It’s becoming evident that time management is an obsession of mine. As a work at home writer with a busy family, it has to be–and the more I learn about time management, the more I enjoy it.
Even now, over the holidays.
It’s loud, to be sure. The baby gabs away at his dad, the television blares (my father-in-law can’t hear it otherwise), the dog whines to be let outside and barks to be let in. The phone rings, and a teenage daughter gets the giggles over some unseen antics of the friend who called.
In the middle of this good-natured chaos, I try to work. It’s difficult, but not impossible. Here’s how I got things done today:
Days like this aren’t the best for phone calls. I save them for quieter times and focus instead on communicating through e-mail. Since most of my work is done electronically anyway, I hardly feel like I’m fudging.
Between every other activity, I check my social networking sites and have a little fun there. That’s partly because it’s the holidays (and I can). I love talking with other writers. It helps keep me motivated, and when I open up a new file I have at least a few minutes of fire under me.
Rather than trying to focus on the flow of writing itself, I use these days to outline what I want to say. Once a basic outline is written, I break it out several times until I have a fairly detailed idea of what the draft will look like. Then I move my words from outline format to a simple text format that I’ll use as a first draft.
On days like this, I can’t expect perfection. This draft will be subject to serious editing and re-writing, but when I get to those quieter days, I’m that much further ahead. The writing from these outlines often isn’t very elegant, but it’s amazing how prolific I can be when I’m working one idea at a time. The copy editing can come later.
Occasionally I come to a point where I do need to focus, and then I use headphones to permeate the background of my mind with relaxing music. This seems to wash away the other, more jarring sounds that otherwise interrupt my train of thought.
And when that train of thought just chugs around the bend, when all else fails–I get up and shut my office door.
Gwen Bristol 