Outsource Your Non-Fundraising Brain

Writing fundraising copy takes concentration and focus. There are a lot of elements, strategic and creative, that have to be accounted for as you write. It takes up a lot of your headspace.

Ari Meisel, author of "Less Doing, More Living," says you'd be able to stay more focused and do better work if you could free your mind of mundane-but-important chores, tasks and errands that eat up your time and attention. Ari cured himself of Crohn's disease using a strict regimen of exercise, nutrition and yoga, so he knows something about eliminating distractions and staying on task.

The idea is that there's a limit to the number of tasks, chores, responsibilities and decisions you can manage before mental and decision fatigue set in (if you don't think these things matter, check out what happened to these prisoners). And the more extraneous stuff you can take off your plate, the more mental and emotional energy you can devote to your work. So Ari offers up a long list of services, mostly online, you can use to manage the little things so you can stay focused on the big ones.

He calls it outsourcing your brain. Some of it seems a little mushy, but there are quite a few tools that could help make a writer's life easier. Here are just a few:

Outsource your research. If you only use one idea from this list, make it Evernote. It's a free suite of software that lets you take notes, archive, organize and access them from nearly every device you use. A "note" can be a piece of formatted text, a URL, a photo, a voice memo or a handwritten "ink" note. If you use a Smartpen you can link it directly to Evernote too. It also has a separate download called Web Clipper that sends any Web page into your Evernote file.

Outsource your inspiration. Ideas come at the most unexpected times. And often the most inconvenient. Because great ideas really do come to you in the shower, there's Aquanote, the waterproof notepad that lets you capture inspiration even when you're soaking wet.

Or try keeping a Writer's Block on your desk. There are plenty of books of writing prompts out there, but none are better — or more fun — than this little three-inch cube of ideas. It's got street cred too. Many of the ideas come from workshops and classes by writers like, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving, Elmore Leonard and others.

Outsource your tedious projects. This one's just crazy. Fiverr is a site full of freelancers who'll do all kinds of small, creative jobs ... for $5. Need someone to design a cover for your mix tape? Five dollars. Write the "About Us" page for your website? Five dollars. Do a voice-over? Five dollars. A pretty woman to stand in front of a scenic backdrop in Singapore and hold up any sign you choose? Yep. Five dollars. Even if you don't use it, you have to check out the site.

Outsource your project organizing. If you're working on a book or other big, complex assignment, take a look at the writing program Scrivener. It keeps the writing process simple and lets you organize in several ways. You can create chapters and sections, post notes on a bulletin board, rearrange any part of your project on a whim, track your research, clear the screen of distractions while you write, and more. It's not the most intuitive system, but it's easy to learn, flexible and best of all costs $45 — a fraction of what a lot other professional writing software suites charge.

Outsource your online life — or part of it anyway — with IFTTT. IFTTT stands for "If this, then that," and it lets you create scenarios so if one thing happens online, another thing happens automatically. For example, if something you want to follow (say, the Outside Counsel blog, for instance) shows up on you RSS feed, then IFTTT will automatically send it to your Facebook or Twitter account, or wherever you like. I haven't tested this yet, but if it works as advertised, it could take a lot of attention-killing work off the table for you.

You can also outsource your chores with TaskRabbit. For non-virtual, actual tasks, TaskRabbit will help you find someone to do just about anything from organizing your office files to fixing your sink. There's also a site called OneReceipt that will collect, manage and organize the receipts for every purchase you make. It can group the purchases by category, issue monthly spending reports, and track shipments and returns. It will also let you keep separate records for personal and business spending.

If you're interested in importing this kind of efficiency into your life, check out the book. There's a lot more there. Writing is complex enough without having "a hundred decisions, and a hundred visions and revisions" from your everyday life crowding your brain. So you don't have to be a hyper-productive workaholic to see the benefits of managing your creative time more efficiently.