Time Management

Writers, have you discovered the Pomodoro technique? #amwriting #timemanagement

/ Deborah Jay / Debby Lush / 41 Comments

Are you a full time writer?

I’m not, so like a lot of others, I have to fit my writing time around my full time business. And my business is VERY full time – I train and judge competition dressage horses at National and International level. It’s a fabulous job, but very time consuming, not to mention sometimes exhausting.

This is me in my day job

When people glibly tell me that there is always time to be found in the work day, I know they have NO idea what my life is like. I can often be on the road by 7am, and not home until 10pm, having been either driving or working the entire time. Please tell me where I am supposed to find time to write in that schedule?

I’m not complaining, no sir, I’m just making a point. Not everybody’s life lends itself to a regular writing routine. Mine certainly doesn’t.

So what is my point?

Well, I recently followed a short writing course, largely because it had a great module on plotting (guess who is trying to learn more about plotting vs pantsing?). But what it also had, was a section on time management.

My first thought was, ‘here we go again, I’ve heard it all before’.

But I hadn’t! This course introduced me to the POMODORO TECHNIQUE.

If you haven’t come across it yet, it is a time management approach developed in the late 1980s, and named after the Pomodoro kitchen timer.

 The reason I found this so useful?

Because I have always felt that there was no point starting to write unless I had at least a clear hour available. Anything less than that seemed to me to be unproductive, and I hate to get started only to find I have to give up.

The nub of the Pomodoro technique, though, is that you work for exactly 25 minutes. Not more, and not less.

If you have that magic hour free, then you can fit two sessions in, with a small gap in the middle for coffee making or similar.

I guess, now I think about it, that this is at least partially based on the knowledge that we (humans) can only concentrate fully for 20 minutes at a time, so the 25 minutes stretches that just a touch, followed by the short break, and then back for another 20 (or 25) minutes work.

What it has meant for me, personally, is that my next book is coming along much quicker than previous ones, because I can often find 25 minutes spare, where I might have to wait days to find one of those precious hour gaps.

It has enabled me to give myself permission to write for just 25 minutes, and without guilt that I didn’t get that full hour of work in.

Crazy, huh? But it’s working for me.

I’ve finally realised that my one hour rule is yet another of those dreaded procrastinations we writers are often so prone to.

How about all of you, how do you manage your time?

Even if you are a full time writer, with all the guff that goes with it these days, how do you arrange your productive writing sessions?

Does anyone else have a favoured minimum writing time?

Deborah Jay

Mystery, magic and mayhem

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#MidWeekPOV #amwriting #wwwblogs How I Write Part One

/ Marcia Meara / 37 Comments

Picture-13

In the interest of better time management and maximizing my writing output, I’ve read a lot of articles and books on how other writers do it. Over and over, I’ve read the first thing you should do every morning is write, to the exclusion of anything else. Most say they take their cup of coffee (Oh, look! They DID make an exclusion, after all. 😀 ) and head for their computer/typewriter/legal tablet (shudder), and start writing. No checking their blogs, no answering emails, nothing to put a damper on the morning’s inspiration and output. To that, I say, balderdash! Tommyrot! And, I don’t theenk so! At least not for me. Continue reading →

#MidWeekPOV – Finding Time To Write – #wwwblogs #amwriting

/ Marcia Meara / 42 Comments

Einstein

Running slightly late today, because I’ve been having the mulligrubs, as my grandmother used to call it. Basically, I’ve been frowning, scowling, muttering, and otherwise grinching about the house, contemplating the unfairness of the universe in ignoring what I want to do with my time, and what I’m actually required to do with it. Or at least, what I think I’m being required to do, which might be different. Or not. 🙂

So for my weekly ration from my Point of View, here’s this. Many, if not most, of you guys are writers, just as I am. Or just as I’m trying to be. Writing is a solitary pursuit that swallows time whole, like a python eating dinner . . . or like my piebald dachshund eating pretty much anything that doesn’t eat him first.

Writing requires hours upon hours of sitting at the computer, pounding on the keyboard (or the desk, itself, if your Muse has deserted you), and otherwise being actively engaged in doing something that pretty much looks like doing nothing to the casual observer.

What writing doesn’t require is a mile-long list of things to interrupt your day’s work. Laundry, taking the dogs out, grocery shopping, taking the dogs out, vacuuming, taking the dogs out. You get my drift. The flotsam and jetsam of household chores and day-to-day errands. It also doesn’t require having to leave town for days at a time, even when it’s for something you want to do and know you’ll enjoy. Or taking endless phone calls from people who know you are writing, yet really need to talk about their relationship problems, string theory,  or the meaning of life.

I’m not saying ALL of the above is happening to me right now, or even that it’s anyone’s fault that some of it is. I’m not saying I’m being made miserable by any of it, either. I’m just saying that what isn’t happening is very much writing. If I’m going to meet my goal of ten books in five years, I have to continue to produce two books a year. And I can do that. But only if I have more days of actual writing, and fewer days of life’s interruptions.

At my age, I don’t have decades to tell my stories, and I really want to tell them. So I’m trying to find a balance that will allow me to do things I must do, and at least some of the things I want to do, without feeling frustrated that my current WIP is nowhere near as far along as it should be at this point.

My question to you good readers is, how do you deal with this? And is there any way at all to convince other people you are really, TRULY, working while sitting at the computer, and not diddling around on Pinterest, checking out things on MeetYourSexyNeighbor.com,  or playing Candy Crush? I need to find a way to mesh my writing schedule with the rest of my life, without hurting other people, neglecting my house to the point of having the State Board of Health condemn it, or leaving myself walking around with a PERMANENT case of the mulligrubs.

What say you? Inquiring minds wanna know! 🙂