Last year at about this time, I suggested you set some goals for the new year. How did you do? What went right? Take time to celebrate your successes. That will give you hope and inspiration for the future. It will also help you set new goals that stretch you. …
Tag: Time Management
Take Back Your Time
We all have time. Every week contains 168 hours, and they are yours to spend as you chose. The choices you make determine what you accomplish. Your schedule is packed. The question is, with what? Your calendar will reveal what your real priorities are. Making room on your calendar for …
Put Boundaries Around Your Writing Time
When we talked about flow, I mentioned Mark McGuinness’s advice to ring-fence your time. The question then is—how? Actually, your first question might be—as it was for one student who took my time management seminar a few months ago—what does that even mean, “ring-fence your time”? A ring fence is …
Schedule a Day of Rest
Regardless of your religious persuasion, I encourage you to take a sabbath. Give yourself one day off a week. Doesn’t really matter which day. In The Art of War for Writers, James Scott Bell recommends taking one day a week completely off and not writing at all: “Taking a day …
Schedule Activities and Downtime
We talk a lot about scheduling time for writing. But here are some other things to consider building into your schedule so you can save time and increase productivity: Morning devotional or meditation. All my life I have risen regularly at four o’clock and have gone into the woods and …
Review Your Progress at the End of the Day
One time management practice I advocate is this: When you do a thing that wasn’t on your to-do list, write it down anyway and cross it off. This helps you assess what you actually did. Often when we get to the end of the day, we feel as if we …
Choose the Right Time Management Tools
The tricky thing about choosing the “right” time management tools is that the right tool for me may be the wrong tool for you. And the tool for one task may be inappropriate for another. So I’ll give you some options. Test them out and keep looking for others. Cal …
Get Your Info Out of Your Head
You’re very smart, but you can’t rely on your brain to keep track of all the things you need or want to do. To stay organize and on track, you must get ideas out of your head and into writing. Your brain is full of creative ideas, and some of …
How to minimize distractions
Remember the “distractions” quadrant of the Urgent/Important grid? Distractions are the grains of sand in our rock jar. Usually they’re small, and they take time we’re unaware of. A time and motion study can help you identify them. Allowing other things to impinge on your writing time may seem practical …
Celebrate Your Small Wins
It’s good to have big hairy audacious goals. And writing a book certainly is one of those. The problem is, it takes a very long time to accomplish. If you only focus on the end goal and not on the incremental achievements, you’ll feel like you’re hiking up a mountain …