I have been a huge fan of Scrivener for years. I love the freedom it gives me to organize a story however I want it, to color code, label, sort, search and tag my text.

But all of this, of course, can actually hamper productivity if you start letting it run your workflow. You can spend so much time going through your manuscript updating keywords that you forget to actually do any writing. This trap is especially easy to fall into if you, like me, suffer from a serious mental condition called “Self-inflicted Terminal Unjustified Paranoia of Invisible Detractors”, or STUPID for short.

STUPID is a condition where you believe that someone, somewhere is looking over your shoulder and judging what you’re doing to be of no worth, that someone is picking apart your workflow and finds it erratic and inefficient, or that someone will take a look at how you are using your tool of choice and pick all your decisions apart.

If left untreated, STUPID can cause you to dry up, stop being creative, and spend excessive amounts of time worrying about productivity instead of actually being productive.

STUPID is rampant in people who consider themselves internet denizens; people like bloggers, authors, and creative professionals. But STUPID is older than the internet, and has been affecting similar personality types for years. Early warning signs for the onset of STUPID include dithering around with todo list software, pomodoro spreadsheets, and other such things that are meant to help you be more productive. In its advanced stages the victim may need to be given a management style job.

Once a case of STUPID is self diagnosed (and it can only be self-diagnosed; external diagnoses are worthless. ) the treatment is fortunately inexpensive. In mild cases most practitioners recommend a quiet walk followed by some time spent in a free write scenario, where the victim is forced to just keep producing without listening to their internal critic. A standard therapeutic session should last for at least half an hour. This treatment should be continued for life, as it has also been found to be an effective preventative.

Very little of this has to do with Scrivener, of course. I meant to write an article about using Scrivener to actually do productive work, but I got sidetracked thinking about how to use it more productively.