What to Do When?

In today’s hectic world, it seems there’s never enough time. But maybe that’s because you’re doing some things at the wrong times.  What if you could pack more into each day by doing everything at the optimal time?

Multi-tasking has caused old-fashioned time management to become obsolete. Research suggests that paying attention to your body clock—and its effects on energy and alertness—can help pinpoint the different times of day when you perform your best at specific tasks, from resolving conflicts to thinking creatively.

Most people organize their time around everything but their body's natural rhythms. Do the demands of freelance writing, kids’ schedules, and social events frequently dominate your day? Inevitably there will be a clash with your body's circadian rhythms of waking and sleeping.

As difficult as it may be to align your schedule with your body clock, it may be worth it to try, because of possible health benefits. Disruption of circadian rhythms has been linked to such problems as diabetes, depression, dementia and obesity. When your body's master clock can synchronize functioning of all its metabolic, cardiovascular and behavioral rhythms in response to light and other natural stimuli, it gives you an edge.

When it comes to doing projects that require intense thought, most adults perform best in the late morning. As your body temperature starts to rise just before you awake and continues to increase through midday, your working memory, alertness and concentration gradually improve. Taking a warm morning shower can jump-start this process.

But your ability to focus and concentrate typically starts to slide soon after Noon. Most people are more easily distracted from Noon to 4 P.M. Also, your alertness tends to slump after eating a meal—the more food you eat, the deeper the slump. Do you find yourself getting sleepy around 2 P.M.? You might want to consider taking a short nap.

Studies have shown that fatigue may actually boost your creative abilities. You may find that tackling problems that require open-ended thinking works best in the evening when you’re tired. Perhaps that’s why many writers get flashes of insight before going to bed.

Of course, everyone's body clock isn't the same, making it even harder to synchronize natural rhythms with daily plans. Research shows that some people operate on either of two distinctive timetables. Morning people tend to wake up and go to sleep earlier and to be most productive early in the day. Evening people tend to wake up later, start more slowly and peak in the evening.

When choosing a time of day to exercise, paying attention to your body clock can help you improve results. Physical performance is usually best, and the risk of injury least, from about 3 P.M. to 6 P.M. Muscle strength tends to peak between 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. at levels as much as 6 percent above the day's lows, improving your physical ability. And joints and muscles are as much as 20 percent more flexible in the evening, lowering the risk of injury. These body rhythms hold true regardless of how much you've slept or how recently you've eaten.

Communicating with friends and colleagues online has its own optimal cycles. Sending emails early in the day helps beat the inbox rush. Messages posted early in the day are most likely to be read. For many people, checking their Email is has replaced reading the newspaper at the beginning of the day.

To start your day out on a positive note, check Twitter between 8 and 9 A.M.. That's when users are most likely to tweet upbeat, enthusiastic messages, and least likely to send downbeat tweets steeped in fear, distress, anger or guilt. Sleep will refresh you and will leave you alert and enthusiastic.

You should do other social networking later in the day. If you want your tweets to be re-tweeted, post them between 3 and 6 P.M., when many people lack energy to share their own tweets and turn to relaying others' instead. Posts to Facebook at about 8 P.M. tend to get the most "likes," after people get home from work or finish dinner.

When Writing and Your Busy Schedule Collide

Every writer perceives the writing process in a differently way. For some the classic rhythm of “Write, edit, revise” is their mantra, for others  order out of chaos rules. But the writing process is flexible, so you can make it serve you by creating your own process.

However, at some point, your busy life and your writing will collide. This leaves you with two ways to go. Become a hermit or get proactive with time management.

Forget choice number one. Do not become a hermit. Isolation will eventually work against you. Don’t remove yourself from your friends and family They will play a major part in the things you achieve. Instead, daydream and seek inspiration whenever you have a moment where getting lost in your ideas won’t be a hazard.

When it comes to making the most of your writing time, there are ways to improve the amount you write, and still have time for your life. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to just  sit down at your favorite place when you have a moment of free time and begin to write. You’ll find this haphazard at best. Instead, schedule your writing just as you would exercise or meals. If you plan on writing say for an hour three times a week, then you’ll look forward to those sessions.

To make the most of the time you do have, you must learn to shut off distractions like Facebook. In order to keep everyone tuned in all the time, Facebook does something pretty sneaky. It may or may not insert a post in your news feed. This causes you to constantly be looking to see if you missed anything. That’s a major distraction which is beginning to cause anti-social behavior in many people. Also, turn off your cell phone. Let voice mail take your messages. That’s why you have it. Now that you’ve eliminated some major distractions, it’s time to write.

Basically writing is one word followed by another. But if you haven’t planned out what you’re going to write, you’ll only get a mish-mash of words that mean little or nothing. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, a little planning and forethought, you can accomplish a lot in a little time.

Professional writers know all too well that planning makes their writing and their life easier. Planning can take many forms. You could begin by creating an outline or you could simply block out what you plan to write. The latter form actually works well for many writers because it allows them to get creative in the process without going off track. If you plan too much, you’ll confine yourself to rigidly and that tends to block creativity.

When it’s time to get back to work, school, chores, eating or sleeping, or whatever else you have to do, remember to pack along a notebook to jot down any ideas that may pop into your head. Wherever you go, inspiration will follow, so be prepared for it.

When you finally sit down to a serious writing session, don’t write too long. Allow time to get a snack and to give your mind a break. Those little breathers will help refresh your brain and actually make you more productive.

Remember, its balancing your life and your writing that’s important. Don’t let your life overwhelm you. Your writing will surely suffer. And the opposite is true. Too much writing will put you out of touch with life around you.

Go With the Flow

Now that you hopefully are on your way to a better organized work space, you need to take a moment to analyze how you spend your time in your writing space—and better yet how writing fits into your daily routine.

Whether you're driving your car to go pick up the kids from school or shooting a few hoops on an afternoon break, churning out an article or researching a book, the ability to get in the groove so that you're working with time instead of against it is the key to increasing your productivity. Psychologists call this transcendent marriage between time and the mind flow, and when you get flow. you're good to go.

But first you have to find your flow taking control of your time and eliminating the interruptions and time wasters that waste so much of it during your day. Be prepared for good news and bad. The bad news is that unless you're practicing good time management or are a very organized person—most people aren’t—you probably waste a lot of time. The good news is that once you find that time, you can reclaim it. The extra minutes and hours are a gift, something you shouldn’t squander.

Keep track of everything you do in an average work day. Jot down each activity. Then take a red pen and circle anything that was, in light of your values and goals. a waste of time, even a phone call to a friend. How can you get these time wasters out of your day? Or at least take better control of them. For instance, you could talk to your friend after dinner.

Most people spend their time on things according to their priorities. How about you? Does anything stand out? Too much time texting on your smartphone? Too little time for yourself or with your family or friends or on your current writing project?

And don’t forget procrastination (We’ll take a look at that next week.) How much time did you spend procrastinating? How many interruptions did you have? What kind? Who were they with? Are there things you shouldn't have been doing because the activities could have been delegated or you simply should have simply said, "No"?

If you spend much of your time complaining about not having enough time to get things done, then perhaps you’re not doing those last two things—delegating and just saying no. By the way, that phrase just doesn’t have to do with drugs.

Look to see if you can bundle certain activities together? With the high price of gas, many people are grouping their errands by location so as not to be running all over the place. Try consolidating some tasks. Is it possible to get all your paperwork out of the way at once? Can you set aside a morning to take care of marketing calls and Emails?

And speaking of Email, how many times a day do you check it? For the average person, looking over and replying to their mail can take up to an hour each time. If you check your mail four times a day, that’s four hours you’re spending reading and corresponding. And if you’re constantly checking messages on your smartphone, who knows how much time you spend on your mail.

To find out how you actually spend your time, you’ll need to keep a Time Log—a record of all the time you spend on every little thing, from the moment you rise in the morning until you put your head down on the pillow at night. A Time Log is a powerful tool for discovering how you allocate the minutes and hours of your life. Sounds tedious, but once you do it, you’ll be able to take better control of your time.

To start your Time Log, take a sheet of ruled paper. In the left-hand margin, note the time you change activities, and on the line to the right list exactly what you're doing: getting ready for work or bed, projects or paperwork, making calls, talking to visitors, attending meetings, reading mail, making or eating meals, walking the dog, watching TV, and so on. Also note who else may have been involved so you can later determine how relevant each activity was to your goals and who tends to take up your time the most.

If your more computer savvy, you can create a spreadsheet, making each row on the sheet represent a 15-minute time block. Many people find this easier because the blocks remind them to log what they were doing. Accounting for time accurately on the computer spreadsheet can be harder, however, because not all activities neatly fall into 15-minute blocks. Whether you log an entire week including a weekend is up to you.

And, yes, keeping a Time Log, even for a couple weeks is a hassle, but it’s a hassle worth considering.

Get Into the Writing Habit

Everyone has habits—both good and bad. Some say we’re creatures of habit. It’s human nature. In fact, all mammals are. In the animal world, it’s called instinct, but for us humans it’s called habit. Most people concentrate on their bad habits. But everyone has some good habits, too. Which you have more of is up to you.

Developing good writing habits takes time and discipline. It also takes some determination and dedication. So how do you develop good writing habits?

First start by finding time to write. Not just here and there in your busy weekly schedule, but a specific times. You don’t need a lot of time, just a reasonable amount, say an hour or two, several times a week. If you use the time you set aside to write productively, you’ll get a lot done. If you wile away that time daydreaming about your first novel, you won’t get anything done.

Begin by making a schedule for yourself. Lay out everything you do in a week, including relaxation time and meals, plus employment if you work at a full-time job. Look to see if there’s any time left. Don’t cut into your relaxation time, but look carefully at how much time you spend at meals. You’ll soon discover that you can easily set aside an hour or two to dedicate to writing.

The trick is to stick to your writing schedule. The time you’ve set aside doesn’t have to be spent actually writing. You could be doing research or editing. But you should be doing some sort of writing-related activity.

Like physical exercise, writing often isn’t a lot of fun while you’re doing it. The key is to make it enjoyable. Begin by writing about subjects that interest you—subjects that you’re passionate about. Your passion will produce the words.

Some writers literally go straight from their bed to their computer the first thing in the morning. For some working full-time at another job, this means getting up with the roosters. But even if you’re a full-time writer, starting the first thing in the morning is a good habit. And any distraction that takes them away from their work kills it. Once you get into the rhythm of writing, the material will flow from your fingertips, almost like magic.

To get yourself into a good writing habit, start by setting aside a designated time to write, each day or on selected days, according to your schedule. Try, if possible to set aside the same time each day, so that your mind will get used to delving into writing problems at that time. Many fiction writers set a number of words to write each day. Non-fiction writers, on the other hand, usually set a certain number of pages to write at each session.

Another good habit to develop is proofreading. With spell-checkers and grammar assists, too many beginning writers fail to do careful proofreading of their work before anyone else sees it. Set up a routine of sifting through your work. First proofread it by reading it from the bottom to the top and from right to left to throw our brain off. This will allow you to see mistakes you might otherwise miss.

Follow proofreading with polishing. Nothing says amateur like a piece that hasn’t been carefully polished. During this process, you’ll delete things that don’t fit, tighten up sentences, take out wordy phrases, and eliminate repetition.

By developing these good habits, your writing will go forward. And the more you do it, the more successful you’ll become at it.

Time is of the Essence

Time is an elusive thing. It can get away from you if you’re not careful. Before you know it, days disappear into weeks, weeks into months, months into years. And what have you accomplished? For many, the answer is not much. Well, it’s time to put your foot down and get something done—at least as far as your writing is concerned.

So how do you find time to write? Finding time to write in today’s busy world can be a real challenge. Ever since computers appeared on the scene, life hasn’t been quite the same. Now Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and God knows what other social media happenings fill the hours between sunrise and sunset. And don’t forget about Email. Sending and especially answering electronic mail can take up a big chunk of your day.

And then there’s work, school, or whatever other endeavor you’re pursuing, plus the time necessary for basic necessities like eating and sleeping—oh, and don’t forget exercising. So where does writing fit in?

Everyone has the same amount of time every day. How you choose to use that time makes you successful at what you do. However, if you aren’t willing to devote some serious time to writing, then perhaps you should take some time to think about how you use your time.

Focusing is the key. You must focus your time so that you accomplish what you set out to do in writing, as well as some but not all of the other stuff. You need to decide what you want to do and what you can do without, so that you can write more—or forget it.

The choice isn’t between writing and doing something else that you don’t want to do. The choice is among a nearly overwhelming array of things that you enjoy doing, such as checking in with your friends on Facebook, reading for pleasure, or having people over for dinner. Then there’s going to the movies, watching T.V., and traveling. You may rather do the dishes, walk the dog, or do laundry than write. So faced with so many options, most beginning writers tend to choose too many and feel like they’re short of time.

While some people can fit little bits of writing or editing in between other chores, that’s just not being realistic. To get any major writing project done, you have to dedicate time to it. To get published requires a considerable effort, so little bits of time writing here and there just won’t cut it.

Writing productivity demands dedication. To get anything done and done right, you have to just do it. And that means intense concentration for the time you’ve chosen to allot for writing. Wanting to write—a dream a lot of people have—and actually writing are two different things. Writing every day produces not only more writing but also more ideas for future writing. But writing posts on Facebook or answering Emails doesn’t count. The type of writing you should be doing is the kind necessary to advance your writing career and improve your writing skills such as articles, short stories, and plays.

Writing, like exercising, is its own reward. When you don’t do it, you feel as if you’re cheating yourself. Successful writers don’t just sit around waiting for inspiration, they sit down and begin to write. At some point, inspiration usually strikes. This is much like runners who exercise in all types of weather, no matter how busy their schedule may be. Like physical exercise, writing is often not enjoyable while you’re doing it. And like exercise, it’s just a matter of discipline. If you aren’t a disciplined person, you can certainly become one.

Distractions are the bane of serious writing. They kill the flow. So turn off the Email reminder and your cell phone and let voice mail answer for you. Stay in flow. Focus on what you’re writing. This is especially important for big projects like books. Find a convenient spot to stop for the day or stop after your daily quota if you’re writing fiction. Don’t write until you get tired. You’ll only have to redo it.

To stay focused on your writing while fulfilling your daily responsibilities, including answering Email and catching up with Facebook, set aside an hour or so every day to write. Or at least set aside an hour three days a week, or even one day a week. The key is making this time a regular slot in your schedule. Don’t let anything deter you from it. And while you’re at it, write at the same time every day. And lastly, write no matter how you feel----even if you feel like you don’t feel like writing. If you want to be a writer, you must write.

Time is of the Essence

One thing you have on your side as a freelance writer is time. It can work for you or against you. Essentially, it’s all about how you play your cards—what you do with your time.  Play them right and you win. Play them wrong and you lose. But there’s always that constant of time.

You have plenty of time available. But does it seems to fly by more quickly than you’d like? That may be because you probably squander your precious working time. Realistically, you can’t write for hours and hours. The quality of your work will suffer, and your body will rebel.   

During an average workday, a writer’s work load consists of various important as well as less important items. Much of your time involves sending and receiving information. During the long hours you work, you’ll be doing a lot of fragmented things. Does this sound like your typical work day?

You need to be realistic when it comes to using your time wisely. Don’t take on too much, or you’ll set yourself up to fail. Only you know how much you’re capable of handling. Overestimating the number of projects you can handle at any one time will surely lead to disappointment. And if you keep that up, it will be more difficult to become more productive.

One of today’s biggest problems for writers is Email and varied other electronic distractions. If you receive lots of mail, you may find yourself taking care of it instead of your writing. It’s easy to procrastinate. And then there’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, to name a few of the social media distractions facing all of us daily. They’re addictive. And as with your Email, you may find yourself spending more time on them than on your writing. Set aside down time to take care of these tasks.

You may want to check your mail the first thing in the morning, then at a couple of specific other times during the day. But limit the time you spend with it. Before you know it, you could easily spend most of your morning doing basically insignificant tasks. And turn off any message or sound telling you that you have mail. That will surely draw you away from your work.

Avoid other distractions, too. Let your voice mail or answering machine take messages for you. You can call whoever called you back later. And don’t forget to turn off your cell phone. If you’re constantly checking your cell, you won’t get any work done, either.

You may also want to keep a piece of scrap paper handy on which to jot down thoughts about other projects that may pop into your head as you’re working. If you don’t, you won’t remember them later. And if you stop to pay attention to them while you’re in the midst of writing, you may find that they’ll knock you off your writing track.

Make writing a priority. But it’s also important not to write for long periods at a stretch. Take breaks every so often. Get up and walk around. Go for a walk, Do laundry. But don’t take your break at your computer. Surfing online isn’t really taking a break, and you’re body needs to get up and move around.

Schedule other duties around your writing. Write when you feel mentally sharp. That can vary from person to person. You may feel sharper earlier in the morning, so get up earlier to write. Or you may feel sharper later in the afternoon. Figure out when your mental peak occurs and work with it. Do menial tasks like cleaning or taking out the trash during your mental down time.

To help you get the most out of your time, create a daily or weekly To-Do List. (See my post “Smart To-Do Lists Get Things Done” from Sept.6, 2013). Use the A-B-C priority system. Once you have made your To Do List, place an “A” next to items of top importance, a “B” next to those less important but that still need to be done, and a “C” next to those with the least importance.  You may find that the ones with a “C” next to them may complete themselves automatically or may not need doing at all.

Schedule five minutes of review time into your day. Look at what happened yesterday, what will happen today, and what you need to do tomorrow. The more you plan out your day, the more you’ll accomplish.

If time is getting between you and your writing, start doing something about it before it’s too late.

You Can Take It With You

As a busy day-job writer, you need to be ready to mix it up, to write on the go, to always have a draft or a research article or a final edit in your briefcase or under the seat of the car, or on your laptop, tablet, cell phone, or thumb drive.

Today’s technology makes it possible for you to take your writing with you.  Laptops, tablets, readers, and smart phones are all available.  But you may not own all of these devices, you most likely have one or two.  And even if you aren’t this electronically connected, you still have pen paper and perhaps a clipboard.

One of the most useful tools for today’s writers is a laptop.  Some use only a laptop computer.  Perhaps you live in a smaller apartment and don’t have space for full desktop setup.  While you can purchase a new laptop – preferably one with wireless—you can often find one for less that’s refurbished on a manufacturer’s web site.

The same applies to tablets.  While you may not have the keyboard flexibility of a laptop or desktop, nor the full word processing power, you can always purchase an optional add-on keyboard to help you jot down notes or make lists. Tablets and e-readers are better for reading overdrafts or for doing research—bookmarking web sites for later use.

Evernote, a program that allows you to save articles and whole web pages, as well as create to do and idea lists, as well as random notes, then access them on another of your devices at another time, is an excellent tool.

Even smart phones offer a way to access notes or to do pulmonary research while on the go.  With so many restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops offering free Wi-Fi, it makes sense to get plugged into today’s technology.

But while owning and using electronic devices is a start, you’ll have to get into a mobile mode if you expect to accomplish anything while on the go.

When you’re at your computer in your office, you have everything at hand—handwritten notes, printed out notes, lists, computer files—all at the ready. But when you’re on the go, you may not have all these things at your fingertips. To successfully work on the go, you have to prepare your work ahead of time.

Type up and print out your pages of notes. Save the files on your desktop but also save them to a thumb drive or directly on your laptop or tablet via a wireless connection. Also print out your notes. While some writers do all their work on their computers, it makes sense to have notes or drafts of articles, stories, or chapters of a book printed out so that you can mark or edit them with a colored pen.

Not all locations have Wi-Fi available. If you’re in a situation where there’s not electronic connection, then you can take out your printed notes and such for current projects, and continue working. But you have to prepare these beforehand.

One problem that can occur when working with a thumb drive is that you create or edit files on it but forget that the version on your main computer hasn’t been changes. Get in the habit of copying all the changed files onto the hard drive of your desktop or laptop at the end of each day or upon returning home if away for a length of time. If you’re using a laptop and a desktop, make sure that you save files to both in their most current form.

If you choose to read over drafts on your tablet or e-reader, don’t forget to delete them when you’re finished that project so that they don’t clog up the memory on your mobile device.

Another way of working while on the go is to use a service like GoToMyPC. With this service, for which you’ll have to pay a monthly fee, you can access the files on your desktop computer while working away from home on your laptop, tablet, or a third-party computer, such as those in a hotel business center.

Using your mobile devices will allow you to make better use of the incidental spots in your daily schedule—lunch hour, waiting for your kids to get out of sports practice, a half-hour between school drop-off and your morning commute, waiting in a doctor’s or dentist’s office, waiting to board your flight at an airport—when, given the right setup and equipment, you could easily fit in a solid session of writing or editing.

There’s Something to be Said for Routine While Working a Day Job

Many beginning writers work a day job while working on improving their craft. Some get up extra early and write before leaving for work. Others work after dinner when they get home. But either way, their writing often suffers because the majority of the day when their mind and body are fresh, they’re working for someone else.

It’s hard to juggle a full-time job with writing. There are only so many hours in the day. So how do you work a job that drains your creative energies and still get your writing done? The answer is simple—routine.

Everyone does a few things by routine—brushing their teeth, showering or bathing, even eating. While working in a routine can seem humdrum, it’s a way to get organized and get more things done in a limited amount of time.

Before you can work out a routine for your writing, you need to figure out what you need to get done. Make a list of your typical writing chores—everything from thinking up and jotting down ideas to researching them to applying that research to your writing to the writing, itself. You can’t do all of these things every day, and you probably don’t need to. Allot a certain amount of time to each type of chore. Some will take just a few minutes while others may take several hours. Divide up the ones that take longer to do, such as writing an article or story, and divide them up into segments that you can work on daily.

It’s actually a better idea to write for shorter periods of time rather than in long stretches, so dividing up your writing, and perhaps your research times will most likely help you in the long run.

Take a look at your daily schedule. You probably don’t think about that much. Instead, you get up, clean up, eat breakfast, go to work, work at your job, eat lunch, work more at your job, go home, eat dinner, relax, and go to bed. The next day you start that basic routine all over again.

What you need to do is work your writing chores into that already established routine. You probably don’t think you have any time, but if you analyze your daily schedule, you may find that you have quite a few blocks of extra time that you could spend doing one or two writing chores.

Map out a schedule—create a spreadsheet of it so you can carry it with you. One good thing about all the technology that’s around you is that you can use it to your advantage. To paraphrase an old saying, “You can take it with you”—your writing, that is. (More next week on using technology to expand your writing and create a portable office.)

Begin by blocking in all the necessary things you need to do every day—washing, eating, cleaning, driving kids places, and working at your job. Study what you do for a week to see how long it take you to say eat breakfast. Do the same with all the other things you have to do. Then adjust your spreadsheet schedule for the times you’ve discovered.  What’s left is the time you have for writing chores. At first it may not look like you have any time left. But look again.

Can you add time anywhere—get up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later, take less time for lunch, take less time for relaxation or relax while doing lighter writing chores like thinking of ideas or even researching online?

Now add writing chores into your schedule. Work up a routine. For instance, housewives used to reserve Mondays for wash day, Tuesdays for ironing, Wednesdays for cleaning bedrooms, Thursdays for cleaning living and dining areas, Fridays for food shopping, etc. You need to do the same with your writing chores. Assign particular chores to particular days of the week. And do them only on those days whenever possible. In addition, you need to allot time for writing every day or every other day. If you’re schedule is packed, then write for a time on weekends.

While this may sound like a lot of work, it will take a while to establish a writing routine, just like it has taken a lifetime to establish your daily routine. You’ve got to re-educate yourself so that writing becomes an integral part of your daily life, not just a once-in-while pastime.

Maximizing Your Productivity

As your freelance career progresses, you may find that you have too many small projects that are interesting but just don't pay their way. Worse yet, you may on occasion work for a publication that doesn't keep its promise to pay. At year's end, even though you've been writing constantly, you find yourself in the hole.

Be realistic about what you can do. Remember, you can only do so much in the time you have. Spending too much time on poorly paying projects will eventually take its toll. So what can you do about it? The answer lies in creating a production schedule for maximizing your productivity.

If you want to improve your productivity for the next year or even the next quarter, you’ll need to take a hard look at what you’ve accomplished and what you haven’t in the last one. After analyzing the data, you need to come up with a production schedule that meets your needs and your lifestyle. Devise a detailed production schedule for the coming year with a built-in review time each month. You should also mark specific billing dates in red, since you’ll want to be reminded to do bookkeeping chores. Doing this will definitely increase your productivity.

Ease into systematic production planning by starting with a desk diary. You should look for one that allots a page to each day, perhaps subdivided into segments, with plenty of space for notations on your production and billing schedules and which will also allow you to note expenses and a list of important contact numbers and email addresses. If you’re somewhat computer savvy, you can use a project scheduling program and while this will work, you may find that being able to write notes and adjustments on a paper one is more thorough.

Begin by writing in the listing for each project the deadline and what you need to prepare for it—basic text, sidebars, photos, graphs, or charts. Include for each a schedule for initial research and library or fieldwork to be completed by a fixed date.

Next note the dates and times for interviews and contact numbers and/or email addresses. Will your interviewees be available when you need them? Also, don't forget to note time differences if they live outside of your area.

Make a note of the date to contact your editor for a progress report. It’s important to let him or her know if you’ve discovered some new material in your research or if the project isn't going in the direction expected. Discussing this with your editor will let you know if it’s salvageable.

Lastly, make a note of dates when you need to obtain permissions or supplementary material, as well as the dates they're due in your hands, ready to be assembled with your text.

Set up a tentative production schedule before you have assignments—a sort of sketch to see how you can fit in trips, interviews, writing time, research time, and such at the beginning of each month or quarter. Some writers prefer to send queries out in groups at the beginning of each month rather than one at a time. Scheduling several interviews in a certain area, for example, not only saves time and effort but also money.

And while editors will always give you a deadline, it’s smart to schedule your own a bit ahead of the ones they'll give you. If you seem to be running to too many places each month, perhaps you could organize your research into three or four trips, instead..

Along with research and deadline dates, make a note of when you expect to be paid and how much. Even if you send a bill with your manuscript, many publications are slow in paying. Ask each new editor you work with when his or her publication pays for work and record that information on your productivity page for that project, then match that against the schedule of foreseeable expenses.

Doing all of the above may sound like extra work but in the end, it will make you a more productive writer.

A Step in Time Saves Nine

Busy managers have a lot in common with busy freelancers, so it’s only natural that time-saving tips for managers would also work for you.

During an average workday, a manager’s work load consists of numerous important as well as  unimportant items. Much of a manager’s time involves sending and receiving information, mostly through speaking with workers under his or her charge. During the long hours managers work, they’re busy doing a lot of mostly fragmented things with a variety of people. So important for a manager to manage their time wisely so they don’t go mad. Does this sound like your typical work day. If so, here are some time-saving tips that will increase your productivity and help you to retain your sanity.

    1. Work at as clean a desk as possible. There’s nothing worse than trying to find that one paper that you need to complete a project. Move projects, important correspondence, and such off your desk each week on schedule.

    2. Handle routine paperwork, such as correspondence, only once.  While this is difficult to achieve without help, make an effort.
   
    3. Create a To Do List. Depending on how busy you are, you might create one for the week or perhaps one every few days. Cross off items you complete as soon as you finish them.

    4. Employ the A-B-C priority system. Once you have made your To Do List, place an “A” next to items of top importance, a “B” next to those less important but that still need to be done, and a “C” next to those with the least importance.  You may find that the ones with a “C” next to them may complete themselves automatically or may not need doing at all.

    5. Also ask yourself, “Am I making the best use of my time right now?” If the answer is no, then take immediate steps to remedy the situation.

    6. Give yourself a reward upon completion of a job. Go for a walk or stop at your local coffee shop for a cup of joe and a sweet treat.

    7. Plan five minutes of review time into your daily schedule. Look at what happened yesterday, what will happen today, and what you need to do tomorrow. The more you plan out your day or week, the more you’ll accomplish.

    8. If you’re especially busy, delegate low-priority jobs to others.  Perhaps hire a high school or college student to do preliminary research, set up interviews, order supplies, or filing.

    9. Force yourself to make decisions. Always take some sort of action on an important job to keep it moving forward. Delays result from simply avoiding decisions.

    10. At the end of each day, take 15 minutes to plan tomorrow. Knowing what you need to do helps to keep things organized should an unexpected emergency develop.

Remember, as your freelance business increases, so do the stresses of everyday work and life. Staying organized will help you to better cope with the ups and downs of this business.

Prioritize

When you decide to quit your day job and write full time, you’ll have to give careful consideration to your priorities. No longer will someone else be deciding what work you have to do and when you have off. Now it will be your responsibility. For some writers, this works great. For others, it doesn’t.

The first thing you’ll need to do is figure out when your peak thinking and writing times occur. Are you a “first-thing-in-the-morning” person, a midday person, or an evening person? Also, do your peak thinking times and peak writing times occur at the same time or at different times during the day? If yours are separate, you’ll want to focus more on the former, giving it top priority in your daily schedule. It’s harder to think out a piece of writing than it is to actually write it.

To help you set your priorities, you must first create a daily work schedule. You don’t have to stick tightly to it, but it should act as a guide. To begin, block out a schedule for the week, indicating when you’ll begin work. You may want to use the same schedule you used in your former job. Working from nine to five is good for a start. Next block out time for lunch, 30-60 minutes should do.

Now that you have your start and end times, plus lunch scheduled, you can lay in blocks of time for your work. If you know when you’re at your peak for thinking, block in time at the appropriate hour. Then lay in some time for writing and research. It helps to mix up your day by working on several projects in different stages. While you’re getting ideas for one, you may be working on the first draft of another, and starting research for a third. Doing this actually helps exercise your brain and prevents getting burned out by writing for hours on end. It pays in the long run to not write for more than two hours at a time.

And don’t forget to allow time to get more work. You’ll need to send out E-mail messages to editors, or perhaps call them on the phone. And when will you study new publications to see if you’re right for them? Many editors schedule staff meetings on Monday and often Fridays are wrap-up times before publication, so you’ll want to limit your editorial contacts to the middle of the week.

What many people who work for themselves forget is allowing time for other obligations. Do you have to take or pick your kids up from school? When do you do grocery shopping? Must you cook meals for your family? What about talking to friends on the phone?

It’s a real temptation to procrastinate when you work at home. You may say to yourself, “I’ll do that later,” but do you? If you have a tendency to procrastinate, you need to attack the problem head-on. Doing so will increase your production and your income immediately.

You should try to schedule time to write every day. Some days you may have more time while on others less, but writing every day will help you keep up the momentum. Be sure to divide your time adequately among important projects. If you know you have deadline coming up, be flexible enough to allow time to finish the project that’s due. This means you must be careful that deadlines don’t pile up on one another. And for some writers, having no deadline takes away the impetus to get things done.

To help you prioritize your work, create three lists—one for Top Priority items, one for Secondary, and one for Do at Leisure Tasks for each week? This will help you stay on track. You might plan on taking care of the items on the first two lists during “working” hours and leave smaller tasks, like filing, correspondence, and organizing notes for evenings or Saturdays.

And while it’s important to get your current work finished, it’s just a important to plan ahead for new work. Do you have days or evenings when you are systematically building your files, increasing your contacts, beginning speculative new ventures, adding to your catalog of possible topics, and promoting yourself?  How about the time it takes to read and answer your E-mail and check on your social media sites?

If you keep your priorities in order as you start out in your writing career, you’ll be in a better position to recognize and take advantage of golden opportunities as they arise. The more you priorities your work, the easier it will be to tackle really complex projects and do them without stress. And as your career progresses, you should have more and more work to do. There are only so many hours in a day, and you can’t squeeze more work out of them than you already are unless you set your priorities.

Plan diversions into your work schedule. Don’t be a workaholic. But do so with care. It's too easy to take time to have that extra cup of coffee.

Do You Have a Hat Rack in Your Office?

Do you have a hat rack in your office? That may seem like an odd question, but as a freelance writer, you’ll need one on which to hang the many hats you’ll have to wear in your business. Coincidentally, there’s a new commercial on T.V. which shows a small business owner entering his office. Everyone working there looks like him because they are. The focus of the commercial is to show how small business owners, like yourself, have to wear many hats to make their businesses successful.

If you thought as a freelancer you were only going to write, think again. The jobs you’ll have to do will range from creator to writer, editor, researcher, interviewer, secretary, salesperson, P.R. exec, bookkeeper, bill collector, general manager, and janitor. If you’re producing ebooks, then add publisher, cover designer, and promoter. Whew! I bet you’re bushed just reading that list.

With such a list of business responsibilities, you’ll have little room for an unprofessional attitude. Unfortunately, many writers often say they don’t have a head for business matters. But you better get one because the success of your freelance business depends on it.

The biggest problem facing you will be finding the time to do all those tasks. While you won’t have to do them all every day, you should create a weekly schedule, so that you don’t overlook any of them, for all of them are important.

To begin, lay out a schedule for the entire week, including Saturday and Sunday, on a spreadsheet. Indicate the time you get up in the morning and the time you go to bed at night. Just because you work for yourself doesn’t mean that you have to work constantly. If you worked for someone else, you’d have hours. Decide if you want to work a normal business day. If so, what time will you arrive at your office and what time will you leave? Most people work from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., so start with that. You can always go “in” early or “leave” late, depending on your work load. Oh, and don’t forget to allow time to eat lunch and perhaps have a short afternoon break.

Next, make a list of all the tasks you need to do for your business each week, allowing time to work on projects. Type in these tasks and work time on your schedule. If you run out of time for say getting ideas or paying bills or filing, you can always do these in the evenings or on weekends. You might want to also schedule some reading time because you’re going to have to do lots of that. And don’t forget your janitorial duties. It won’t take long for your office to look like a tornado swept through it—try to keep up with cleaning and sorting as best you can.

The idea is to get all your jobs done in the time you have. Don’t be a slave to your schedule, but let it guide you through the week. After a while, you’ll automatically know when it’s time to do which task. And don’t forget to dust off your virtual hat rack once in a while.

Taking Stock

For many writers, the New Year means a chance for a new beginning. For others, it offers a time to reflect on what happened during the past year. Whichever one it is for you, the New Year offers a time to set new goals and analyze your situation. Just as retailers set aside the month of January to take stock of their inventory, so should you take stock of not only what you wrote and published in the last year, but accomplishments you achieved and problems you need to solve.

To move forward, you have to plan ahead. Recognize problems early on—set down goals you want to reach, obstacles you need to overcome, and the resources you have at your disposal. Doing all of these things is almost as good as solving the problems, themselves.

No general ever goes into battle without some sort of plan. Military commanders need a map marked with all their troop units’ positions and weapons in order to make fast and effective decisions in the heat of battle. You need to do the same in order to assess your situation and draw on the resources or ideas best suited for each situation.

First, write down the problem or direction you’d like to take, followed by the goals you need to achieve to solve that problem or get started in your new direction. Together these are known as a situation summary.

Although you can use a situation summary at any time to resolve difficult business decisions, writing up one or more of them at the beginning of the year will set you off on the right foot.

A common problem facing many freelance writers is upgrading their markets. Perhaps you’ve published several articles or short stories in local newspapers or small regional magazines, none of which pay you enough to make a living. You want to continue freelancing but to do that you’ll have to sell to more reliable, higher-paying markets. This is where a situation summary can work wonders.

To begin, jot down a short concise statement of what you’d like to do. Next you need to write down your goals—both long and short term—as well as actions you’ll need to take to reach them. Be specific. Lay out a detailed plan, including relevant dates and resources required. For each goal, write down three actions.

Following your goals and actions, you should write down the benefits of the actions you’ll be taking. Will they increase your financial bottom line, increase your work schedule flexibility, or give you peace of mind—or all three?

How much time or money will be required to achieve your goals? Will you have to spend additional time writing and marketing that might be spent with your family? Will you need to purchase new or additional computer equipment and programs? Or will you need to do a good deal of research to go in-depth with a subject?

What if what you’ve got planned doesn’t work out? List some alternative solutions and why you should stick to your main plan. Some call this “Plan B.” However, often these alternatives present other problems that make reaching your goals for the new year doubly hard.

If you’re seeking to improve your markets, you must allow a block of time to study what’s out there. Are there editors out there that you know that might help you advance your plan? List anyone and everyone who may be able to help you. Can you build on what you’re doing now? Perhaps you can spin off a new specialty from a subject that you’ve written a lot about?

Lastly, set a date to review your actions—say in a month or two. And set a date to review your short-term goals to see if you’ve reached one or all of them, most likely at the end of the first or second quarter.

A situation summary, like a business plan, should be flexible and able to be adjusted as you go. Keep an open mind. Look for the positive side of whatever develops and build on it. And if you do, you’ll definitely have a Happy New Year.

The Best Job on Earth

Whenever I’m at a dinner or a party, inevitably someone will come up to me and ask what I do. I tell them I’m a freelance writer. Then they either ask me where I’m published or what it’s like to be in business for myself. The first question is relatively easy to answer. I dazzle them with a long string of publications, most of which they’ve never heard of. But the second question is a bit more tricky because most people work for someone else. Even my closest friends often have a hard time understanding how I manage to live on so little money. Yes, folks, the truth is that the majority of freelance writers aren’t paid all that much for their work. Do I love to write? Yes. Do I love to eat? Even more than I love to write.

So where did the term “freelance” come from? Historians believe that Sir Walter Scott coined the phrase to refer to itinerant knights who traveled about the countryside, equipped with their own lances and sold their skills to anyone who would pay them. And since the term originated in his works about kings and knights and damsels in distress, it has acquired a romantic connotation.

And to this day, it has retained those same romantic notions, albeit to the detriment of many a would-be writer.

The truth is that freelance writing offers more flexibility in work and lifestyle than most other occupations, as well as a great sense of satisfaction (when my belly is full). From an outsider’s point of view, freelancing seems the best of all worlds—the best job on Earth. Most likely some, if not all, of these outsiders get up at an ungodly hour to brave a bumper-to-bumper commute on a jammed highway or equally crowded train, then spend eight more hours sitting behind a desk in a cubicle. They see freedom from all this drudgery as a form of liberty and power. But as the grass is always greener on the other side, they don’t see the discipline necessary to accomplish that freedom.

Some of the reasons I love freelancing include getting up later, working at home on bad winter days when everyone else has to fight the weather, knocking off early if I’m too tired, and going grocery shopping when everyone else is at work. Notice, I didn’t say anything about writing.

But there are reasons I love freelancing for writing’s sake. The first and foremost is that I can generate my own ideas and develop them the way I want. Second, I can work at my own pace, except when I’m on deadline. Third, I get continuing credit and recognition for my work as long as it’s in the hands of readers. Fourth, I have only a five-minute commute to my office, from bedroom through the den to my office—with no traffic jams—thus saving me precious hours during the workday. Fifth, I can set my own priorities. In fact, that’s one of the most important facets of freelancing for me, being able to prioritize my work. Sixth, I can get paid for my work multiple times, depending on how I use the information I gather through research. Seventh, I’m constantly meeting new people and learning new things. Eighth, since my schedule is open, I can take advantage of opportunities and events that others might not be able to because of their jobs. And lastly, I can develop my work the way I want and gain great satisfaction that I did it myself.