Writing Life: Working Out the Work Schedule
Like a lot of writers, I have a lot on my
plate. This year, in addition to being the primary carer of a child, and the
main housekeeper, I am trying to maintain my publishing schedule, fill out the
last third of that schedule, finish my university degree, and decide if I’m
going to take a year to write before going back to work, find a job, or write
full time. Right now, I’m not sure which way I’ll jump, but that last option is
looking better as the year progresses.
I’ve tried to work out a schedule that will
let me do all this, and I started by breaking down what I wanted to do, and
allotting it to part of a daily schedule. It’s taken me a week to see just how
badly this will not work. It’s not because allotting things to each day is a
bad thing; it’s because I just don’t work like that. I work best in a block.
And this makes it difficult for me to break
away to do things that must be done
daily. Things like exercise and language practice. Those can’t be done in a once-a-week block; they have to be done on
a daily basis. The problem with trying to do everything like that, is it takes
me time to adjust between tasks. If I’m writing, I lose the flow. And same if I
am publishing—and that is where mistakes creep in.
While I can work on multiple projects at a
time, I actually need to work on them in two to three hour blocks, or set aside
a particular day of the week for them. Until the week just gone, I didn’t
realise just how strongly I needed to work that way, or how my productivity
would drop if I did not. This week, I’m going to test working in blocks with
only the necessary tasks done daily.
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