1. Don’t bake cookies (esp. Nigella Lawson cookies) when you’re in the throes of a project. You will have an excuse to eat them for every snag or bright idea you come across for the duration of your project.

2. Don’t feel bad (or like a loser) if you have to lock your door and hide your phone under the mattress. Once you come out of your hole and tell people you “really aren’t crazy, it’s because you actually were working”, they’ll understand.

3. Quit editing your work while you work. If you are editing while you work your bright ideas will never hit the page. You will stare at the dog and wonder what she is dreaming about that is making her twitch and whine and you will also eat lots of cookies.

4. If the weather is too dangerous to go for a walk (i.e. you wipe out as soon as your foot touches the step), jog on the spot, stick your head in the freezer, see if you can wrap your ankle around your head. This changes the air allowing for fresh perspectives to aid you in your work and also limits cookie intake.

5. Only deal with the task that is in your lap. Contemplating the hundred other things you should be doing only instigates pencil chewing, ripping of paper, screaming at the wall, and increased cookie intake.

6. Your brain (although it is where your bright ideas come from and is, essentially what pays the bills), wants desperately to distract you from finishing your task. It will have you thinking about how much you want a cheeseburger, what your dog is thinking, whether it is dangerous or not to go outside, what your boyfriend is doing, and the cookies of course. Don’t give in.

7. Find a balance between letting your project run away with you and keeping your goal (objective you set out for yourself) in front of you. If you don’t, your inner critic will either slam you for all the time you wasted doing something great that is useless, or slam you for wasting time doing something completely unimaginative and also useless.

8. When it comes to reference images for your project, print them out and pin them up. Your computer will hate you when you have a hundred tabs open and you will hate you when you mistakenly close a tab by impulse clicking and then have to spend an hour searching for the image all over again.

9. You look like hell. Trust me, you’ll be more productive if you wash your face. Don’t worry about clothes. As one tweeter put it, sometimes pants-less is what liberates your work.

10. And finally, when you’re having a breakdown and are drenched in tears and sweat and are wondering why the hell you are doing this because you SUCK, call a best friend. Someone who knows you so well they feel comfortable with slapping your face and telling you to sit down-and shut up-and get to work-you’re so full of shit-because you actually are really good at what you do.

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