7 Ways I Find Time to Write
How I started hacking my days to actually get work done.
As a professional copywriter, I fill each hour of my day with my favorite passion: writing. The dream, right?
Not quite. I spend most of my daily hours of writing every day putting the digital pen to paper on content that I don’t necessarily love:
- Cold-call emails to potential clients
- Initial website copy for new content
- Reviews and edits of client project needs
- Blog content ideas to pitch to clients
- Email replies, follow-ups, and administrative tasks (ugh)
Each of these essential tasks (and yes, they pay the bills, so they are essential!) can quickly eat up the limited time I have each day to actually write.
So to fight back against the monster of relentless work to be done, I’ve developed a list of ways to find time to write. Unsurprisingly, these seven steps can help anyone who is trying to get better at their daily life!
Here are the seven ways you can “find” time to write (or anything else you want to accomplish!)
1. Prioritize your tasks.
Everything we do each day is a choice. And although that sounds idealistic and airy-fairy, it’s true. The “resistance” — those factors that keep you from focusing on what needs to get done — is based on one thing: confusion.
So if you clear up your confusion around how urgent each task is and give yourself a top priority, two priorities, three priorities — whatever number of priorities you have — then you can begin to take a step back from the chaos.
2. Turn off your urge for instant gratification.
I’m certainly not anti-technology, but let’s face it: The Internet is a time and attention suck (it’s also a money sucker, too).
I spent two hours catching up on my favorite blogs just yesterday, and then I spent another hour looking at my Facebook and Instagram news feeds.
That night, rather than write out my to-do list for the next day, I got sucked into a recent Twitter spat between two people I’ve never met. What a waste of valuable, precious time!
The first step toward finding time to write is breaking the habit of “instant” Internet gratification.
It’s no secret that the internet wants you to click on links, read articles, watch videos — and ultimately buy or subscribe to something. So instead of going down the rabbit hole of fun, funny content that falls in your lap (and leads nowhere)…
3. Make a plan for what you’ll do with your time.
You have to schedule your time, or the world will happily schedule your time for you.
What’s on your list (go back to step 1!) right now for this week?
Once you have your goals and tasks on paper, it’s time to schedule them.
Just like you would with a client meeting or family gathering, you need to put that task on the calendar with an estimated time frame.
When the time comes, get that one thing done!
One benefit to this scheduling method is that you will quickly see how fast your calendar fills up. This can prevent you from taking on too much at any given time and facing overload and burnout.
4. Stop multitasking and focus on one thing at a time.
At dinner, my three-year-old son will often start eating — only to stop chewing with food in his mouth to tell me a story of something he saw today.
While bits of bacon are falling from his mouth, he starts to stand up in his chair and pull out a toy car he has hidden in his pocket.
Wobbling, he leans forward to show me the car and dips the front of his shirt into his syrup as his chair starts to tip backward.
Just moments before a disaster strikes, I yell out, “Stop! Woah! Focus on what you are doing, buddy!”
Sound familiar? How often do we find ourselves teetering on the edge of disaster, trying to get everything done at once?
If you have a list of things that you want to accomplish today, stop multitasking and focus on one task at a time.
It may take longer than if you tried to accomplish them all in parallel, but the quality of your work will be so much better than if you hurry through them!
Go back to step three — blocking out time in your schedule. Would you schedule three dinner dates for the exact same hour and expect to succeed with the sitcom-esque antics of trying to give ample time to each?
Your best work deserves all of you. Focus.
5. Know your body and plan around peak performance.
A lot of time, you CAN do it all — but you can’t do it all well.
As a writer or any kind of professional, the best time to write is when you’re “on.” That means crafting your words effortlessly without needing a nap or hit of caffeine every 30 minutes.
No schedule will ever be perfect, but if you can think about when you are at your best, plan around that time for writing.
Learn your unique circadian rhythms (those times when your body is at peak energy) and operate around those highs and lows.
Your body, your mind, and your writing will thank you!
6. Commit to a daily writing schedule.
Some people can crank out the six-page novel outline in an hour. Others (like me) need a month of Sundays to pound out a perfectionist’s blog post.
Regardless, you have to start somewhere — and often that’s at the beginning. You don’t have to write EVERY SINGLE DAY, but you have to START EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Treat writing like reading. You should read every day, but I’m not going to judge you if you need a break now and then for a good book or magazine.
Don’t let the commitment of daily writing intimidate you. Simply pick a convenient time that is most conducive to your schedule and start writing something each day.
7. Keep it simple.
If you are going to succeed long term, you need to reduce your complexity.
You don’t have to add a million steps to your routine. You just need to get to your one or two top goals each day!
You don’t have to download 50 productivity apps. You just need to find the ones that work and use them consistently!
Remember the end goal.
- What is the “single push-up” of writing that will accomplish this?
- Do I need to schedule an entire day, or can I just carve out some time here and there to write?
- Can I write for just one hour today?
- How about 20 minutes twice a day?
- Just five minutes?
The solution is often simpler than we think — we just need to remind ourselves of the goal.
Write for You
No matter the goal, make sure that you are enjoying what you are doing. It’s so easy to get caught up in the process of planning and goal-setting that you begin to lose sight of the reason why we are doing this in the first place.
The secret to enjoying writing is simple: Let go of perfectionism, stop competing with yourself, let go of guilt and self-judgment.
Because when you let go of all these other external pressures, you get to enjoy the beautiful journey of seeing yourself grow as a writer, an engineer, a nuclear physicist, a stay-at-home-parent, you name it.
I’m in this with you. What works for you? Leave a comment with the best way you have learned to balance your work and life each day so we can all grow together!
