The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (17 page)

1.  Time is the most valuable resource.

2.  Always seek to invest time, not spend it.

3.  The things you invest quality time in are the things you will improve at or succeed at, and the things you don’t are the things you won’t.

4.  The purpose of time management isn’t to stuff as much as possible into your schedule, but to remove as much as possible from your schedule so you have time to get the important stuff done to a high degree of quality, and with as little stress as possible.

5.  There is no such thing as unmanaged time. If you don’t manage your own time, others will be happy to manage it for you.

Let’s take those one at a time.

P
icture two people trying to get fit:

One spends thousands on a fancy health club membership, fancy exercise clothes, and a top-of-the-line racing bike, but never gets around to using them.

The other spends $75 on a good pair of running shoes, and maybe $20 on a second-hand set of weights, and uses them for an hour or more each day.

Who will get fit? Obviously, the one who invests time rather than money.

Or, imagine a parent who hardly spends any time with her children, but tries to compensate with expensive gifts, versus one who can offer few gifts but lots of quality time. Who is likely to have the better relationship with her children? The latter, obviously.

Time, as it turns out, does not equal money; it’s far more valuable than money, because it can create values that money can’t. And the principle that time is the most valuable resource is by far the most important of the five principles because it is the one that has the most fundamental impact on our behavior. People who value their time highly behave very differently from those who don’t:

They are intolerant of wasting time.
Wherever they go, whatever they do, there’s a little voice in their head asking: Was that a good use of my time? Could I have done it in less time? Could I have delegated it? How could I do it more effectively or efficiently in the future? In other words, they are
optimizers
who work strenuously to eliminate even small inefficiencies from their schedules. They do this because they know that (1) the trivial savings can add up, (2) trivia often take longer than planned, and often lead to more trivia, and (3) even trivial activities can add stress or distract from more important endeavors.

Please note that the optimizing voice is always gentle and helpful, never harsh or punitive. Harsh corrections are the voice of the oppressor: perfectionism.

They value small amounts of time.
They see even a five-minute gap between meetings as valuable time during which they can make a call, send an email, or review their notes—or do some calming stretches or meditation. (Recall how a lot of procrastination begins in the body; Section 1.9). In contrast, people who do not value time highly see not just minutes, but hours, days, weeks, months, and even years as expendable on low-value “busy work,” “time wasting,” and projects outside their mission.

They invest time and money in time management.
They buy organizers, timers, clocks, watches, and other tools. They read books related to time management. And they actually use all these tools, as well as the techniques discussed throughout this chapter.

They don’t do a lot of housework, chores, busywork, or maintenance, and they don’t overgive.
See Sections 4.4 and 4.8.

They tend to have shorter business meetings and conversations.
At work, they’re polite and friendly, but not big on small talk or running off on tangents. At meetings, they stick to the point. Also, they don’t visit someone when they can call, don’t call when they can email, and don’t manually answer emails that they can set their email program to answer automatically (see below). Obviously, you can take this too far and “over-optimize” to the point of ineffectiveness, but many people, for fear of seeming rude or other reasons, have a hard time limiting unproductive conversations.

They invest in technology and automation.
They use signatures, autoresponders, how-to lists, reminders, and other tools to streamline their work (Section 3.6). They also invest in technology that aids their functioning in other areas of their lives, such as top-quality household appliances and housecleaning tools and supplies.

They avoid personal and professional drama.
Drama is profoundly antiproductive and often leads to bad outcomes, so productive people are selective about whom they get involved with, personally and professionally, and what types of interactions they tolerate. And, finally,

They are resilient in the face of criticism.
They don’t give in, or even feel particularly bad, when they’ve made a principled decision regarding their time use, and someone says, “What do you mean, you can’t you help me with my project?” or “Why can’t you go out tonight? You’re no fun any more!” or even, “If you loved me, you’d do ___.” They know that they are really not selfish or killjoys or unloving, but self-directed and mission-focused. They also know that those who truly support them and their goals will understand and support their time-management efforts.

Let’s face it: there are plenty of selfish people in the world, plenty of exploiters. But most of the people who seek out my coaching and workshops, and presumably you (since you are reading this book), have the opposite problem: over-giving (Section 4.8), or the too-frequent sacrificing of your mission and needs to others’. That’s a much nobler problem, but still a problem.
That’s why I tell people that if ,after you start managing your time, people start complaining, congratulations! It means you’re doing it right.

To develop more resilience, work to build your compassionate objectivity (Section 2.10) and to overcome any internalized oppression (Chapter 6).

A
n investment is something that accrues value over time. An expense is something that loses value.

You’re probably familiar with financial investments including the stock market and real estate. Pretty much everything else is an expense, including cars, cell phones, clothes, food, and entertainment. Sure, we may need some of those things, but they are still expenses, and personal finance gurus advise us to spend as little as possible on them.

The division between investments and expenses is not always clear, since some expenses are actually investments in the non-financial realm. It costs money to eat healthily and stay in shape, for instance, but that’s money you should invest. Also, some people’s lives are so enhanced by music, travel, or other “expenses” that those expenses are more properly thought of as investments. (The corollary is that one person’s investment can be another’s expense.) Regardless of their benefits, however, these activities remain financial expenses, so you still have to exercise restraint.

It works exactly the same way with time: you want investments, not expenses. The common time investment categories are: health and fitness, healing and recovery, personal growth and development, education, planning and management, relationships, community/civic work, creativity, any kind of serious vocation or hobby, and what I call “replenishing recreation” (see below). These all yield a profound return in terms of productivity and happiness, and you should be allocating as much time as possible to them. This means, of course, that you should be allocating as
little
time as possible to everything else, including a day job you do primarily for the income, cleaning and other household chores, and tasks outside your mission.

Most investments are fun, by the way—and when an investment isn’t, it’s often because we’re being perfectionist about it. Many people struggle with money management, for instance, but approached the right way it is interesting and engaging, and definitely empowering. The solution, when you can’t get motivated do something you absolutely must do, is to (1) work to overcome your perfectionism and internalized oppression around it, using the techniques in this book, (2) go deeper into it, so that it becomes an interesting intellectual challenge instead of a tedious chore, (3) reframe it as empowerment (which all investments really are), and (4) do it with the help of a supportive community. Even the least enjoyable investments, such as dealing with a chronic health problem, become much more palatable with these steps.

As with money, the line between time expenses and investments is not always clear. In general,
if you truly enjoy doing something and/or find it rewarding, then it’s probably an investment.
If, however, you’re just doing it just because you have to (e.g., a day job), or to “kill time” (television), or because it’s the conventional thing to do (housework), or because you’re afraid of what others might think or say if you don’t do it (committee work you don’t really care about, or a visit to unpleasant relatives, or, yeah, housework), then it’s probably an expense, and you should work strenuously to eliminate it from your schedule.

Recreation is a special case. It’s hard to talk about someone’s recreational choices without sounding judgmental, but there are important differences between what I call “replenishing” and “escapist” recreation. Replenishing recreation is typically active and/or engaging. It typically connects you with others, the environment, and/or even parts of your personality you don’t ordinarily get to connect with. It often supports your other investments (e.g., your health or writing or relationships), and leaves you happy and fulfilled. Examples include sports, socializing, art, crafts, and many outdoor activities like hiking or gardening.

Replenishing recreation is an investment, and when we do our time budgets in Section 4.7, I’m going to recommend you include plenty of it.

In contrast to replenishing recreation, escapist recreation such as television, Web-surfing, and videogaming tends to leave us bored or depleted. It also tends to be passive, solitary (even if you’re in a room with others, you’re engaged not with them so much as with the television or PC), and not supportive of your investments—in fact, it’s often detrimental to them. Here’s Stephen King (from
On Writing
) on television:

TV ... really is about the last thing an aspiring writer needs. If you feel you must have the news analyst blowhards on CNN while you exercise, or the stock market blowhards on MSNBC, or the sports blowhards on ESPN, it’s time for you to question how serious you really are about becoming a writer. You must be prepared to do some serious turning inward toward the life of the imagination, and that means, I’m afraid, that Geraldo, Keith Obermann, and Jay Leno must go. Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.

Judith Wright, author of
The Soft Addiction Solution
, writes extensively about a large category of expenses she calls “soft addictions,” which she defines as,

... [T]hose seemingly harmless habits like overshopping, overeating, watching too much TV, surfing the Internet, gossiping, procrastinating—that actually keep us from the life we want. Whether we realize it or not, our soft addictions cost us money, rob us of time, numb us from our feelings, mute our consciousness, and drain our energy.

Of course, many people resort to escapist recreation after long and exhausting days or weeks, when they feel they don’t have the energy to be active or creative. In that case, escapist recreation is serving as a “band-aid” covering up serious problems with the person’s lifestyle; also, it’s correlated with depression and physical health problems.
1

Escapist recreation is a clear expense—if not a clear danger—and so you want to minimize it. However, since we’re not robots who can be programmed 100% but complex beings with complex needs, including the need for down time, in Section 4.7 I’m going to suggest one hour of escapism per day, although your own need may be for more or less than that. (As you move deeper into the realm of your investments, television and other escapist time-sinks are revealed for what they are—weak tea—and it becomes easier than you might now imagine to give them up.)

Helping others is another complex category. There are two general guidelines:

1.  In an emergency, HELP. I
want
you to be the Good Samaritan, and if you do your time management, you’ll be able to do it without sacrificing your mission.

2.  In non-emergencies,
try as much as possible to help others only with their investments and only when you can do so by providing your high-value activities: those which are congruent with your mission; leverage your strengths; and are impactful, i.e., they create change in the real world.

Contributing your high-value activities to others’ investments will ensure that you make a meaningful contribution—and probably enjoy doing it—while contributing low-value activities to others’ expenses is a route to ineffectiveness, resentment, and burnout. Limiting the amount and type of non-emergency help you provide may sound narrow or even selfish—and some of the people you decline to help may even label your behavior as such!—but the reality is that the need for help in the world around us is vast, and your time, energy, and other resources are limited. You must be selective—and in being selective, you’ll gain the skills and capacity that will allow you to become an even more powerful helper in the future (Section 4.8).

1
Here are two scientific articles: Mark Hamer, Emmanuel Stamatakis, and Gita D. Mishra, “Television- and Screen-Based Activity and Mental Well-Being in Adults,”
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
, vol. 38, issue 4, pp. 375-380, April 2010 (www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2810%2900010-3/abstract); Emmanuel Stamatakis, Mark Hamer and David W. Dunstan, “Screen-Based Entertainment Time, All-Cause Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events: Population-Based Study With Ongoing Mortality and Hospital Events Follow-Up,”
Journal of the American College of Cardiology
, vol. 57, issue 3, pp. 292-299, January 18, 2011 (http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0735109710044657). And here’s a general one: Emily Main, Too Much TV Can Make You Depressed, Rodale.com (blog), May 6, 2010 (health.yahoo.net/rodale/PVN/too-much-tv-can-make-you-depressed).