Time management is at best an optimistic wish and at worst a lie.
For starters, time isn’t real. But, in more practical terms, while clocks might be real and dictate our lives, things change. Constantly.
Even those of us who have strict schedules see those schedules derailed. When you’re a writer trying to fit your writing in around the rest of life – kids, other family, day jobs, social life, exercise, rest, low energy days, etc. – that means our writing plans are also thrown around at the whims of life.
I thrive on routine and habit and work best when I know what’s happening next. But I also live in the reality of a modern world (with kids!), so that routine needs flexibility in order for us all to stay sane and healthy.
I used to have a militaristic schedule where I would force the most out of every minute. Yeah, I also ended up with anxiety taking over my life, burned out and laid out by a host of psychosomatic syndromes related to an over-stressed nervous system.
These days, my days have time points. They revolve around my kids – school start and finish, dinner, bedtime. In between those times, I make it up as I go. I call it Creative Scheduling.
Creative scheduling doesn’t necessarily involve actually being creative. It means working whenever you can on whatever you can, however you can with a basic structure of time, and working in a way that aligns with your goals and values.
I know what I want from my writing life, and so long as I’m making some kind of progress on most days in some area of writing and creativity that will get me to my career goals, I call it a win.
Principles Of Creative Scheduling
- Life is never static.
- Define your time points (and let them change on days when they do).
- Define your values and goals.
- Go with what feels right in any moment that will get you to your goals in a way that matches your values.
- Think long term about your writing goals. Know what needs to happen to get your project finished. When you have the time and energy, do the Big Tasks. When you don’t, do the Little Tasks.
Life is an ocean of calm and storms. Creative scheduling lets you surf that sea, still getting you where you want to go but not drowning when a wave takes you into an unexpected direction.
