Part of my New Year’s
resolution is to write more. I have
several WIPs at various levels of completion that require my attention without
disruptions, interruptions and distractions.
Of course I have the attention span of a two year old and although I
don’t have ADD, I can act like it sometimes – look shiny! With all of that in mind, I figured that what
I need to do is work on time management.
This is how my evenings usually
go:
·
I get home between 8:00 and 8:30 pm every night
after travelling 1 ½ hours from work.
The first thing I do after checking my snail mail is start working on dinner –
that can take about an hour.
·
9:30 – 10:00 pm I’m eating dinner.
·
10:00 – 10:15 pm I tidy up a bit – how much
clean up depends on how tired I am.
·
10:15 – 11:15 Check e-mail. Lately, I’ve been exhausted and under the
weather so I haven’t kept up with my e-mails, newsletter subscriptions, blog
subscriptions, etcetera so they’re piling up in my inbox.
·
11:15 – 11:45 pm I take shower.
·
11:45 – 12:00 am Figure out what I’ll be wearing
the next day because I’m not a morning person and I’m usually a brainless
zombie in the mornings.
·
12:00 – 12:30 am Visit some of the blogs I
follow (didn’t realize I follow so many!)
·
12:30 am Research whatever topic has grabbed my
interest lately. Another of my resolutions is to eat more raw fruits &
vegetables – generally eat healthier (e.g.: Organic & Non-GMO verified
foods, Vegetarian foods, Raw foods, etc.).
·
1:00 am Yawning, I go to bed.
Unlike others, I can’t write
in the mornings. I’m NOT a morning
person and my brain is still snoozing before 12:00 pm. The only way I can get any writing in, is if
I skip a lot of the normal routine things like making dinner, cleaning the
house (not that I do that much cleaning anyway), going to sleep at a somewhat
normal hour. I write on the weekends but
this isn’t enough to complete any projects.
What can I do to get some writing in without resorting to drinking too
much coffee and picking up smoking as a habit?
The only thing I can think of
to do at the moment is this: I’ll stop
checking e-mail every day. Instead I’ll
check it every other day. I’ll end up
with more in my inbox which will take me longer to go through but it’s got to
be done so I can write more. I will designate a day during the week to write so
there will be no cooking dinner. That saves about an hour and 45 minutes which
I can use for writing! In addition to
that, I won’t check e-mail on that day which will save another hour. So the tally is now two hours and 45 minutes
at my disposal. Wednesday nights might
be perfect to do this because it’s the middle of the week; I’ll pick up some
takeout food that night on my way home.
From now on, I will refer to Wednesday as “Write Day” instead of “Hump
Day”.
I will continue to write on
Saturdays. Fridays are iffy when it
comes to writing because I like to catch up on programs that I watch online,
surf a few vlogs that I follow on YouTube and/or read.
Sundays are “cleaning” day in my house but I will try to sneak in some
writing as well. That’s all I have for
now but I will incorporate these changes into my schedule as of next week.
