This is the first in a series of posts where I’m coaching you on one of the biggest challenges writers say they face: time.
It comes up in nearly every conversation with a writer, whether in a group or one-to-one: “I don’t have time to write.”
Their deep longing to compose thoughtful, focused prose runs up against scrunched schedules that squeeze out creative effort. It seems they have nothing more than cracks or crevices of time to sit at the computer and can’t focus long enough to write what they want to say.
Worse, they give up, and the project remains unwritten, living only in their head.
Don’t let it be you.
Value the Work
If you want to write, you must first value the project and yourself enough to figure out a solution. Your writing is worth the effort of figuring this out. You are worth it.
Do you believe that?
Some people live as if their writing isn’t worth it, unaware of how their time is slipping away from day to day.
Where Does the Time Go?
Honor the work and yourself by discovering the truth about where your time goes. That’ll come when you log your activities. You won’t be guessing; hour by hour you’ll end up with facts to inform a solution—a plan—for prioritizing your message.
For one week, approach your days like lawyers and freelancers do: log your time as if it’s all billable hours.
As Annie Dillard reminds us, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”1 We owe it to ourselves to figure out where our time goes to get a clear picture of how we spend our lives.
Here are suggestions for how to track your time.
Dedicated Time Trackers to Find Time to Write
Use a dedicated time tracker tool like Toggl or Clockify to log tasks and projects. Or pull out a stopwatch and piece of paper to write down the time and what you’re doing until you switch to something else. Increase your awareness of what gets that 30 minutes or hour of your life. It’s worth noticing and noting.
And it might reveal windows for writing. The message you’ve been putting off deserves at least a portion of your day, and time tracking is the first step toward sorting out where it might fit.
Interstitial Journaling
Another approach to tracking time is interstitial journaling. When my day seems to be slipping away, I pull out a notebook and pen or a digital planner to write the time, the task, and a line or two about what I’m thinking and feeling as I complete one and choose another.
Interstitial journaling might take an extra 30 seconds than simply clicking a category in a time tracker app, but it’s easy to do.
Grab a journal that can travel with you throughout the day or use a notes app on your phone, and see how an interstitial journal dives into more than your activities—as you express those feelings and opinions, like, “Why does it take so long to sort my email?” You’ll gain valuable insights with this approach.
Let the Calendar Tell the Story
Not into journaling? Document your days in detail using a digital or analog calendar.
I like to plan my days by creating blocks on a digital calendar for the activity I intend to focus on. When I finish, I adjust that block to reflect how long it actually took me to finish. Then, thanks to color-coding, I end up with an at-a-glance visual of how I spend my days.
Because I use a digital calendar, I’m vague about the details for privacy reasons (another vote for pen and paper), but seeing my life unfold on a calendar has been instructive, showing pockets to slip in writing sessions.
How You Spend Your Days
Test one of these ideas for a week and you’ll learn where your time goes. My hope is you’ll spot openings and opportunities where you could have been writing—and where you can begin to write in the weeks ahead.
See and seize those opportunities. If time tracking reveals you’re devoting part of your day to an activity you could delete from your life (or delegate), do it.
Get rid of anything that doesn’t belong in order to do the thing only you can do: write.
Resources
To pursue publishing, you’ll need to become book-ready
Book-Ready Writers offers the best of all my coaching in one comprehensive, 12-month program so writers can craft quality book proposals, build their platform, improve their writing skills, and work alongside others so they become the book-ready writers that agents and publishers are looking for.
Footnote:
- Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. HarperPerennial, 1990.
