to Elizabeth’s suggested topic for the 2016 Dancing Monkey series. Today we look at that idea in more detail, courtesy of a request from the inimitable Lois Spangler. Her requested topic: Finishing a thing (project, story, etc.) Right then, let’s get into the guts of it, and talk about actually finishing things. ONE: DEFINE “FINISHED” Not a facetious question, and I’m not trying to be cute. If you’re struggling to get things finished, perhaps it’s time to sit down and figure out what finished really means in this context. More importantly, whether your concept of “finished” is getting in your way. Here is the thing about creative-types: we have this tendency to take something minor that needs to be done, then subconsciously extrapolate outwards to a point of failure. There’s this circuit in the back of your mind where I should sit down and write becomes I should finish this story which becomes I should submit this somewhere which becomes oh god, the rejections which becomes oh

I spent a hair over six hours on social media last week, which is considerably more extensive than usual courtesy of the extra time spent losing my mind over Riverdale with friends. And I used to think my approach to managing Facebook so it didn’t eat all my time was pretty goddamn tight. Then I read this post on Lifehacker about unfollowing everyone on your friends list to transform the default feed into a desolate wasteland and I was all, holy fuck, that’s genius.   I haven’t quite gone scorched earth yet, but did elect to get really, really aggressive. Yesterday I opened up the new Newsfeed Preference system which makes it far, far easier to see who you’re actively following and began to really, really ask myself if everyone on that list was posting stuff that I either a) wanted to engage with on a daily basis, or b) actually cared about on a daily basis. An hour later, my default feed only shows content from twenty-four friends, my two favourite authors, one of Australia’s best reviewers, two family members, the Facebook group we use to organise my weekly Superhero game, the Facebook page for my local cafe, and the