No It's Not Tuesday, But Here's Another Time Management Post, Anyway

Thank you to Tanita Davis for bringing a time management post at Cynsations to my attention. I would have found it myself, but probably not for another month or so. Reading blogs regularly is something I've given up in order to find some time for family paperwork and life tasks.

Today at Cynsations author Mette Ivie Harrison has a guest post up on How to Find Time to Write. Harrison has written six novels while raising five kids and running an Ironman triathlon each year. She offers  a number of lists of suggestions for managing time.

Early in her post she says: "If you want to add writing (or more writing) to your current schedule, the first simple principle is that you will have to make room by taking something else out." What interested me the most is what she lists as things that can be "taken out"--TV, movies, shopping, lunch with friends, and volunteer work.  

What she's talking about is busyness. Busyness is one of the few places where I think someone can truly "find" time. Cutting out the busyness to get to that time is rough, though. Harrison says, "No one is going to make writing time for you. You will have to wrest it away from other commitments, and it will not be painless." Busyness provides a lot of our connections with people. Eliminating any of it is going to have an impact on your life.

Not everyone who writes has to do this. Jane Yolen, for one, can work and be busy, too. And by no means is a desire to remain "busy" an indication that someone struggling with time doesn't have a commitment to writing. I'm just saying that busyness is a "place" you can look for time. It sounds as if Mette Ivie Harrison agrees with me.