If You Fail To Plan...

There are lots of potential ways to be more disciplined about writing.  The key suggestion I’ve come across is to think of it as your work/business.  In theory this should be easy for me, especially as I’m not “working” at the moment and allegedly I have all my time available for this pursuit!

This post by a fellow writer looks at that idea – http://elizabethducie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/business-start-up-doing-work.html 

Points 3 & 4 painfully challenge me, although I agree with them fundamentally!  I’ve known for awhile that if I’m going to get serious about writing then I need to ring-fence my time, but do I really want to go as far as setting up child-care arrangements or getting a cleaner?  Surely those are hassles (and expenses) that I save myself by not having a “proper job”?

Bullet point 4 cuts to the heart of one of the main reasons why I particularly enjoy not being employed.  I can be flexible with my time, including being part of the Jubilee Food Bank team, getting involved with the council’s Major Incident Response Group and spending time with people that matter to me.

So, how serious am I prepared to get?  What am I willing to give up?  If I want to write then there are going to be sacrifices I’ll have to make.  If I’m not going to give up anything in order to write then I’m going to have to give up the idea of writing instead :-(

Even then, how exactly should I organise my time?  Time management is such a challenge for so many people and we too easily let mundane things get in the way of pursuing our hopes and dreams.  I may not have a "proper job" but I'm constantly busy and rarely stop or sit down.  I don't have spare time just sitting around, waiting to be filled.

One option would be to block out an hour or more at the same time every day, which would quickly become a habit that I could hopefully stick to.  But each day is very different and my life doesn’t work like that.  Something invariably crops up or runs over into that time and it doesn’t happen.  Elizabeth's points 3 and 4 sting again!!

Another possibility I’ve considered is blocking out a whole day a week to just write.  I did that with great success when I was studying an online course a couple of years ago.  But I get bored very easily and although it worked for the course as I could flit between different modules and assignments, I really don’t think I could sit and write for 5 solid hours (at least not yet – perhaps one day I’ll have to!).

In all honesty I've done so much time management training over the years that I don't think that that's my actual problem.  My mental attitude about how much I can fit into my life and what I want to achieve (in reality, rather than dreams!) is the real challenge.  

But my first step is going to be getting back to my old mega-disciplined and organised ways again (flexible and spontaneous can be fun but it’s not very productive!).  Hopefully through effective, even excessive, planning my time and priorities will start to dovetail more.  It may even enable me to “do it all”, at least some of the time!  I feel a good old-fashioned full-week, hour-by-hour planner in Word coming on, with specific writing sessions blocked out - initially, at least, fitting around my existing commitments.  I'll need to remember to include a session for blogging in there though...perhaps I can even manage some eating and sleeping time too :-)