Steven Robbins here. Welcome to the Get It Done Guys, quick and dirty tips to work less

and do more. Today's topic is keeping a longer piece of writing coherent. The quick and dirty

tip is to use collapsible tools like outliners and mind maps to view your logic at different depths.

I'm writing a book. Much to my surprise, it's harder to write a book than a five-minute podcast.

With a podcast, it's easy to keep the whole thing in mind at once, but with a book, it's different.

It's so big that there's just no way to keep it all in my brain at one time, and working

on it for months and months.

I get so distractible that anything shiny or sparkly, totally grabs my attention.

Like, for example, sun glinting on the three feet of freshly fallen snow outside my office

window.

Come to think of it, it's beautiful, so hypnotic. I could watch it for hours.

The main idea is where you start. The only way to keep a whole book in mind at once is to simplify, simplify, simplify. I need simplicity.

Scientists say people can keep seven plus or minus two things in mind at once. Not me. I'm lucky

to keep one plus or minus two things in mind. So, my wonderful 295-page first draft really amounts

to life can be easy. Everything else is just details,

and at last I can hold the whole book in my brain at once. Subtopics give details. My publisher

heard my one-liner and laughed in my face. Do you really believe life can be easy? You're nuts.

I had to expand on the idea for him.

Well, I said, if you learn to deal with your own brain, you can make your internal life easy.

And if you learn to make projects easy, you'll be able to reach your goals.

Then all that's left is making organizational life easy, relationships easy, and your career easy.

Self, projects, organizations, relationships, and career.

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