Writing Tips: Make More Writing Time by Organizing Work Time

Five tips to work smarter and create more time for your writing life.

If your creative writing is more of an avocation than vocation, almost certainly you bump up against this issue on daily basis: Not enough time to write.

Where to carve out more minutes in a day? There’s family time and personal time, but a writer not only needs to tend to those responsibilities, those activities can be a source of inspiration and provide an emotional boost.

That pretty much leaves work time which leads me to this Fast Company article: How To Organize Your Day To Set Yourself Up For Success.

If you’re constantly frazzled on the job, logging super-long hours with little to show for it at the end of the day, chances are good that you’re mismanaging your time. But the good news is it’s easy (enough) to reorganize your schedule and get back on a successful track, stat!

“There’s a lot coming at us: mail–and [all kinds of] paper in general–emails, texts, phone calls, bosses calling for help, deadlines, projects–it doesn’t stop,” points out Felice Cohen, organizer and author of 90 Lessons for Living Large in 90 Square Feet (or More). No wonder so many of us get so behind and feel so exasperated. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

The answer isn’t to do more. “Not everyone can multitask, and most of us who do probably shouldn’t,” says Cohen. Rather, the answer is to do what you do smarter.

Here are five tips to work smarter and make more time for your creative projects:

1. Keep Only Four Items On Your Desk

2. Keep A Digital To-Do List

3. Set Aside 15 Minutes At The End Of Each Day

4. Schedule “Organizing” Or “Filing” Time

5. Put Repeating Tasks On Autopilot

I already do a pretty good job with some of these. When I moved to our new place this summer, I streamlined what I keep on my desk. It’s more than four items, but everything is specifically tied to the work I do and the fact it’s free of clutter helps to keep my mind less cluttered as well.

For the last decade, I have not only kept a digital to-do list, I have a digital calendar with all my daily and weekly tasks color-coded to note what’s open and what’s been closed.

As for #5, over the course of a year, I created a set of Word docs with repeatable tasks. For example, I have 100s of @GoIntoTheStory tweets all pre-written and hashtagged for scheduling which I do each morning. As I generate new blog articles, I add ones to that I think are evergreen in terms of their interest to readers.

So three out of five, I’ve already got in play. However, items #3 and #4 are worth considering more thoroughly.

3. Set Aside 15 Minutes At The End Of Each Day

No, those last 15 minutes aren’t for deep breaths before you leave. They’re to set yourself up for success tomorrow. “Fifteen minutes before you leave for the day, put things away: file papers, return items to other offices, bring recyclables or trash to where it needs to go, rewrite your to-do list,” says Cohen. “You will come to work the next morning with a neat work area and a direction for the day.”

4. Schedule “Organizing” Or “Filing” Time

But don’t wait until the end of the day to get all your organizing on, warns Cohen. (If you do, you may need more than 15 minutes to get on track for tomorrow.) Throughout the day, “even 10 minutes can make a difference,” Cohen says. “When you schedule lunch and meetings, you go, right? So add [organization time] to your day. You can even return phone calls while you do — just put the phone on speaker.”

How about you? Do any of these five tips resonate with you?

To read the rest of the Fast Company article, go here.