The Prosperous Author: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More: Prosperity for Authors, #2

By Cassandra Gaisford

Do Less, Achieve More: Master the Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Authors


Bestselling author, award-winning artist, holistic therapist, and creativity expert Cassandra Gaisford (BCA, Dip Psych) challenges the myth of the overworked, starving artist. In The Prosperous Author: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More Gaisford reveals dozens of insights based on survey research, her professional achievements and the success secrets of extraordinary artists, authors and creative entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss, James Patterson, Paulo Coelho, Nora Roberts, Arianna Huffington, Oprah, Isabel Allende, and many more.


Perhaps you've bought into the myth that you can't write faster, make money from your writing and produce excellent work. For years, the fallacy of the starving artist, working slavishly has pervaded our culture, leaching into the minds of creative people and stifling their dreams. But the evidence-based truth is that the world's most successful authors and artists do not starve. In fact, they thrive by learning the tools of titans and leveraging off the tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers.

The Prosperous Author: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More is a blueprint for mastering productivity, making money and having fun. By fuelling your desire, empowering your vision, slaying obstacles, mastering your subconscious mind, maintaining optimum health, empowering your relationships, making a commitment to turn pro, you'll elevate your attitude to success itself and create the ultimate mindset.

In The Prosperous Author: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More Cassandra Gaisford answers the question: How can you thrive as an author, writer, artist, and entrepreneur, create success on your own terms, and live a happier life? Gaisford shows us that being prosperous and productive is not just about money. It's also about health, happiness, close relationships, living a meaningful life, and enjoying life's journey.

If you'd love to find a way to create a living from your writing, if you suffer from procrastination, fear of failure, self-doubt, disorganization, if you're a perfectionist or find the challenges of creative life overwhelming…then The Prosperous Author: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More is exactly the right book for you—because it will show you that these challenges are a critical part of your success. The secret is knowing how to use them to your advantage, to turn your world around and achieve your goals.

In The Prosperous Author: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More Gaisford reveals:

✓How billionaires, icons, and world-class performers master productivity.
✓Simple strategies to accelerate your productivity
✓How to turn procrastination into your strength
✓How to fight through your blocks and win your inner creative battles
✓How to steal from your heroes (rather than waiting for inspiration)
✓How to overcome your fear of failure, criticism, and change
✓How to whip anxiety, despondency, and depression into shape
✓How to overcome inertia, writers block and the resistance of a blank page
✓How to identify real priorities that are central to your life and work's true meaning
✓How to turn pro, tap your inner power and create your life's work
✓How to do less and earn more

If you're short on time but high on motivation The Prosperous Author: Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More will cheerlead, support, encourage and inspire you to move toward success.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Cassandra Gaisford
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9780994148445

Cassandra Gaisford

Cassandra Gaisford, is a holistic psychologist, award-winning artist, and #1 bestselling author. A corporate escapee, she now lives and works from her idyllic lifestyle property overlooking the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. Cassandra is best known for the passionate call to redefine what it means to be successful in today’s world. She is a well-known expert in the area of success, passion, purpose and transformational business, career and life change, and is regularly sought after as a keynote speaker, and by media seeking an expert opinion on career and personal development issues.  Cassandra has also contributed to international publications and been interviewed on national radio and television in New Zealand and America.  She has a proven-track record of success helping people find savvy ways to boost their finances, change careers, build a business or become a solopreneur—on a shoestring. Cassandra’s unique blend of business experience and qualifications (BCA, Dip Pych.), creative skills, and well-ness and holistic training (Dip Counselling, Reiki Master Teacher) blends pragmatism and commercial savvy with rare and unique insight and out-of-the-box-thinking for anyone wanting to achieve an extraordinary life. ​

Book preview

The Prosperous Author: How to Make a Living With Your Writing

The Prosperous Author: How to Make a Living With Your Writing

Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More

Cassandra Gaisford

Blue Giraffe Publishing

Contents

THE PROSPEROUS AUTHOR: HOW to MAKE a LIVING WITH YOUR WRITING:

Praise for The Prosperous Author

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Introduction

Your 4-Step Blueprint to True Success

How to Use This Book

THE PROSPEROUS PRODUCTIVITY MINDSET

1. What Is Prosperous Productivity?

2. What is Productivity?

3. A Vision of Victory

4. Imagine Better

5. Dream Big

6. See the True Value

7. Plan for Success—Set and Achieve Goals

8. What Do You Believe?

9. Your Money Blueprint

10. What’s Blocking Your Productivity?

11. Monitor Your Productivity

12. Purposeful Productivity

13. Fill a Need

14. The Power of Passion

15. Become Audaciously Obsessed

16. Take Control of Your Time

17. Avoid Decision Fatigue

18. Elevate Your Energy

19. Play

TOOLS OF TITANS

20. Tackle the Toughest Items First

21. Cultivate a Productive Mindset

22. Hypnotize Your Millionaire Mind

23. Affirm Success

24. Understand the Rules

25. Make Space for Productivity

26. Successful Daily Habits

27. Magic Mornings

28. Journal Your Way to Success

29. Your ‘Not to Do’ List

30. Meditate

31. Get Organized

32. Find Your Vibe Tribe

33. Small Steps Beat Big Dreams

34. Rough Out Your First Draft

35. 15-Minute Sprints

36. Write Faster with Scrivener

37. Vellum Velocity

38. Make Friends with Technology

39. Automate Social Media Updates

40. Batch to Hatch Time

41. Consult the Oracles

YOUR HEALTH IS YOUR WEALTH

42. Protect Your Mental Health

43. Stress Less

44. Breathe

45. Aromatherapy for Mental Alertness

46. Sleep Your Way to The Top

47. Unplug

48. Move Inside Out

49. Mindfood

50. You Booze, You Lose

51. Just Add Water

52. Maintain Some Balance

53. Real Resilience

SLAYING OBSTACLES: EMPOWER YOUR TENACITY TO SUCCEED

54. Fight for Your Dreams

55. Invoke Your Muse with Prayer

56. Finish What You Start

57. Knock the Bugger Off

58. Show Your Work

59. Maintain Your Faith

60. Write with Confidence

61. What Makes You Happy?

62. Protect Your Dream

63. Publish Your Self

64. Plan for Success

65. Allow No Doubt

66. Shifting Self-Limiting Beliefs

67. Focus

68. Take the Procrastination Challenge

69. Keep Your Deadlines Sacred

70. Just Do It

71. Keep Learning

Free Workbook!

CONCLUSION

Go Beyond Your Own Expectations

Please Leave A Review

Also by the Author

Follow Your Passion to Prosperity Online Course

Coaching Offer

Further Resources

Stay In Touch

Acknowledgments

About the Author

THE PROSPEROUS AUTHOR: HOW to MAKE a LIVING WITH YOUR WRITING:

Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More

Cassandra Gaisford, BCA, Dip Psych

Praise for The Prosperous Author

The Prosperous Author is a blueprint for success. Cassandra Gaisford has crafted a well-rounded collection of productivity tips, wisdom, and practical advice. This book offers the mindset revolution I needed to get on with my writing! Each chapter in the book contains practical tips, wisdom from successful authors, and thought-provoking questions. I will be opening this book and flipping to various chapters whenever I need a pick-me-up.The chapter called, Become Audaciously Obsessed is brilliant!

~ Courtney Kenney, author of Creating Space to Thrive: Get Unstuck, Reboot Your Creativity and Change Your Life.

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"Cassandra Gaisford has molded a helpful resource in her latest publication The Prosperous Author. Together with helpful ideas encouraging readers to believe in their writing, or in my case in my project, she also presents challenges to motivate the reader, well-chosen examples of successful writers, and honest offerings of her own journey.

This book provides well-researched ideas to support anyone who has a dream to believe in themselves and go for gold and develop that dream into reality. It is not just for writers, it is for all of us who have a golden nugget of a dream and want to bring it to full creation."

~ Catherine Sloan, counsellor

"I really loved this book! I'm currently working on increasing my productivity so this book came at the right time. Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More is packed with productivity tips and insights for writers. I enjoyed learning how some of the most successful writers on earth plan their day as well as how they think. Feeling inspired, I’ve already decided to implement concrete changes in the way I work in order to increase my productivity."

~ Thibaut Meurisse, blogger

"This book really hits home for me as an author and someone who is dedicated to carving out purpose, passion and a life of more wealth and health. Every chapter ends with a positive wrap-up [‘Mining for Gold’] of the important lessons learned.

This book will teach you how to: Dream big, create a new destiny and turn a profit as a successful author. My A definite ‘Good Read’ recommendation."

~ Scott Allan, author of Do It Scared

A vital resource for writers wanting to break free from financial constraints and make a living from their writing. Lots of writers do make a living, but the tips and tricks in this book enable you to 10x your productivity, so you can get your life back. From creativity to mindset, and practical steps, this is the book you need if you want to be more than a one-book wonder! Thanks for this excellent resource, coming from another writer who has walked the path, make its all the more valuable.

~ 5-star review

For Lorenzo

whose mantra

Show me the money!

inspires me to succeed.

Epilogue

Remember that just because you’re doing a lot more doesn’t mean you’re getting a lot more done. Don’t confuse movement with progress. My mother told me, she said, Yeah, because you can run in one place all the time and never get anywhere.

Continue to strive, continue to have goals, continue to progress and anything you want—good, you can have it. Claim it, work hard to get it, when you get it, reach back, pull someone else up. Each one, teach one.

Don’t just aspire to make a living. Aspire to make a difference.

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~ Denzel Washington, actor

Author’s Note

I’ve been a published non-fiction writer for over ten years, penning articles for newspapers and magazines. Initially, I wrote for free. My motivation? I wanted to provide helpful tips and strategies for people who couldn’t afford my coaching and psychology fees.

I also started writing inspirational workbooks for career and life coaching clients who were sent to me for help by their workplaces—but who were only given two or three paid hours of support. Early on, before Kindle became the phenomenon it is now, I began thinking of ways I could help more people with my words of self-help and empowerment.

I was interviewed by Marie Claire Magazine and the editor suggested I write a book. So I did. I drew upon on my many hours with coaching clients and the successful life and career transformations I helped them achieve. I also expanded on advice I had provided to readers in my popular careers column in The Dominion Post newspaper.

But, despite knowing there was a market for my book, Happy at Work for Mid-Lifers was rejected. It was turned down by so many publishing houses that I began to get discouraged. I was told, New Zealanders aren’t ready for passion. It won’t sell.

I knew they were wrong. And I also knew that the advice I could provide and the help I could offer would have international relevance. So, I decided to back myself and start my own publishing company and self-publish my book.

I have since written and self-published over 20 titles in the last two years alone—all of them have been #1 bestsellers on Amazon. I’ve branched into fiction too—writing romance novels under my pen name, Mollie Mathews.

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The Art of Business

I first made a significant income starting my life and career coaching consultancy, Worklife Solutions. Prior to this I was a single mom struggling to make ends meet and trapped in a soul-sucking day job that gave me shingles and eroded by confidence and self-esteem.

I share my experience of finding my mojo and making an awesome living in my Mid-Life Career Rescue series.

It’s my successful experience as a businesswoman and creative entrepreneur that I bring to my writing, and which I want to share with you. I’ve learned that it is vitally important to treat writing, or any other creative skill from which you wish to make a living, as a business.

As Sir Richard Branson, English business magnate and founder of Virgin Records, notes, Building a business is not rocket science, it's about having a great idea and seeing it through with integrity.

My one thing is to live and create with passion and purpose and to help others achieve the same. With this guiding light, I have created multiple streams of income—many of them from my writing, others from my art. I’ve also developed other income streams from my work as a holistic psychologist, life and career coach, mentor to creatives, and from certifying people to become Worklife Solutions life and career coaches.

People write to me and tell me that they are awed by my prosperous productivity and success. But I feel it’s so important to let you know that I wasn’t always the confident, prosperous author and business woman I am today.

For many years I struggled to finish my books. I wrestled unsuccessfully with doubt and fear and other blocks to living a prosperous writing life.

Because of my own limiting beliefs about my writing and my ability to make money as a writer, it took me until my sixteenth book to even call myself an author.

Even then I struggled. I hadn’t gone to university and received an English degree. I didn’t train as a journalist. Everything I learned was self-taught in the University of Life. It took me many years to value this.

Happily, I’m a compulsive note-taker and researcher—my partner once said that I’m an obsessive collector of positivity. My goal has always been to overcome obstacles and live my best life—and to help people like you achieve the same.

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Your Virtual Mentor

Whenever I’m in a slump or needing an inspirational boost, I turn to people who are smarter or more skilled than me for good advice. Very often, I write a book—like this one, to self-help my way to greater productivity and prosperity.

If you’ve been procrastinating, experiencing self-doubt, feeling fearful, or just getting in your own way, you’re in good company. I’ve been there, too—as have many successful people. Getting in your own way is normal!

I promise there are solutions to the problems you’re currently facing—and you’ll find them in the pages that follow.

Much of the wisdom contained in this book, and in Developing a Millionaire Mindset, the first in The Prosperous Author series, are the success strategies I’ve distilled and applied in the last few years—having finally knocked the buggers off (to paraphrase fellow New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary—the first person to climb the summit of Mount Everest).

Again, after years of starting books and never finishing them, in the past two years I’ve written, finished, and published twenty bestselling books.

What changed?

My mindset, and my systemic effectiveness and purposeful productivity amongst other things.

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What You’ll Discover

In The Prosperity for Authors series, I’ll share with you the things I’ve learned figuring out how to make a living from my writing.

You’ll benefit from dozens of insights based on survey research and my professional achievements as a holistic psychologist, bestselling author, and creativity expert.

You’ll gain insight into the success secrets of extraordinary authors and creative entrepreneurs from a variety of fiction and non-fiction genres. Tim Ferriss, James Patterson, Paulo Coelho, Nora Roberts, Arianna Huffington, Oprah, and Isabel Allende are just a few of the many creative mentors you’ll learn from.

As you’ll discover, being prosperous and productive is not just about money; it’s also about health, happiness, close relationships, living a meaningful life, and enjoying life’s journey.

As one advance reader wrote to me: I’m emailing you to let you know the impact your book has had on me. I cold-turkey stopped imbibing alcohol and coke and I've gained twenty years in energy. We all know we don't drink a lot but what an insidious thing nightly alcohol is...Thank you for your book - it's become a bit of a bible, or should I say they've become bits of bibles.

I’m so pleased to know this! It’s amazing how much productivity is gained by making changes to our health habits.

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If you’d love to find a way to create a living from your writing

If you suffer from writer’s block

If you find it hard to focus, are easily distracted, and have shiny object syndrome

If you suffer from mindset issues, including self-doubt, fear of failure, or comparisonitis

If you lack confidence or self-esteem

If you’re a perfectionist, or find the challenges of a creative life overwhelming

Or, if you’ve already embarked on the writer’s journey and want to elevate your success

And, you want no-hype, practical tips and easily implementable strategies

. . . then Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More is exactly the right book for you. It will show you that these challenges, obstacles, and desires are a critical part of your success.

If you’d like to make a living from your writing, developing prosperous productivity is the foundation skill from which all else follows.

The ideas described in this book apply to anyone who’s trying to inject some purposeful productivity into their life and work.

In short, this book is for you—whoever you are, whatever you ache to create, and however you define prosperity.

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A heads up…

Some reviewers have been critical of this book because of the references I make to other authors. I have done this mindfully and intentionally, attributing where I can to people whose words have sustained my confidence and boosted my productivity.

In future books, I may heed their challenge and provide solely my own unique contribution, but for now, I wish to share. If you’re the sort of person who will race to Amazon and give this book two-stars read no further. This is not the book for you. But if you want to know what worked for me, who inspired me and why—then Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More has your back! My hope is that you too will benefit from this book of collective wisdom.

Introduction

Focus on being productive instead of being busy.

~ Tim Ferriss, author & millionaire

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So many famous stories of success are about working smarter not harder and achieving your potential. But in many of us, there is a hesitant skeptical part of ourselves that knows, "I probably should be more systematic and organised but what if it cramps my creativity? What if this is the