Have You Reviewed Your Work Schedule Lately?

When I first took my six months leave, I naively thought that as a full time writer I would be writing 8 hours a day.  Ok perhaps realistically not 8 hours.  I knew there would be admin, research, marketing and follow up to be done.  What I didn’t realise was how long some of these tasks would take.

I also underestimated the work involved in launching and maintaining a self hosted blog which I am ultimately hoping to grow into a small business (which means I treat it as one) and starting out as a freelance writer. Both require significant amounts of time.  I quickly discovered it is not all about the writing.

Consequently I got to thinking last Friday.  Where was I spending my time? What should I be working on every day and for how long?  Inspired by reading The EMyth Revisited I started an exercise.  I wrote down everything I needed to get done in one day to achieve my end goals as both a freelancer and a blogger.  To be clear, I am not talking about a to do list – more setting a structure for my average working day.  

It was a quick and simple table.  Column one – the task; column two – approximate time for task and thirdly in the last column the purpose.  Fundamentally a ‘why’ column.

The finished product was quite an eye opener.  What I didn’t realise was the tasks I was trying to cram into an 8 hour day, barely fit into 12½ hours.  And 12½ was being conservative, as some of the more important tasks such as writing and preparing pitches could have easily benefited from more time.

So how many hours did I have on my plan for actual writing?  Well that was the interesting (slightly scary) part.  The answer: 4 hours.  Four hours a day for starting a new freelance writing business.  Out of 12½ hours each day.  Hummm….. I can suddenly see where my source of frustration has been coming from lately.

Having a closer look however, I realise depending on my priorities and deadlines there is the flexibility to allow for extra writing time when required.  Hence the importance of the ‘purpose’ column in my table.  If I need to reschedule my day, I can see exactly what I am delaying or sacrificing to make it happen.

Now that I have my plan in front of me I can’t help but wonder, is it realistic to even try to implement a 12½ hour working day, every day of the week?  I suspect not. My coach confirmed this to me when I sent her the plan to review.  Another key consideration she pointed out is sustainability.

With just under two months before I return to full time employment (working for someone else), however putting the extra effort in is something that needs to be done.  No doubt my new plan will need some changes along the way.  The key to the plan however is to be more productive.  More focused.  To have more work completed at the end of each week.

My first day is going well (though I suspect the first day always does!).  I found I did get a lot of writing done in the 4 hour block this morning.  More so than I have in the past with more time at my disposal.  I sense the important point to remember is to keep the four hours available only for writing.  No distractions.

The other interesting thing my coach said when she got my email with the plan, ‘Welcome to Business’.  As she explained so much of what is involved in running a business (even a small one starting out like mine) does not involve working on your core product (ie writing in my case and coaching in hers). Definitely a valuable lesson learnt.  

In fact, that would be the best thing about this experience.  Other than writing (which I enjoy) there is the thrill of constantly learning and improving each and every day.

Better run for now.  I have a schedule to keep! 

Does your work schedule need reviewing? Feel free to leave your comments.

This post was written by...

Thea – who has written 265 posts on Write Change Grow.

Hi! Welcome to my blog.  I'm a freelance writer and blogger. For more Write Change Grow goodness, sign up for my free newsletter.  You can connect with me on Facebook and Twitter.

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