Time

[mmerriam]

A question for all my gentle readers.

How do you prioritize your time?

If you are one of the writers on my friends list tell me how you make sure that you get your allotted daily writing time in. How do you manage to not lose precious writing time to the daily things that must get done, such as laundry, eating, and dealing with the myriad stuff that crops up? Do you just give yourself permission to let things go until you've applied butt to chair for at least X amount of time?

If you are not a writer, then tell me what methods you use to prioritize time to make sure you actually get to have some fun (whatever that might be to you) once in awhile. We know that all work and no play leads to running around a haunted hotel while chasing your family with an axe. Since none of you have reached that point, you must able to relax somehow.

In other news, tomorrow at school I'm going to tell Lynn that I plan to start dropping classes, and re-arrange my schedule. It is my hope that the extra couple of hours saved every day will ease the scheduling stress, and will help both careswen and I sleep better.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

How I prioritize my time: very, very badly.

This is not entirely true. Sometimes I manage to put things in the right order. But mostly my writing runs away with me.

When I was first starting a novel, I was newly married (which was a lot more complicated than that phrase expresses, but that's a story for another time). I was in nuclear physics grad school. My commute was two hours a day in the car. And I was writing a book. So we decided that at the end of every day, I would tell Mark what I had done on the book. He wouldn't judge it, he would just listen and occasionally ask questions. If I had done nothing, I still had to report in with that information. This kept me accountable for long enough that the work got really ingrained, and it also kept him involved in a way and gave us some regularly scheduled talking time, which was also both fun and important.

[nomaddervish.livejournal.com]

Pri-o-ri-wha? I'm not familiar with that word...

Sounds like I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum from you. I always seem to be having fun (or at least trying to) when I'm not at work, but don't always do so well with "laundry, eating, and dealing with the myriad stuff that crops up". I occasionally feel like I should do that kind of stuff more consistently than I do, but that feeling usually passes rather quickly.

Time management

[(Anonymous)]

I use deadlines. If something must be done by such and such a date, it gets done (I'm not always sure how, but it does). For example, I'm currently working under a deadline to get a draft of one of my stories ready for critiquing by June 15th, that's the cut-off date for my face to face crit group.

That works for homework too. Paper always seem to get done on time, because I have to have them done by a certain date. I choose not to push my writing during the school year for sanities sake.

Other than that, I do have trouble keeping up with the laundry (though a lack of clothes usually prompts that before I have to go to work naked) and other house type work. And my cat will tell you that I am particularily bad about scheduling enough scritchy time for him.

It also helps that I'm usually more interested in what's going on in my own head than what's going on TV. Now that Sweetie has more evening meetings, I've been using boredom to my advantage.

-Becca-
www.mreauow.com

[pezwitch.livejournal.com]

I don't know.. time in work tends to be dictated by whichever thing is running the most urgently at the moment. Time out of work (IMO) turns me into much more of a procrastinator. I go through spells where things pile up until I just can't stand it anymore and do them (dishes, laundry, etc). I think I let reading and watchig TV take up entirely too much of my brain.

Then again, there are times when I'm hyper productive at home. I guess I just trust that the phases will balance out over time.

[williamofoccam.livejournal.com]

I'm, what's that phrase... pretty super hypersensitive list and goal oriented type of person. Does it mean that I don't have trouble balancing stuff? Of course not, I just get all stressed up about it, but that's a different topic. Here's what I did, and do occasionally again because it makes me feel better. But just a warning I'm a list oriented person.

Often I'll list out things that I need/want to do and group them by 'fun or by choice' and 'need or should do'. Knowing that life is full of surprises these lists need to be kept somewhere I can find them again later.

I then go through the lists and figure out what things off the need are most important right now. Sometimes I number them for importance sometimes not. I know, how whimsical. Then I do the same with the fun list.

I'll use the lists as reminders in a prominent location, or I'll make plans for the week/month to do specific list things. If I'm having a hard time I'll make my projections into the future shorter like planning only a couple days in advance.

The reason to review the list is because there is never enough time to do everything right now, so pick what's important right now. If there are large life changes choose new items to reflect what's important. Working on what's important to you leaves little room for regret because you were doing what you thought was important.

If it's simply the balance between work and fun I try to figure out what things I can combine. Like working on live journal while doing laundry, which in my case the computer is in the basement so I can easily make that work.

I look at my habits and se where I'm wasting time and figure out what I could be doing with that time. If you're a big TV watcher break down the shows that you're watching and question if it or something else is more important to you. Or you could get down to looking at what fun things give you the biggest buzz with the least amount of time spent... or you can ramble like a psychology undergrad who thinks pavlov's dog and behavior modification are the most fascinating things under the sun.

I've got other thoughts but I think I've put too much into this one entry already. In short treat time like money. You only have so much of it to spend. What do you HAVE TO spend it on, and then what do you WANT to spend it on?