Time Management Tools
Understanding Your Top 3 Priorities
The top 3 priorities can change based on the person. For me, I like to try to think that I put self care as my number 1 priority. However, I think it is very closely followed by family. Then, those two are followed by writing. If you want to go a little bit further with this, you could do top 5 instead, but I wouldn’t go further than that just cause you want to keep this list simple and in the back of your mind.
Here are my top 5 priorities:
Self-Care
Family
Writing
Chores
Marketing
Blocking Off Time
Once you have your priorities set, you can block off some time to get done your writing. These are times that don’t interfere with the priorities above writing. For instance, during the weekdays, I have dinner with my husband so I try not to focus on writing during the nights that he is home. Now, this doesn’t mean that I can’t work on my manuscript at all during the week. It just means that I don’t expect myself to get anything done on those days. If I do, that is great, but not expected. Saturday mornings have been my best writing time. I focus on self care Friday night after my 9-5 job so that I feel refreshed and ready to go Saturday morning to work on my book.
I have found blocking out time to write not only helps your brain focus on it once you get into the routine, but it also helps let others know that you are busy. During NaNoWriMo in November, I learned how valuable uninterrupted time was with my creative process. There were a lot of time that I felt motivated to write and got interrupted by life or dinner or any number of things. This put a complete halt to my creative thinking and made it harder to come back to it later and remember what I was working on.
Setting Realistic Expectations
This one is third on the list, but isn’t any less important than the above. When writing, you want to feel some sense of accomplishment in what you are getting done. However, if you say, “I am going to write 3000 works this Saturday” and you know that you have never written that much in a single day before, when you don’t hit that goal, it can put you down. I try to set different goals that I know I can hit and sometimes I will have another goal I am striving for.
A great example of this was NaNoWriMo in November. The goal was to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Before starting this, I knew that I had only ever written about 22,000 words in a single month. There was no way that I could guarantee getting up to 50,000. Instead, I said that 50,000 would be great, but I would be happy with myself if I wrote 30,000 words. This was a goal that wouldn’t be easy but seemed a lot more doable, and at the end of November I was able to hit 30,000 words.
This gave me a great sense of accomplishment and I didn’t feel discouraged not hitting the 50,000 words.
My biggest issue with setting unrealistic expectations is when I set a deadline for a completed manuscript. Editing has been easier to set deadlines for, but completing a first draft has been a lot harder to predict when it will be done.
Understanding that things happen
Which brings me right into my next topic. When it comes to time management, you could do everything right, but still not get your manuscript done because things happen. You might decide two-thirds of the way through a book that you don’t like where it is going and change the entire thing (which I have done before). There is no way to predict everything that will happen. You might get sick or hit some writers block that you have to work your way out of. There is no way of knowing.
New Tools to Try
There are many different tools out there that you can try to help manage your time and your goals. My most used tools is a planner (one that I make myself) and making lists.
I have also used daily schedule planners. These were beneficial when it came to days that I had to myself to make sure I scheduled breaks and making sure I got everything done on my list of things I had to get done for that day. However, I have not found this useful for day to day use. Only on my writing days.
There are also many online programs or suggested methods that can be used. The important thing is finding something that works for you and sticking to it.
