Scheduling Time
I have to be very self-disciplined with my schedule since I have nobody to answer to but myself. It means outlining clear weekly goals and trying to stick to them as best as possible. The toughest thing about this is that because I’m following so many different leads for work/pay/creative outlets that my weekly schedule is tossed out the window by Monday morning.
While I might plan on say, working at Borders Tuesday morning, and then working out of the home office on Wednesday, I might end up on an unplanned conference call that keeps me from leaving, or end up with a meeting on the other side of town that I hadn’t known would happen. All very productive, but maddening when trying to have clear, set writing time – especially when you throw in late night dealings with India, since our night is their afternoon. It means that many times, I go to bed hours later than planned and then don’t wake up for the early morning writing that I would love to do. With my schedule out of wack, I obsessively try to track my timesheet and hit weekly goals, knowing full well that it’s just not going to happen. There are too many unknowns from week to week to be able to balance the business side of film with writing, reading, and watching movies. Something gives each week, but I still wear myself out trying to prevent that.
I’ve decided on a few new strategies going forward in order to give me some peace of mind.
Writing time is set in stone
This is non-negotiable now. Too often my writing is what loses out to other things going on. I am going to drag myself out of bed in the mornings, and stick to set writing hours in the morning. The problem I have is that I usually chase whatever new issues arise as quickly as possible. That means that if I sit down to start writing, but get an email of an issue that needs addressing, I’ll handle the email first. Before I know it, a few hours of business work have replaced my writing time. Not cool for the writing. If I want to keep building momentum with all of my writing I have to always treat it as a priority. I can always get to my emails later.
Schedule free time
I always forget to do this. My mind is mush by the end of the day, but I’ll tell myself I can squeeze in some late night reading. One, it’s not enjoyable to read as a task when I’m exhausted, and two, I don’t get as much out of it as I should. It defeats the purpose of trying to do more reading if I’m always dozing while I do it. Taking time outs, especially to break the day up between business and creative, makes a huge difference. Knowing that I have some scheduled time to just relax goes a long way in being refreshed for work.
My work day should end.
This is another tough one. I try to squeeze things in (unsuccessfully) from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed. What ends up happening is that I slack off or get distracted in the middle of the day, feel guilty and work late, oversleep, repeat. It’s a vicious cycle. I think the combination of scheduled free time, and knowing that I have a stopping time will make the hours in between much more productive.
In all, I think these new strategies allow me to be more productive instead of constantly trying to stay “busy”. Staying busy just wears me out without accomplishing as much. Hopefully I can apply these ideas and they help make a difference.