How Scheduling a Power Hour Will Help You Publish Your Next Book

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

How a power hour will help you publish your next book is the topic of this training. Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I'm an author coach and I'm a podcast host at Author Audience and and I'm here to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. In this training, I'm going to talk all about a power hour and how just implementing this one thing can make a huge difference. What is a power hour? Well, a power hour is when you set aside one hour, it could be one hour a day, it could be one hour a week where you're going to focus on, on your main 90 day goal. So within Author Audience Academy, my group coaching program, I have a training called Plan It Day and I help you set that 90 day goal. For some of you right now, your 90 day goal is to finish your book, to publish your book. And one of the things I suggested inside my private Facebook group for Author Audience Academy is that my members set up a power hour. I've been doing this for a while and I just didn't, I didn't really think about the fact that I hadn't really shared this exact strategy with my members. When I shared this just about a week ago, so many people were like, oh my goodness, this is such a great idea. People implemented it right away and they're getting their book done, they're moving forward and it's so exciting because there's something about giving your brain a deadline. It's similar to how the Pomodoro technique works. If you've taken my free seven day nonfiction writing challenge@writingweek.com you know about the Pomodoro technique. If you haven't taken that training yet, I encourage you to sign up. It's completely free. You get a ton of stuff. I just give you all sorts of really, really applicable strategies to help you write faster and better. Plus, you get a $27 productivity software and. But in there, you learn about the Pomodoro technique. It's a form of time boxing. Now, with the Pomodoro technique, you set a timer for 25 minutes. Then you take a five minute break. 25 minutes, five minute break. Now with the power hour, you set aside an hour and you're like, okay, this hour is devoted to moving the needle towards my 90 day goal. Your big goal. The thing that you really want to accomplish right now, and that could be publishing your next book. And during that hour, you turn off notifications, you don't answer text messages, you don't check into email, you don't check social media. You stay focused. And it's amazing what just implementing one power hour every week can do. Now, if you're able to do two power hours a day, whoa. If you're able to even just do one a day, you're going to see, I believe, a really big difference. And I'm happy to say those of you that have been following, I finished the first draft and all the videos that each video is about 35 to 38 minutes of content, like different content than in my book and PowerPoint slides and all sorts of viewers guides and all sorts of things. I finished everything on Monday, so what a huge relief. But then today, in just a few hours, I'm heading off to lead and host my very first in person writing retreat. I've spoken at lots of retreats, spoken at a lot of events. I've done tons of stuff online. But as far as organizing and hosting a writing retreat, this is my very first one here in Colorado. We're heading out to the mountains in a few hours. So I'm so excited. You know, what do you think? Would you try a power hour? Or have you done this type of technique before in the past? Did it help you? Anytime you give your brain a deadline, your brain then knows it's like, okay, I have this amount of time to get this done. Let's do it. Think about it. When you get ready to go on vacation, you can get a ton of stuff done, right? You get a lot of stuff done because you know, I have to leave. And when I have to leave, you know, I have to get all this stuff done beforehand. Whether it's packing or, you know, finishing work, stuff like that. When you give your brain a deadline, it is powerful. And that's what a power hour does. It says, okay, I'm giving you one hour, let's do this, let's get this done. Now, I'm not saying you need to be doing this all the time because if you overuse this strategy, you're going to wear yourself out. You don't want to be doing a power hour 10 times a day, but if you have one or two power hours every day, I really think you're going to see a huge change in your productivity and moving the needle forward on your current project. My challenge to you today in this training is to schedule your next power hour. Schedule one power hour, your next one. It could be next week, it could be today. You could take action literally on this today and schedule a power hour and you're like, okay, Shelly, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna try it and then report back. Let me know how it goes. And if you haven't taken my free writing challenge yet, sign up@writingweek.com there's a place to comment and interact with me inside our members area. It's completely free. You get seven days for free. Lots of great resources to help you in writing and publishing your next book. And if you've already taken Writing Week, would you do me a quick favor and share the the link with someone you know who is either writing blog posts or writing books and really could use this training? It's completely free. They will thank you. And I thank you as well. Sharing is caring, isn't it? Thank you so much for being here with me and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.