There’s an irony to this, in that I’m writing it when I am on deadline for three separate columns, there’s a draft savourites in the next tab along and I’m in a phase of book-writing where the guilt about not getting words down looms large and foul-smelling. This newsletter is, indeed, a literal form of the kind of procrastination its contents hope to banish.

However, the fact that I’m in such a swell of this kind of thing at the moment suggests it might be useful to you, too. And while I use them to help me write, I think they’d work for other things you need to get done, whether that’s jobs around the house or tackling the gross things in your inbox.

The more I write (16 years now, a full teenager of writing) the more I realise that - for me, at least - the words aren’t the hard thing. It’s all the stuff around them that make it difficult. It’s akin to when lovely Adrienne of Yoga with Adrienne fame congratulates you for selecting your yoga video and pressing play and getting on the mat because, well, once you’re there you’re probably going to do the session. I feel flat when I feel I’ve not cracked something, or when I’ve done something else instead of the words, or when I worry that I won’t make the deadline. But get me to the desk and I can usually cough something up.

So, here are ways that I find help in getting me to the desk...