Reader Question: How do you manage your time?
Courtney asks:
I have a question.
I’ve followed this blog every day for roughly eighteen months and you post… every single day.
6am to 6pm.
Has Mrs. M ever asked…
“Can we leave the house… please?”
The information you post on a daily basis is priceless but I do wonder…
Do you ever vacation?
Or, are you actually…
A ROBOT!
Dun… dun… duuuuuuuuuuuuuun!!!
“Scott Myers” is actually a pseudonym for a collective of writers chained to desks in a sweat shop on the Marianas Islands. This is a photo of our home office:
Actually GITS is a natural extension of what I’ve done for a quarter century in the entertainment business: I track the news, read about movies, follow what’s happening with screenwriters, look for interesting ideas about creativity, seek inspiration around me, and just generally am an exceedingly curious fellow.
The blog is simply a way of putting down on virtual paper some of what filters through my eyes, into my brain, and out of my fingertips.
Contrary to what you may imagine, I am not here from 6AM-6PM to manage all the posts. There is a schedule function in Blogger, so I write a post and set it to upload at a certain time.
Specifically to your question, how do I manage my time? Between my fiction writing, book writing, blog writing, Screenwriting Master Class, and teaching screenwriting at the university level, not to mention my family life, I have had to become really good with handling tasks and managing time. There are two primary things I do:
* Lists: I’m a big list-maker. I have lists of things to do each day, each week, each month, each quarter, and each year. I love Google calendar because I can create a list of things I need to get done tied to each day. They are green when I create them. When I complete the task, I turn them blue, that being my favorite color, which gives me a nice bit of positive reinforcement when I accomplish a goal. More importantly I can easily look at my calendar and see what I’ve done… and what needs to be done.
Note: It’s not just about making a list, it’s also about setting priorities. I take the time every Sunday night to review what I have upcoming for the week. I do the same every morning, putting my daily tasks in an order that takes into consideration the time required for each, switching off the types of tasks to give me some variety, and my own mental and emotional cycles during the course of any given day.
* The Pomodoro Technique: I got this idea from one of the writers I’ve worked with at Screenwriting Master Class and posted about here. When I’m blogging or consulting on a script, I break up my time into 30 minute work blocks. I actually have a timer on my computer desktop (you can download it here), so when I hit “start,” that’s it — I’m working. No interruptions. Every 30 minutes, I get a 5 minute break. I use that time to check the Internet, scan emails, post a Tweet, then it’s right back into another pomodoro. I’ve gotten pretty adept at it to the point now where I can look at a task and assign how many pomodoros it will take. So when I prioritize my day, I have a pretty good sense of how much time I’ll need per each item in advance of those tasks.
Note: The key here is to commit to working during the pomodoro. If you follow TV writer @JaneEspenson on Twitter, often she Tweets, “30 minute writing sprint in 5 minutes! Who’s with me?” and then when the time comes, she’ll say something like, “Writing sprint! Go, go, go!!!” And then after 30 minutes, she’ll come back and Tweet something akin to, “Phew! I got a lot done. How about you?” The pomodoro approach is like that, pump yourself up and commit to using that time block just to work.
One final thing: I post six items per day each day primarily because that’s a big part of my vision for this site — to provide a source of insight, information and inspiration for writers. But there is a subtext to what I do and that is the importance of consistency. I don’t know anyone who is a good writer who doesn’t show up each day and put in the hours to write their stories. Good day, bad day. Feeling up, feeling down. Doesn’t matter. You’re a writer, your job is to write. Every day. So I would hope that a subliminal message you take away from the maniacal persistence I have shown in over three years of hosting this blog and producing over 7,000 posts is for you to be consistent. Work your craft every day. Aspiring writer or professional writer, it doesn’t matter. The daily energy you expend writing will only benefit you with better writing and more energy.
That’s how I manage my time. How about the rest of you in the GITS community? What tips do you have?
Comment Archive