If there’s one thing I constantly struggle with in my writing life, it’s staying on top of all the work that needs doing. There are books to write and edit, blog posts to schedule, Instagram pictures to be taken and captions to prepare. Amongst all that, I have to go to work, exercise, and occasionally make some time to read and relax. There are so many balls to keep up in the air, and I am no juggler, that’s for sure. Which is why sometimes things slip. I might forget to schedule some blog posts. I might spend all my time batching content and forget that I need to actually write something. I might get so guilty over everything I haven’t done yet that I can’t allow myself to relax when I really need to.
I’ve tried a lot of things to keep myself on track, from scheduling every hour of my day and allotting tasks to these time slots, to keeping a master list of every single thing that needs to be done. I’ve tracked my productivity on apps, totted up the time I’ve spent writing every day, and in general tried one hundred and one ways to stay on top of everything I need to do. What I’ve discovered through much trial and error, is that the more complicated a system I use, the less effective it becomes. In the end though, what works the best is keeping everything very simple.
Every day I write myself a to-do list on a post-it note. If the amount of tasks I want to add to my day doesn’t fit on the note, I’m trying to do too much. As I finish each task, I get to check it off. I get such a sense of reward for ticking off all those little boxes. It gives me a fun little motivational boost throughout the day. At the end of each day, I stick the list in my diary, and close it up for the evening with a sense of achievement.
Every week I sit down and go through what I want to achieve in the next seven-ish days. Going through all the areas I need to put work into, like blogging, writing, etc, I work out several goals that I think I could realistically achieve over the course of a week. Those are written on another note and stuck in my diary where I can refer back to them easily every day. Each of these gets a tick when I achieve them too, of course. I like ticking things off.
Every time I set goals, I decide which goals I need to prioritise. Usually they’re the goals related to writing and editing books.. Blogging, Instagramming and other such tasks are all here to support my writing, not the other way around. The first thing I try to do every day is to work on one of my books. Knowing the way I work, if I put off important tasks until like actually doing the whole writing thing, I’ll never get it done.
The other big thing I try to do is make sure I have enough time in which to rest. Between my day job as a waitress and my writing, I have more than enough work to fill up the hours I have available, and then some. Instead of cramming every moment full of work, I try give myself some time to relax as well. I’m not a machine. I get tired. I get burnt out. I lose the will to create when I get too tired. Much as I want to make the best use of what time I have, sometimes that also means allowing myself to rest, to consume books and movies instead of always creating. Sleeping instead of writing. Looking after myself is another way of investing in my writing, and being well rested is a huge step towards being able to achieve everything I need to in a day.
My system isn’t perfect yet. I’m always tweaking it, trying to make sure it works for me, instead of forcing myself into a system that creates more work than it saves. Of course, sometimes I fall off the bandwagon. I get tired. I get lazy. Things don’t always get done. But my system means that I check in with myself often. It gives me regular chances to remind myself what my important goals are. And it gives me plenty of ways to easily check and make sure I’m achieving the things I want to, instead of floating through my day wasting time. And in the end, that’s all I need from my organisational system. All I want is to be able to write more books and achieve the goals that really mean something to me. That is enough.
