Time Management Tuesday: The Chaos Theory Of Time Management

I think from now on the bulk of my time management efforts are going to revolve around living with chaos. We are all a moment away from a time-consuming crisis, another illness (our own or someone else's), a breakdown, or storm damage; we are all a moment away from having today, tomorrow, or most of this week--hell, most of next month--totally consumed with something unrelated to what we had planned. 

You can be broken by chaos or you can roll with it. I'm still working on rolling with it.

A Case Study Using Set Aside Time, The Unit System, And Beginning Again

The case study, of course, involves me, as so many of my case studies do. For the past two months, I've been functioning as back up child care during a period involving a change in school schedules as well as one of those family illnesses that circulates around a couple of weeks and takes the regular child care provider out of commission, as well. 

Set-aside Time. My first step in dealing with this was to treat the period while I was going to be doing this particular part-time job as a set-aside time, like the May Days program I do with a Facebook group or National Novel Writing Month, when people set-aside the month of November to try to write the first draft of a book. During the time I was going to be committing a lot of time to family assistance, I would shift how I work. I wouldn't try to complete any particular work task. Instead, I would try to do something every day. 

This period started at the beginning of March, the beginning of a month, and the beginning of a time period is significant. It's easy to feel excited about starting something new then. 

Unit System. The second step in dealing with this situation was to accept that I didn't need huge periods of time in order to do something. I didn't need the whole month, a whole week, a retreat, a weekend, a day. In fact, there's a great deal of evidence that working over long periods of time actually decreases the quality of work. That's the argument for breaking your time into units or segments. 

The point being, having only a short period of time to work most days isn't a reason to give into the what-the-hell effect . Do something. Do anything.

During the month of March, I maintained a folder in my word processing program and every day I had to put something into that I had done. It could be reading a NetGalley ARC, which will become a blog post here. It could be working on one of several humor pieces I have in progress. It could be research. It could be working on a chapter.

Working like that during the month of March I was able to get a chapter started in the never-ending book I'm working on, finish revising a humorous essay into a humor piece, format it, and submit it, revise a story from years back and submit that, and submit a manuscript to an agent. 

It wasn't orderly, but I did something and moved forward. All the submissions have already been rejected, but one was a good rejection. A great rejection with feedback and the offer to look at a revision. This is a very positive outcome, and it came during a period when I wasn't working at my best.

Unfortunately, the end of time periods are just as important as the beginnings. When the end of March came, I couldn't maintain that daily work load, as minor as it was, because my set-aside time was over. Done.

Begin Again. And that is when beginning again comes into play. The end is in sight with the childcare situation. Gail shouldn't be twisting little minds much longer. I have a couple of days this week to get back on my feet and prepare for my more normal schedule next week. And then after that comes this year's May Days Facebook initiative, which I've found helpful for dealing with chaos in the past. What happened in March and most of April is in the past. It's behind me. I am beginning again.

Now, of course, that's only one possible future timeline, because remember my first paragraph--we are one call or text from chaos. But if I don't begin again next week, I'll try to use the May Days program to get back on task with a daily writing chore. That's a plan! 

Either way, I will begin again. 

Time Management Tuesday: The LeGuin Method

Last year I saw something on Twitter about Ursula LeGuin's work schedule. This article on the subject refers to it and LeGuin's discipline. But when I saw it, I didn't think discipline. I thought, What?! She didn't write after noon and spent an hour on lunch and two hours reading and listening to music? I want that life!

 Ursula LeGuin's Daily Schedule (From A 1988 Interview)

• 5:30 AM--Wake up and lie there and think
• 6:15 AM--Get up and eat breakfast (lots)
• 7:15 AM--Get to work writing, writing, writing
• Noon--Lunch
• 1:00-3:00 PM--Reading and listening to music
• 3:00-5:00 PM--Correspondence, maybe house cleaning
• 5:00-8:00 PM--Make dinner and eat it
• After 8:00 PM--I tend to be very stupid and we won't talk about this

I've seen this schedule referred to as LeGuin's "ideal" writing schedule. However, I haven't been able to find the interview in which LeGuin discussed it. I don't know if she used the term "ideal," which might mean something like, "This is my preferred schedule, but you do what you can do" or if others are applying the term to it, which might mean, "Wow. This is the perfect work schedule, isn't it?"

Because it does sound pretty great. 

Gail's Daily Schedule

• 5:00 to 7:00 AM--Wake up at some point, lie there and think, read news sites and Facebook.
• 7:20 to 8:00 AM to 10:00 or so--Get up, dress, exercise, eat something, mess in kitchen
  
• 10:00 to 11:00--Start work
• 11:00 to whenever--Work on a 45-minute work/15-minute do something else schedule. (Unit System)
• 3:30 or 4:00 PM to 7:00 or 7:30 PM--Madly try to get all kinds of things done.
• 8:00 to 10:20 or 11:00 PM--Write cards, mend, read on-line, watch TV, do other small tasks I can do while sitting down
  

The point of the Unit System, which I mention in my schedule,  is to restore your feeling of self-control and discipline, which decrease after 45-minutes of work. The longer you work during the day, research indicates, the less productive you become, because self-control and discipline are finite. The 15-minute breaks trick our minds into thinking it's the beginning of the day, and we're starting work again. Additionally, they provide opportunities for breakout experiences, creative ideas that come about when you have switched off intense work. And, finally, the unit system is great for encouraging people to take advantage of small units of time, instead of taking the attitude that 45 minutes or less just isn't enough time to do anything.

Scheduling Realities

The LeGuin Schedule that's been bouncing about on social media the last couple of years appears a little tongue-in-cheek to me. Is there a joke in there somewhere when she gives eating lots of breakfast an hour and places correspondence and house cleaning in the same time slot? What was she thinking about for 45 minutes every morning while she was still in bed? 

Or maybe it just seems funny, in a satirical sort of way, to me, because it sounds like a fantasy schedule for a writer, and I know she probably didn't get to adhere to it regularly. In a 1976 interview, she referred to herself as a "middle-aged Portland housewife." That meant that she had demands for her time 7 days a week and way more than 8 hours a day. She probably wasn't joking about house cleaning and the hours making dinner. And no doubt even in middle age there were adult children and extended family to provide for in some way, community demands, errands to run, a house to maintain. Her correspondence was competing with her cleaning between 3:00 and 5:00.  

Nonetheless, it does sound great to think that work could be wrapped up for the day by noon.

The Gauthier Schedule began to crumble these last couple of years, even before the pandemic. What was happening was that the 15-minute rests from work periods were becoming longer and the 45-minute writing periods shorter. Ideally you're supposed to use those 15-minute breaks from work for something relaxing like a walk or some meditation. But, I am a middle-aged housewife. I've always used them for things like bringing in firewood and feeding the stove, or putting in a load of wash, or calling the pharmacy, or making a bed. Toward the end, I was starting meals or putting some baking in the oven, running errands, talking on the phone with family members. And those were days when I wasn't going to someone's home or prepping something to take to someone's home.

Work often dragged out until nearly 4, for what good that did me.

Gail And Ursula Come Together

So late last year, I decided to try the LeGuin Method. I lie around in bed longer than she did, but I'm trying to use that time for professional reading. It could be 9:30 to 10:00 before I'm actually working, and I usually stop sometime after 1. Little tasks, like tweeting monthly book posts, might be squeezed in now and then in the afternoon. Reading some history or journal articles might happen while exercising. I try to do a little professional reading in the evening. 

This is a work-in-progress. 

So far, I can't say I'm doing more work with this schedule. But I can't say I'm doing less, either. And I'm more hopeful that I'll get ahead on either the housewife or writing work.

Time Management Tuesday: Carry On Carrying On

I am not back at Original Content, or work, for that matter, in any kind of organized way. I am not back to normal after fighting the most recent eldercare fire. Of course, there has not been a normal for long periods of time at Chez Gauthier for over eleven years. I know one couple who dealt with the swings of eldercare "issues," as they're often called, for well over two decades. Maybe close to three. Open a paper or look around at your friends, neighbors, and relatives. Tens of thousands of people can never be sure of how they'll be able to use their time because they are caregivers for parents, spouses, siblings, or children. For some people, that may be the reality of big chunks of their adult lives. Their time goes to care giving and the kind of work that puts bread on the table. If there's time in their lives for other kinds of work, it's hidden somewhere where they have trouble finding it.

Recently I recalled my inspiration for starting the Time Management Tuesday feature here at OC. A memoirist had written an essay responding to new writers who had asked her how they could find time to write. She advised them to take a few hours from the time they used for exercising and housework. From all of us who use up most of our exercise and cleaning time making multiple emergency room visits, lining up home companions, connecting with visiting nurses, hunting for nursing homes and assisted living facilities, visiting said nursing homes and assisted living facilities a couple of times a week, researching medications and treatments, meeting with doctors, social workers, physical and  occupational therapists, audiologists, the occasional lawyer, and even a minister when a funeral needs to be planned, let me just say that that was enormously, enormously unhelpful. Glib. Shallow. I ran out of adjectives early on and became royally pissed. Time Management Tuesday came out of rage.

I'll be up front here and admit that being judgemental is my worst fault. Dwelling on what I've passed judgement on is probably a close second. But there you go. On the plus side, rage and holding a grudge led to a multi-year study of time management that has provided some help to me this past month.

A Three-Pronged Modest Proposal For Those Writing During A Crisis. Or Two Or Three.

 

So you have day after day and week after week and month after month of dealing with family problems. In all likelihood, year after year. It's clear this stuff isn't coming to an end any time soon--which is just as well, given how some of these family problems end--and you'd like to keep writing. Realistically, what can you do?

Situational Time Management. Don't expect to be able to manage your creative time or any of your time the same way every moment of your life. Our life situations are always changing, so we change how and when we work in order to work around them. What's more, our work situations are always changing. Are we prepublished writers trying to generate work? Are we making a living from our writing and have to keep the income coming? Are we established writers working on projects that aren't in the publishing pipeline yet or do we have books coming out soon so we have to work on marketing? Everything we do is dependent upon our life and work situation. We only have to wrap our time around the situations we're in, and we can do it in any way. What a relief. Shifting from situation to situation is a whole lot easier than trying to work with only one schedule, and if we can't conform to it, believing we're out of luck.

The Unit System.  One very good way to wrap our time around whatever situation we're in is to stop thinking that we need a full day to work. In the fields of time management and productivity, there's a lot of support for breaking work days into units or segments of time. The theory is that the first 45-minutes of work are the most productive of the day. The longer we spend working past that point, the less productive we become. Thus working, taking a break, and working again tricks the brain into thinking that each new start is the beginning of a new day. Meaning that a short work period squeezed in before heading off for the nursing home or the couple of hours you have after you get back can be valuable. Doing something is always better than doing nothing, and it has the benefit of making you feel you're still in the game. Also, coming home to your laptop or a book you're reading for research can be hugely relaxing after having lunch with a table full of ladies all at different levels of cognitive decline but all certain that they don't like oven-roasted sweet potatoes.

Use Your Goals and Objectives. How can we make the best use of whatever units of time we have while in our particular situation? Make sure that we're always using them to work toward one of our work goals. That way, we're always making some kind of progress on the work we want to do. That's good both practically and emotionally. In addition, we're not wasting time, which we don't have very much of, trying to decide what to do. Having established goals at the beginning of the year that I could work toward was hugely helpful last month.

Does that sound more useful than "use some of your exercise and housework time for writing?"Am I still being judgemental here?

How Did You Use Your Units Of Time This Past Month, Gail?

 

Goal 4. Complete a second draft of Good Women by September. I've spent more time working on this goal than I expected to at this point. Why? Because so far it's been easier than I expected. This suggests to me that working on an easy goal while I have other kinds of stress going on in my life may be a very good idea.

Goal 1. Work on short-form writing, essays and short stories. I've hit a couple of objectives for this one. "Revise His Times Or Mine essay" and "Read an essay or short story every day."

Goal 2. Concentrate on submitting completed book-length projects as well as short form work. I submitted His Times Or Mine and received a very good rejection. Yes, there are good rejections.

Goal 6. Research and create notes for a happy apocalyptic story. I happened to stumble upon a book dealing with a historical event that should be helpful for this, so I've been reading that.

Carry On Carrying On

The above doesn't sound like a lot, but I've had periods when we had elder crises when I threw in the towel and didn't even try to work for months at a time. I ran into a member of my writers' group recently and she said to me, "Well, Gail, carry on." The fact that I've been able to carry on this much is probably due to my writing about situational time management, the unit system, and goals and objectives over and over again these past seven years here at Original Content and to my toughening up over these past eleven years of older relatives going up in flames over and over again.

Please excuse me now. After visiting the nursing home and dropping a hearing aid off at the audiologist (yes, I do go there a lot), I returned some books to a library where I stumbled upon still another book dealing with a historical event that relates to my happy apocalypse story. I have about an hour and a half left today, and I'm going to use it for research.

Time Management Tuesday: Why Going Over My Whining Is Helpful

Last week my TMT post was a round-up of December Whine Posts. ("Whine Posts." I'm going to make that a thing.) I found them oddly helpful.

You Don't Need To Do Much To Keep Your Head In The Game

The day I did that blog post I worked maybe twenty minutes sometime in the afternoon. Yeah, that's pathetic. Except with those twenty minutes I managed to figure out a transition, either getting from one time period to another or moving someone from place to place. I can't remember now. I can tell you, though, that I often have trouble making those kinds of transitions. That little bit of work meant that the next time I worked, I was able to move forward far more easily than I would have been without those twenty minutes.

Dec. 12, 2017

This experience made going over my whine posts more useful than it might have been. One of them involved using the unit system, short segments of time, which was what I had done that day. It served me very well and that success, such as it was, encouraged me to keep sneaking in little segments of work whenever I could. I'm staying on tasks better this year than I did last.

Remembering What We're Supposed To Do

Dec. 10, 2018

Writing last week's whine post about my old whine posts reminded me that it's all well and good to be constantly studying time management and coming up with schemes for how I'm going to work more efficiently and get more done. But I've also got to remember

• all I've planned to do
• what I've planned, tried, and liked
• what I've planned, tried, and decided to discard

In all the chaos of juggling work and life, we may have to make an effort to recall that we have ways of dealing with all that stuff.  But it's definitely worth doing.

Time Management Tuesday: The Law Of Diminishing Returns And Slow Work

At last! I've found some real talk about doing less to do more.

In How To Accomplish More By Doing Less at 99U, journalist Tony Schwartz (I wrote about him here back in 2013) describes how the quality of the hours we work is as significant as the number of hours we work. "Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy – physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually – requires refueling it intermittently." As we become physically, mentally, emotionally, and, perhaps, spiritually worn out, our output becomes progressively worse. Planning a workday around rest stops can mean getting as much done, or even more, than if you kept yourself chained to your desk for a longer period of unbroken time.

Schwartz uses a study of pilots and another of violinists to support his argument.

I think it's pretty obvious how this article relates to my goal of finding ways to improve productivity by slowing down. Schwartz is literally talking about working fewer hours without a drop in output. It also relates to a couple of things discussed here in the past. (Besides Tony Schwartz.)

The Unit System

Planning your work time around stops, so you can recharge and sort of trick your mind into thinking it's starting the day over, is what I've been calling the unit system. (Other people, I've learned, refer to it has segmenting.) Whether you break your time into 45-minute units, as I've read about several times, 20-minute units, as in the Pomodoro Technique, or 90-minute units, as Schwartz prefers, you're managing your energy as well as your time. You're making it possible to slow down and still produce.

Minimum Effective Dose

Last week, I wrote about the minimum effective dose and slow work. "In terms of productivity," I said, "the theory goes that you can find a minimum effective dose--or the minimum amount of time/effort--needed to get the work result you want or require."

Schwartz's argument about the law of diminishing returns and using work units to manage your work hours instead of working randomly sounds very much like a minimum effective dose to me.

Time Management Tuesday: When To-Do Lists Go Bad

I'm a big fan of to-do lists. I've been keeping a serious weekly to-do list for years, and I occasionally supplement it with other lists. I tend to feel that if I want to be sure to get something done, I should put it on a list.

But just writing things down on a piece of paper, one item after another instead of in a paragraph, won't necessarily provide you with a to-do list that will get you anywhere. Melissa Thompson explains why in 2018 Is Your Year For Avoiding These 6 To-Do List Mistakes.

How Writers Can Make Mistakes With To-Do Lists

1. You Put Too Many Things On The List. Overwhelm. Few people deal well with that. And, remember, we're most likely to experience failures of willpower when we feel bad about ourselves, for things like not getting everything done on our to-do lists. Less. My word for the year is less.
2.  You Don't Plan For Interruptions. For instance, your editor gets back to you with content editing and that is the end of the new work you were getting started on. Or you suddenly hear of an opportunity to submit work, but the submission, itself, requires some unexpected work when your to-do list says you're supposed to be doing marketing. Or you're suddenly dealing with a problem with the pharmacy or a medical bill you think you already paid or a family who is sick. I don't see how you can plan for these things. Unless you go back to Item 1 and don't have your to-do list jammed packed in the first place.
3.  You Don't Prioritize. Writers have an array of tasks these days. Which one is the most important? That's easy, right. Writing, of course. Not always. It's all situational, lads and lasses. Research may be a priority one day. Marketing another. Editing. Teaching. Appearances. You have to constantly be changing your priorities. Sad to say, you can't pick one and create a long-term habit.
4. You Don't Set Deadlines Or Estimate Time. The unit system can help with this. Whatever time segment you choose to use becomes an immediate deadline. You can assign yourself a number of units for a particular task, and there you have an estimate of time.
5.  You Aren't Specific. This is where having objectives for your goals comes in handy. For instance, a goal of "Generate New Work" isn't very specific. The objectives for the goals are. 1. "Finish a draft of Good Women." 2. "Write food essays." 3. "Write essays using outlines created for workshop submissions." And you can get even more specific. 1. "Write food essays--draft an essay about baking pans." (Seriously. I want to do that.) 2. "Write essays using outlines created for workshop submissions--draft an essay from the procrastination submission."

Clearly, there are ways to get more bang for your buck with to-do lists.

Time Management Tuesday: My 2015 Time Management Disaster

I made a decision in May that knocked me off the time management wagon the rest of the year.

I decided to give up the unit system to work "in bits and pieces" because that work strategy was triggering breakout experiences that were extremely helpful while working on the first draft of The Mummy Hunters. Now, some people would say that the unit system is working in bits and pieces, anyway, because you work for 45-minutes (or another segment of time) and do something else for 15. But I'm talking smaller bits and pieces. Bits and pieces that stopped leading to breakout experiences. Bits that eventually led to pieces spent on-line.

My impulse control is shot.

I did finish a first draft of The Mummy Hunters, though the last portion of that draft was pretty weak. And I've nearly finished a second draft.  But I'm not at all satisfied with how much I've done on other projects these past seven months. Plus the last portion of that second mummy draft is like doing a first draft again, because, as I said, the original first draft was pretty weak. First drafts...Yeah.

In The Throes Of The End Of One Unit Of Time And Eagerly Looking Forward To A New One

I'm hoping to have this second draft done by New Year's Eve. Even with that deadline, I'm struggling to stay on task. Why? My theory is that it's because this deadline involves the end of a year, a significant unit of time. It's an ending. At the end of a unit of time, we're kind of worn out. If nothing else, our willpower, which is finite, is wearing thin. Plus, if you're unhappy with what you've been doing during that unit of time that is almost over, as I am, it's hard to stay psyched. Or is that just me?

That new year that's coming up is an entirely different thing. It's like starting the day over, rested and with impulse control intact. There will be new goals for next year. Hey, everything is going to be different.

It's kind of a Zenny thing, isn't it? We put the old year, the old unit of time, behind us and try to live in the new one.

It's going to be a lot easier for me to do that, if I finish that draft.