I love to do research for a post – it is my favorite part.I can spend lots of time doing it because I like it so much. I can always find something I need to research while I am writing. It is the biggest problem in my writing life. Research is important – extremely important. But writing is just as important. Just don’t do both at the same time. Why? There are so many reasons:

• When you stop writing to research something, you break your writing flow! When you do that you lose your train of thought and your writing speed drops!
• Researching can be another form of procrastination. You procrastinate on writing with something you enjoy more and make yourself BELIEVE that it is OK because you are working on your page or post. The truth is that you should either be researching or you writing (or you editing for that matter) – ONE THING AT A TIME.
• Once you stop writing and go out on the net, you find yourself also doing other things. Yes, you go off and check your email, buy that additional toy for your pet, look for the perfect pencil (I am an office supply fanatic), whatever you find your mind flitting to. Once you start surfing the net it is so easy to distract yourself.

Here are the keys to ELIMINATING researching while you are writing.

• Do your research first. After all, you need to know what you are writing about so it makes sense to research it first!
• Put your research into one document, even the document you are writing. That way it is handy for you to look up the things you want WITHOUT going to the web. If you have numbers, quotes, etc. that you are going to need, put them in the document before you start.
• If you are missing something, make a note of that in your document and look it up later. Or you can just type a string of question marks (???)
• MOST IMPORTANT: Disconnect your computer/iPad or whatever you are writing on from the Internet while you are writing. That required extra step of reconnecting to the Internet can be all you need to stop yourself from being distracted by the web and you won’t get those fascinating reminders that you have mail!

So research first and then write!