Start Here: My Story Index & Archive

The best and most recent of what I’ve written on Medium.

Kayla Derstein
4 min readOct 30, 2021

My Top 5 Most Popular Articles of All Time:

12 Ambient Noise Generators for Creative Work

How Music Affects Your Brain (Plus 11 Artists To Listen To At Work)

The Importance Of Slowing Down

How To Find Peace On Rough Days

13 Creatives On Dealing With Disenchantment

Content Archive (In Order of Oldest to Newest):

10 Lofi Music Playlists For Productivity And Motivation

Be Kind To Yourself: 15 Signs And Habits To Use Every Day

How I Get Things Done When I’m Depressed (From a Person With Clinical Depression)

You Have My Permission To Stop Trying To Be Your Best Self

4 Easy Lifestyle Changes That Added More Writing Hours to My Day

How Being Lazy Made Me Better At My Job

Why You Should Set Deadlines For Your Creative Writing (+4 Kinds to Set)

A Conversation With Your Ideal Reader: An Easy Way to Get High-Quality Writing Ideas

5 Alternatives For Writers Who Hate Writing Outlines

The Life You Want is Inside You

How Can You Automatically Improve Your Writing? Use These 3 Tools

How to Fall in Love With Writing Again

Why We’re Drawn to Round Profile Pictures (And How to Make One on Medium)

Every Job Search Resource I Could Find ( And One I Made)

How I Easily Published 4,000 Words in One Week

Answering the 15 Questions You’re Afraid to Ask Your Artsy Friend

I’m Deleting My 46,500-Word Novel And I’ve Never Felt More Free

The Case for Not Planning Your Content: 5 Improvements I Saw Immediately

Do You Really Need a Website? What I Learned From 4 Failed Blogs

This 10-Second Writing Hack Will Improve Your Transitions

7 Signs of Personal Growth That Are More Positive Than They Feel

The Myth of Prolific Alcoholic Writers

Everyone, But Especially Women, Should Get Better at This Kind of Writing

Can We Talk About the Problem with Writing Workshops in 2022?

Patience is a Skill Every Writer Needs

4 Lessons ‘Maid’ Taught Me About Plot and Character Development

How to Stand Out in a Sea of Writers

A Love Letter to My Laptop

8 Digital Magazine Subscription Services That’ll Save You Money in 2021

The Hard Truth About The Excuses We Tell Ourselves

3 Hidden Medium Features Every Writer Should Know

It’s Completely Acceptable to Set Boundaries For Your Creative Work

How I Get on Big Publications While Writing Every Day

It’s Not Fair! How to be Happy for Other Writers Instead of Jealous

How I Accomplish in 20 Hours What Used to Take 40

9 Things to Be Thankful For No Matter What’s Going On

How I Get Through All My Emails, Every Single Day

Growing Old and Looking Back

You Don’t Need to Get Lucky, You Need to Get Serious

How to Come Up With Ideas on a No-Idea Day

Letter From a Time Traveler

Your Idea Isn’t New But You Can Make It Good

Read Time and Word Count: A Quick Reference

It Took Me 20 Years to Realize I Was Having Panic Attacks

The Power of Doing It Anyway

How I Get Publications to Add Me as a Writer

This Writing Style is Completely Underrated

The Worst Thing That Can Happen to a Writer Happened to Me

The Completely Unremarkable Way I Earned 300 Followers in a Month and Hit The 1K Mark

My Favorite Focus Sounds

I’m Not Rich, But I’m Successful

The UX of This App is 10X Better Than Evernote

I Wish I Never Heard This Piece of Goal-Setting Advice

The Schedule Hack I Use to Make Time For All My Projects

My Formula for Generating 80 Topic Ideas Every Week

The Simple Calendar That Helps Me Publish Content Every Day

How I Get Motivated to Write Every Day

I Published Every Day for Nearly 50 Days — Why I’m Quitting Now

Side Hustle Story: I Made Over $500 My First Month as a Dog Walker

You Won’t Be a Good Writer in Your 20s

I’m Finally a Top Writer!

I Was Given The Gift of Depression

The Powerful Creative Process That Helps Me Write Short Fiction Consistently

Further Evidence That Daily Publishing Doesn’t Pay Off

7 Lessons From a Really Hard Week

Why There’s No Such Thing as a Writer Anymore

7 Ways Scammers Trick You With Classic Copywriting Tips

2 Steps to Build a Writing Portfolio With No Experience

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Kayla Derstein
Kayla Derstein

Written by Kayla Derstein

2x Top Writer. I find ways to be enjoyably productive. Passionate about storytelling, personal development, and getting the most out of everything we do.

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