THE ETERNAL PROBLEM OF TIME MANAGEMENT FOR A WRITER

People ask me questions (at my invitation) on Facebook and this was one. I have to admit this query stumped me at first because who really thinks they can manage time? But then I started to think about it and tick off everything I’ve written. It will be 20 years in September that I started my writing career. Right now my 8th book, a novel called Love Children, is with an editor and I’m writing a proposal for my 9th book Survival Guide, which will be a manual to share my personal health and wellness program with you. It will be done in less than eight weeks (that’s the plan). So OK, I must have some methods of managing time lurking there even if I’m not formally aware of them.

My primary goal every day is to begin the day with meditation. I find if I don’t meditate immediately then fires take control of my schedule. If I do meditate then I’m better able to extinguish fires during the workday. I don’t need coffee to wake up so I meditate before I leave the bedroom.

I schedule exercise (usually yoga) on my calendar. If it’s not on my calendar then when something comes up it might bump yoga off my day, and I don’t want that to happen. Because I’m a health and wellness writer I factor yoga into my work day with impunity!

I work every day, even on the weekends. I rarely skip a day. I may not work the entire day, but I get something done. I frequently work the entire weekend. Fortunately I’m in love with what I do. But I don’t always write. I would like to write every day, but I’m an industry of one so I have to do everything, including grocery shopping, bills, cooking. In the spirit of disclosure, I do have a housekeeper who comes once a week, an assistant who runs errands for me once a week, and now that one of our dogs is too old to give me a workout, a dog walker comes 5 days a week.

When I have time alone on the weekends I don’t “work,” I write. That is pleasure and those are wonderful stolen hours.

Every week begins with a To Do list. This list runs the gamut from personal to business. It’s all mixed up. The To Do list would take over my writing schedule if I didn’t create artificial deadlines. I know exactly what trajectory any given project is on and what state it needs to be in by a certain date. Then I set another deadline. This works well for airline travel because I have edited all of my manuscripts on airplanes. But you have to plan ahead and have the manuscript in a prepared state.

Because I create deadlines there are days when I simply have to devote the entire day to writing just to make progress. I have to read a manuscript through in total quiet without interruptions so that I can gauge its flow and continuity. That takes scheduling. On those days bathroom breaks and food runs to the kitchen are the only interruptions allowed. But it’s so much fun.

I only make business calls during the day. I’m not a phone talker by nature and don’t enjoy talking on the phone so I generally keep calls to the point and move it along. The phone can chew up a lot of a writer’s day. The same is true with the Internet. It’s very easy to get caught up in emails and Facebook.

Because I’m doing FB videos now, that takes a lot of my time. It requires “stage” makeup or I’m washed out. So just getting myself organized, and the camera set up with acceptable lighting takes a lot of time and then it takes time to upload the videos to YouTube. So I generally turn back to whatever I’m writing while the video is uploading. This sounds a lot like mult-tasking though it’s not. I’ve come to the conclusion that multi-tasking doesn’t really result in the optimal completion of tasks. You get stuff done but not in the spirit of excellence.

Right now I’m working on my proposal for Survival Guide. I’m thinking about it all the time, when I wake up and when I go to bed. I take the last draft with me to bed and read and edit it before I go to sleep. After I meditate, I take my laptop to the kitchen for breakfast and download emails and FB messages. I blow through them as fast as I can. Then I eat breakfast and I’ll work for several hours on my writing. I attend to emails and FB messages in between writing when I want to clear my mind of what I’m working on so I can have a fresh look at it.

I don’t go out very often at night. That would probably not appeal to a lot of people, but I like to go to bed early so I can be fresh the next day. I’m dedicated to my lifestyle of work and accomplishments. I haven’t been much of a vacation taker since I started my writing career. That needed to change for my health, sanity, and productivity, so the last few summers we’ve spent 4-6 weeks on Martha’s Vineyard. Last summer was a near total bust. I started working on my memoir Hippie Chick but mostly I goofed off the entire time. It was OK and it didn’t make me paranoid because I knew that I would crank in September. And since that time I have not stopped. But if that kind of slacking derails you, then I wouldn’t recommend it.

Because of my dedication to my work, I’m not a crazy social animal. I love entertaining, but I keep it to a reasonable amount of time. Socializing is a reward for work done, but at the same time there are times when I can’t stand the sight of my laptop.  So socializing purges me of any pent up discontent.

Every single social, travel, or extracurricular event, book, magazine, newspaper, TV, movie, play, or opera is fodder for my writing. I never stop making mental or actual notes. Keeping my mind active saves me time because I never have to think, now what? I have so much creative stuff at my disposal that sometimes it builds up to a toxic level and that’s when I can’t sleep. So I have to monitor my drive a little.

One detail that I have always given priority to is making connections. I spend time networking regularly. I spend a lot of time sending review books out, scheduling radio interviews, preparing for interviews and talks and rehearsing. And in the beginning I always wrote thank you notes (on real stationary not emails) to agents who rejected a manuscript. They took time out of their busy schedules to read my work and I felt an acknowledgement is only polite. Now I don’t really get much information on who reads what because my agent does it for me. But if there is an instance where I have direct contact with a person who gives me any amount of time, I thank that person with a real note.

As I write I’m getting a pedicure. It’s taken me 45 minutes to write this. I planned it that way. I plan my entire work schedule. So I guess in a nutshell my time management strategy is all about planning.

Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,

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