Time Management Tuesday: Shadow Work

According to Daniel J. Levitin in The Organized Mind, shadow work "represents a kind of parallel, shadow economy in which a lot of the service we expect from companies has been transferred to the customer. Each of us is doing the work of others and not getting paid for it." He gives as examples scanning and bagging our own groceries, keeping track of our banking on-line, and pumping our own gas.

Shadow Work Is Technology Driven

Technology makes a lot of shadow work possible. We're making our own hotel reservations on-line instead of calling the site and asking an employee to do it for us because on-line exists. We're researching and making purchases at home instead of getting assistance from store employees, because so many stores have a web presence. A great deal has been made of the fact that many of us don't browse for books in bookstores because we're ordering books from Amazon. Amazon is an example of a completely technology driven company. There would be no Amazon without the Internet.

Shadow Work's Big Impact On Writers

Book marketing is writers' shadow work. In decades past book marketing was definitely part of publishers' jobs. Publication parties and book signings were connected with big-name writers and publishers were usually involved. While publishers are still printing and distributing galleys to reviewers, including new publications in their catalogs, and sending out sales people to promote books, writers of all different levels are running and funding their own real-world marketing events. They are also often publicizing them through Internet connections, the technology-driven aspect of this situation.

Social media marketing is a big part of the book marketing writers do, and it exists because of technology. All the social media platforms writers use are on-line: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Goodreads, Pinterest, Instagram, and something that was probably created while we were sleeping last night. Formal social marketing did not exist before the Internet. It's an example of technology driven shadow work.

Where Does The Time Come From?

Book marketing shadow work is an example of computers making more work for people, simply because they create possibilities that didn't exist before. Writers have more work because of the marketing that has been transferred to them, but nothing has changed in terms of the number of hours in a day or days in a week. For most of us, the time for shadow work comes out of writing time. We cut down on production to market.

If I find anything in The Organized Mind on changing the number of hours in the day/days in a week. I'll let you know.
 

Time Management Tuesday: Satisficing

When I was in college, back before every mother's child was supposed to be gifted across the board, I knew at least two people who let some of their course work go in order to focus the bulk of their time and energy on their major areas. They didn't fail anything, they just didn't worry about taking a B or B- for a class so long as it wasn't in engineering or nursing. They were not being shiftless and lazy, they were strategizing. They went on to successful careers, by the way.

According to Daniel J. Levitin in The Organized Mind, they were satisficing. Levitin says Herbert Simon came up with the term "to describe not getting the very best option but one that was good enough. For things that don't matter critically, we make a choice that satisfies us and is deemed sufficient."

How does that apply to writers? We have to manage our entire lives in order to make time to write. But we can't just blow off things, leave them totally undone. Remember the environmental disorder study last year that found that a disordered environment leads to self-regulatory failure? We definitely can't just ignore taking care of our homes, for instance, to make more time for writing because the environment we make for ourselves could lead to problems with staying on task. Instead, we have to find a level for what doesn't matter critically that is satisficing, good enough.

It's even true for professional work. Our work situation is always changing. When we have a contractual deadline, we have to focus on writing, but we can't just forget about marketing and other types of writing. They aren't critically important at that point, though. We satisfice. When a new book comes out, marketing does become critically important. We satisfice with the writing then.

We move among all the things we have to do, focusing our effort on some things and  spending only as much time as we have to on others.

Time Management Tuesday: "The Organized Mind" Reading Project

I haven't done a time management reading project in a while, so I'm psyched for this one.

I stumbled upon The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin at the library and picked it up because it has a chapter called Organizing Our Time. I was reading that when I decided I'd better go back and look at some of the earlier chapters. So I'll be seeing what I can pick up from this book that could relate to writers managing their time.

Cognitive Psychology? What's That?

Levitin is a cognitive psychologist. He describes cognitive psychology as "the scientific study of how humans (and animals and, in some cases, computers) process information." Among the areas of study cognitive psychology covers are memory and attention. Attention relates to staying on task, an issue for managing time. I'm wondering if memory won't be a factor for organic writers, which, I know, veers off from the time management topic. I may be addressing that more later as I'm reading and thinking about this book.

In his introduction Levitin says that "successful members of society" have "learned to maximize their creativity, and efficiency, by organizing their lives so that they spend less time on the mundane, and more time on the inspiring, comforting, and rewarding things in life." Yes! Get me some of that!

An Evolutionary Theory For Writing Process

He has another interesting line in the intro: "Evolution doesn't design things and it doesn't build systems--it settles on systems that, historically, conveyed a survival benefit (and if a better way comes along, it will adopt that.)" This sounds to me like a way to think of writing process and managing time.

There is no grand design or system we can learn in graduate school or at conference workshops. Instead, individuals have to settle on a system that has, within their personal history, worked for them. And if they're smart, they'll maintain that zenny mind of a beginner I'm so fond of and adopt any new, better systems they happen upon, too.

Writing process and managing time evolve over the course of our work lives.