The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (18 page)

Time-Management Principle #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.

If you invest a lot of quality time in your writing, you will probably end up an accomplished and successful writer. If you invest a lot of quality time in your health and fitness, you will probably end up healthy and fit.

In contrast, if you spend a lot of time doing a day job you don’t care about except as an income source, or housework, or low-value favors for others, or video games, you will end up being successful at those low-value activities.

This principle may seem obvious or even banal, but I constantly run into people who pine to write a book, start a business, exercise, do community work, etc., but who never clear time for those activities.

Clearing time is the first step for any ambitious goal.

Many writers live by the axiom,
“Writing comes first.”
It means that, no matter what else is happening in your day, writing is the priority. (Often, it means you literally do it first thing in the morning.) Many successful entrepreneurs, athletes, and others employ a similar mindset.

Time-Management Principle #4: Time management is not about jamming as much as possible into your schedule, but eliminating as much as possible from your schedule so that you have time to get the important stuff done to a high degree of quality and with as little stress as possible.

In American society we make a fetish of overwork. We may say we disapprove of workaholism (Section 4.9), but we mostly admire it. (And employers are happy to exploit it.) We speak admiringly of multitasking, which is not just a scam—since most of us can’t transition between tasks without losing capacity—but often a highly rationalized form of procrastination in which you delay working on your hard stuff by working on easier (and, often, less important) stuff instead.

Poor Time Managers
(PTMs; see next section) often fall for these dysfunctional attitudes about time, and this, often combined with perfectionism and a tendency toward over-giving (Section 4.8), mires them in a perpetual, stressful frenzy of activity that tends not to yield much.

Aspiring Time Managers
(ATMs) may understand the folly of overgiving and underinvestment, but they don’t take things as far they need to. They may trim and prune their schedules in a half-hearted way, creating a little time here and there, but not enough to yield much payback. (I often have to remind ATMs that “the goal isn’t ‘to be semi-stressed’ or ‘semi-exhausted.’”)

In contrast to the PTMs and ATMs,
Good Time Managers
(GTMs) ruthlessly purge their schedules of as many expenses and low-value activities as possible. Their aim is to have
abundant
time to devote to their important priorities so as to maximize their chances of productivity, success, mastery, and joy.

Time-Management Principle #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.

The list of those who will step in and manage your time for you includes not just your family, friends, and coworkers, but neighbors, others in the community, and, of course, corporations who want you to buy and use their products. These people will have all kinds of motives—and some will genuinely care about you—but trust me: you do not want to be the person whose time everyone else is managing.

T
he PTM probably lacks an understanding of the above five principles, and therefore tends to make the kinds of conventional choices regarding her time use that will lead her to this lifestyle:

She works 40 hours or more a week at a job that provides an income but is not related to her mission. Maybe it’s an “okay” job, or maybe she hates it—but, in any case, she would rather be doing something else. (Obviously, it is possible to have a full-time job doing what you love—in which case, no problem!—but many people don’t, and certainly not many PTMs.)

Actually, she’s probably on the job 45 hours, including her unpaid lunch break, and she’s probably also commuting at least one hour a day.
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So let’s estimate her weekly day job expense at 50 hours. That represents 44.6% of the 112 hours she’s awake in a week, assuming she’s getting eight hours of sleep a night (which, as a PTM, she probably isn’t).

I need to repeat that:
Almost half her waking hours are spent doing something she’d rather not be doing, and maybe hates.

What a sad situation, and, over decades, a tragic one. What a terrible waste of a person’s skills, passion, and life.

I hope the PTM isn’t giving her workplace free hours, but sadly I know she might be—PTMs are often chronic overgivers (Section 4.8).

Our PTM probably spends most of her weekends shopping, cleaning, and doing yard work and other household chores. (If she’s got kids, she’s of course devoting many hours to them.) And she probably spends a lot of her evenings doing yet more chores, or in escapist recreation, since the average American now watches more than five(!) hours of TV a day.
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And many indulge in equivalent hours of videogaming, Web-surfing, and other escapism.

What’s missing from the PTM lifestyle of work, shopping, home maintenance, and escapism? If you answered “the investments,” you’re absolutely right. The PTM is probably not investing much of her time in relationships, health, fitness, self-care, planning and management, personal growth, vocation, community, or replenishing recreation.

Or, of course, her writing.

How does the PTM feel? Look around you and you can probably answer. So many people are stressed and unhappy. So many relationships are sterile or faltering. So many parents are too busy and fatigued to enjoy their kids. So many communities are withering from lack of participation.

So many missions are unrealized, so many passions unexplored, and so many books unwritten.

Now, let’s look at the GTM. Like many of us, she probably started out working 40 hours a week. But assuming her job is not part of her mission, she has relentlessly worked to reduce its hours and impact on her life. And so she’s probably working 30 hours a week, or 25, or even 20. This probably necessitates her living frugally, but that’s a trade-off most GTMs will happily make based on Principle #1.

Frugality is a fundamental element of a successful, happy life.
It’s too big a topic to go into here, but there are plenty of resources on and off the Web devoted to it. Besides allowing you to manage your work schedule, frugality also allows you to shorten your commute (see below), and quit jobs where you are being mistreated, which is key to avoiding the kinds of toxic rejections that can lead to perfectionism (Section 7.1).

While I’m at it, if you can go car-free, that also yields a marvelous benefit in terms of both money and time savings.
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(I haven’t owned a car in years.)

Our GTM isn’t content to reduce her day-job hours, however; she also works relentlessly to arrange her work schedule to (1) reserve her best times for her writing and other investments, and (2) minimize unproductive and stressful commute. Many mission-focused people work, for instance, three long days a week, or just mornings or afternoons, etc. They also work from home a lot.

If you’re not a GTM yourself, all this might seem unlikely, particularly in a bad economy where the employers seem to be calling all the shots. But I promise you that all around you there are GTMs who are making it happen. They find good jobs where they do great work and are treated well, and where, either as part of the initial hiring negotiation or after they’ve proven their worth, they negotiate to work nontraditional hours that support their writing and other investments.
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(Often, it takes multiple negotiations over a period of years—first, for Fridays off, then to work at home on Mondays, then to work 10–6 instead of 9–5 for a shorter commute, etc.) See Section 4.11 for an example of how such a negotiation could go; also, if you join the right communities (Section 3.9), you should meet people who have solved this problem and can learn from them.

If a GTM can’t get a reasonable schedule from her current employer, she won’t hesitate to find another one, because she knows that
the long-term consequences of not managing her time are far worse than the temporary inconveniences of managing it
. (For job search tips, download my free ebook
It’s Not You, It’s Your Strategy
from www.hillaryrettig.com.)

Let’s be conservative and say that our GTM manages to whittle her day job down from 45 hours a week (five eight-hour days, plus an hour of unpaid lunch) to 31.5 hours (three ten-hour days, plus a half-hour of unpaid lunch). At the same time, her commute has shrunk from 5 to 4 hours. She’s now spending 35.5 hours/week on her job instead of 50, for a savings of 14.5 hours a week.

Many people tell me, by the way, that they welcome their commute as a chance to be alone and relax. Some also tell me that they read or do paperwork during their commutes. That’s all well and good, but don’t forget that GTMs are optimizers (Section 4.3); if a GTM wants peaceful time alone, she’ll seek it in a more effective and convenient setting than sitting in traffic or on a crowded bus.

Scrub the Housework.
By getting her day job under control, the GTM has reclaimed 14.5 hours for her writing and other investments—a glorious act of self-liberation. Most people, when they take this step, wonder what the heck they ever waited for—it’s so wonderful to live more fully in the realm of mission and investments. (You do have to watch out for situational perfectionism; see Section 2.9.)

The next big step our GTM can take is to minimize time spent on household maintenance and chores. As mentioned earlier, many people spend all weekend, and many evenings, on these gruesome tasks.

Although members of the Calvinist (perfectionist) “suffering is good for the soul” school may disagree,
there is absolutely no reason to do more than the bare minimum of activities that are, (a) not part of your mission, and (b) unpleasant.
These activities are not character-building—in fact, they’re character-depleting—and you are not an “idealistic dreamer” or “frivolous” for wanting to live your life as close as possible to 100% in mission and joy; in fact, you’re enlightened and pragmatic. The thing to do with tedium and unpleasantness is to work strenuously to minimize them.

As mentioned in Section 4.4, if you truly enjoy something, it’s probably an investment, and so you should revel in it; for many people, that includes cooking or gardening. But I haven’t yet met anyone who truly loves laundry or mopping, except, perhaps, as a vehicle for procrastination (Section 1.8).

The main techniques for minimizing household chores are to:

(1)
Live simply and in a small space.
Remember that everything you buy costs you twice: in the time and money you spent to purchase it, and the time and money you spend to maintain it. And large spaces cost more to clean, heat, etc.

(2)
Professionalize.
Use good tools and supplies (e.g., a good washer and dryer, or a high-powered vacuum cleaner to cope with animal hair). Also, invest in convenience—say, by having a sprayer-mop in each high-traffic room. And also budget your time so that you work swiftly without killing yourself. (Something like, say, thirty minutes per room per week.)

(3)
Delegate whatever you can
, not just to other family or household members but to professionals. Use a grocery-delivery service (or get meals delivered from local restaurants), drop your laundry off to be done, and hire cleaning and lawn-care services. And, finally,

(4)
Lower your standards.
I’m not talking about living in a dirty house, or even a messy one. But there’s a great gulf of non-perfectionism between a “dirty” house and the kinds of spotless paragons the media promotes in its endless quest to get you to feel inadequate and therefore compelled to consume (Section 2.8). Ignore them all, as well as any critics within your personal circle; instead, figure out your own level of comfort and cleanliness and aim for that.

People typically raise two objections when I suggest they adopt these techniques:

(a)
It’s wrong to ask others to clean up after me.
Assuming we’re talking about professionals (since you shouldn’t feel bad about asking your family or roommates to do their part), then I strenuously disagree—and, more importantly, the people whom you will be asking will also strenuously disagree. People need jobs, and for some people a cleaning or laundry gig where they’re treated respectfully and paid well is the ideal job.

I discuss other common objections to delegation—too much time to train, won’t do as good a job as me, etc.—in Section 4.11.

(b)
Cleaning services, take out meals, etc., cost money, and I can’t afford it. Besides, you said to be frugal.
It’s true that some people can’t afford to delegate, but it’s also true that many who can afford it choose to spend their money elsewhere. (Recall Section 3.4 and how many underproductive people chronically under-resource themselves.) We can deduce from Principle #1 that using money to buy more time for investments is a sound choice.

Let’s say that using these four techniques—simplicity, professionalism, delegation, and lowered standards—the writer has managed to whittle her household chores down from around twenty hours a week to eight.

And let’s say that she allots only one hour a day (versus three) to television and other escapist activities.

She’s now gained 14.5 + 12 + 14, or 40.5 hours a week for her “investments”—more than the equivalent of a full-time job! Think of all the writing, relationships, exercise, fun, and other investments she can now partake of—and how much more profoundly happy and satisfying and meaningful her life will be as a result.