Preventing Your Writing Time from Slipping Away
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Time is a precious resource. You need to guard your writing time. Here are some things you can do to eliminate some of the distractions and time hogs.
When you’re writing, make notes in your manuscript of things you need to research. Then later, go back and do all your research at one time. If you hop on the internet each time you need to check something, you could be on there for hours looking at llama videos.
Figure out how much time you have for your writing and put it on your calendar or task list. We reserve time for things we need to get done.
Turn off the TV. We often spend hours watching television or movies. You may be able to use this for extra writing time.
Record shows that you want to watch, so you can fast forward through the commercials. It does save a lot of time.
Schedule your social media posts for the week.
Don’t check your phone every five minutes. It’s too easy to get sucked into email or social media feed when you’re supposed to be writing.
Training and learning are good things. Just be careful not to over schedule so that you’re always attending training or watching training videos. I did the same thing with writing books. I was always reading about writing instead of writing.
Networking is great and much needed. I am on a lot of online groups where each post creates an alert to all the members. I adjusted the frequency of the emails for these sites to a daily digest when I didn’t need to follow the conversations in real time. This helped me cut down on the emails.
Spend a few minutes unsubscribing to sites and newsletters that you don’t need or aren’t interested in. By pairing down your inbox, it saves you time when you review email.
