Writers! You NEED To Understand Time Management

Time management is the closest a writer can come to superpowers in this reality.

The act of being able to manage and design how you spend your time is absolutely critical for writers.

Knowing what you are going to do and when you’re going to do it allows for creative freedom as you’re worried about what you ‘should’ be doing but rather gives you peace of mind.

Unfortunately, this skill is difficult to possess, in a world where your attention is being bought and traded for advertisement agencies, being able to balance your writing with your other responsibilities is greatly empowering.

Set Goals and Prioritise

There are basically two types of goals;

Long-term goals

and

Short-term goals

Having both long and short-term goals allows for a holistic approach to goal setting and provides a scaffold for you to build your daily routine around.

Long-term goals are obviously goals that you aim to achieve far into the future.

An example of a long-term goal in writing is;

“I aim to have 5 novels published in 10 years from now”

Short-term goals are the opposite. These goals are fragments of long-term goals.

For example;

“I aim to write 1000 words today”

To achieve a long-term goal you regularly achieve short-term goals.

You need to break down your big projects otherwise they seem too foreign and unachievable.

This is key to understanding how you should be spending your time best if you want to move towards a goal.

To recap, you should create a long-term goal for your writing and various short-term goals that allow you to regularly work on achieving your goal.

Creating Goals That ACTUALLY Motivate You as a Creative

If you do this with enough projects it can get messy.

This is where prioritization is handy.

You need to become aware of how you spend your time, I do this by just living my day as I would and at the end of the day journaling on where my time has gone that day.

This will give you an understanding of your current priorities or lack thereof. You should understand that spending 2 hours of your day unintentionally scrolling social media is getting in the way of your dreams and aspirations.

Prioritize your time by order of importance and alignment with your overall goals.

This is the first step in effective time management.

Write Consistently

It’s hard to manage your time as a writer if you lack the discipline to implement your intentions into your life.

A simple way of ensuring discipline is to establish a creative routine.

3 Simple Steps to Build A Writing Routine For Maximum Productivity

Creative routines serve as a when, where, and how long for your writing daily.

Having a consistent time of the day that you will sit down and write allows for you to ensure that although you tweak how you spend your time, the time will ALWAYS be spent writing.

The easiest way to create your writing routine is to set restrictions.

Make the promise to yourself that you will be writing between 10am and 11am or whatever time you choose.

I know that every day I will be writing between the hours of 10pm to 1am, that’s just what works for me.

A good way to find out what times you should be writing is by pinpointing when during the day you are at peak productivity.

What time of the day would you do your best work?

This, often times is based on whether you’re a morning person or a night owl.

I am a night owl. Getting up early in the morning just doesn’t result in a productive mindset as I’m often too sluggish until 12.

Consider your natural energy levels and schedule accordingly.

Time-Effective Techniques

Now you have goals and priorities with your time as well as a regular writing time blocked out, here are some techniques to manage your writing time better.

Distraction Management

The majority of the time you need to manage is that which you are spending unconsciously.

I know if I have easy access to my phone during writing time, I’ll pick up my phone and an hour will pass in a blink of an eye.

We can control for this wasted time by controlling for distractions earlier in the day.

Remove all distractions before you sit down to write, this way no time will go into anything other than writing in your blocked time.

Use Them Apps

There are so many apps that are created for writers just like yourself to eliminate wasted time and increase productivity.

First of all, simply tracking what you do every day in your blocked time can give great amounts of motivation when writing as you want to fill up that tracker with words.

Personally, I use Notion to track how much and how well I am writing daily, this creates incredible amounts of satisfaction as I can clearly see the days that I got stuff and when I didn’t.

Trackers just make me happy.

Another app is the Forest app.

This app is a deep work motivator. Forest tracks the time you spend doing purposeful things and the more time you rack up doing your writing the more plants you get and the goal is to build your own forest of plants.

This app is awesome as not only is it incredibly satisfying to be able to add more plants to your garden the app also reminds you regularly if you use your phone in the designated time for other things.

Both types of productivity apps are awesome with time management.

Pomodoro Technique

If you’ve never heard of the Pomodoro technique it is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo that uses a kitchen timer to break work into intervals, typically in 25-minute increments, separated by breaks.

The Pomodoro technique is so effective as we’re not robots, writing for a long time is exhausting. So the quality of work at the back half of a 4-hour sitting is going to be nowhere as good as that at the first 30 minutes.

Regularly splitting your writing time blocks with breaks, act as mini refreshers every 30 minutes. In this way, your peak performance is constantly achieved.

So, be sure to use the Pomodoro technique to your advantage and witness the boost in productivity of your writing.

In Conclusion. . .

In conclusion, mastering time management is crucial for writers seeking to balance creativity with productivity.

Remember to set clear goals, break down tasks, and prioritize effectively. Creating a realistic writing routine tailored to your peak productivity time is essential.

Additionally, adopting techniques like the Pomodoro Technique can significantly boost focus.

Each writer’s journey is unique, so don’t hesitate to experiment with different time management techniques

In your writing journey remember that time management is a skill that evolves. Stay open to refining your methods, stay committed to your goals, and watch your productivity soar.

Happy Writing!

Here’s another post like this one about why you should journal every day as a writer;

Why You Should Journal Every Day as a Writer