I have always been a person who creates and adheres to schedules. I’m sure a lot of that is because, until this year, I spent my entire life in schools. I went from elementary to middle to high school to college to teaching without ever taking a year off. All of those things require schedules. While in college I also worked in retail. The manager actually put me in charge of making the schedules for our department for a little while. I’ve helped with countless school schedules. There’s something about scheduling that just makes sense to me.
I was talking to a writer friend not long ago and we had a discussion about scheduling your writing and keeping yourself from being distracted. This led to me to develop a few tips for creating a schedule for your time if you’re a writer. Here are those tips. Take what you need, maybe they’ll help!
- Schedule writing time in minutes, even if you track it in words.
- Set aside time for something you enjoy, like reading, otherwise it’ll always be the thing you put off.
- Sort household chores into categories by minutes it takes to complete them. That makes them easier to squeeze in when you have, for example, 15 free minutes.
- Schedule breaks. Even if you end up not needing them they’re great for days when you run over on a different task.
- Have a distinct start and stop time to your working day. Hold yourself to it.
That’s it! Feel free to ask questions or drop your own tips in the comments section.
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