By Jennifer Blanchard
In any given week, you have 168 hours of time in which to do everything you need to do—from sleep to exercise to work to take care of the kids to meet with your writer’s group to search for freelance opportunities to cook dinner to commute to go to the movies with your significant other, etc.
The problem with having what seems like so much time, is your schedule tends to fill up quickly. Then before you know it, you have two hours left until the new week starts and you still haven’t gotten much (or any) writing done.
Time management is often one of the biggest challenges writers face.
With so much going on in your life, it can feel overwhelming trying to squeeze it all in. And most days you probably still end up wishing there were a few more hours left in the day.
The good news is, with a simple adjustment in your mindset—and an effective scheduling tool—you can easily overcome the barrier that keeps you from managing your time effectively.
The Un-Schedule
The un-schedule was created by psychologist, Neil Fiore, Ph.D. This is one of many tools in his arsenal for overcoming procrastination.
In order to know how much time you have in your week for writing, you need to know what you’re already doing each week. This is where an un-schedule can be a huge help.
Once you know everything (or pretty much everything) you have to do each week, you will then be able to determine the maximum amount of hours you have each week to spend writing.
Here’s how an un-schedule works:
- Using the un-schedule worksheet (Note: there’s a link to download this free worksheet at the end of this post), fill in everything you already know you’re doing this week. Be sure to include things like sleep, eating and commuting time. These are all activities that take up many of the 168 hours you have available each week. Remember to only include the activities you know you’ll be doing for sure.For example, if you plan on exercising for sure at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, write it on your un-schedule. If, however, you don’t know for sure when you’ll be exercising this week, leave exercising off the un-schedule (there will be time to add it during a later step).
- Once your un-schedule is completely filled out, take inventory of how many hours (or blanks) are remaining. This is the maximum amount of free hours you have available for writing.
- Now make a list of all the things that aren’t on your un-schedule, but that you know you’ll be doing at some point this week (things like exercising, calling your mom and writing).
- Figure out when your best available hours will be for writing, and set your writing schedule for the week. You may not make every session, but putting it down on paper (or in your smart phone) will help you keep it at the front of your mind as you go through you week.
- Repeat this process again next week. And the week after. And the week after…
Have you ever created an un-schedule before? What was your experience like? What did you discover from filling one out?
FREE DOWNLOAD: the un-schedule worksheet (blank).
