You have carefully crafted your report, blog post, or project proposal, and now it’s time to get other people’s feedback.

Asking for feedback is never easy. Ideally, everyone will rave about how brilliant you are and maybe contribute one or two gems that make the work even better.

Realistically, you know you will receive feedback you don’t want to deal with. But you also know that it should improve the result. And perhaps your workplace requires review cycles or external approvals.

So you steel yourself and send the work out for review or approval, and wait for those responses.

And wait.

[Cue the sound of crickets.]

You need to write an important report or blog post. It’s a task like any other, right? You set aside a block of time and swear not to leave the desk until it’s done.

If you have high standards for your work, you may not be pleased with what you write. Being diligent, you keep going, perhaps banging your head against a metaphorical wall or flashing back to late night papers in college. It takes longer than you hoped to get to a decent draft and the process isn’t fun.

Does this sound familiar?

It gets worse. Because the experience was unpleasant, the next time you have a writing project, you put it off. (Who is eager to do something unpleasant?) Now you’re up against a deadline, perhaps working in the evening or weekend.

Thinking of writing as a single task puts too much pressure on the work and kicks off a vicious cycle that makes you avoid your writing projects. Break that cycle!

An idea for a new project comes to you when you’re in the shower. Or you’re on the way home from work when you think of the perfect words to convince your executive team to fund your initiative.

Breakthrough insights and inspired ideas often appear when we’re far from our desks.

That’s no accident. It’s an artifact of the way that our brains work. In this post, we’ll look at how you can set up your brain to generate insights when you’re doing other things. (It’s like crowdsourcing within your own head. More on that below.)

Successful professional writing starts with clear thinking.

In the rush of deadlines and projects, it’s tempting to jump right in and knock something out. Faster is better, right? Instead, take a moment to set a course before you write.

This post offers a simple, four-question checklist to complete for every work-related project, whether a social media post, a legal brief, or an email to a client. Make it part of your writing process and you’ll find it makes the whole process faster, easier, and more successful.