The Time Budget
Do
you ever feel like Willie Wonka in Willie
Wonka in the Chocolate Factory? “So much time, and so little to do! Strike
that, reverse it.”
At
the beginning of this year, I was overwhelmed with some commitment nearly every
evening, which is when I do much of my writing. Each day had its own specific
“to-dos,” but I
found myself letting my writing slide as
I prioritized tasks that involved other people.
I’ll
admit, it
left me feeling guilty, especially
considering my recent post on keeping disciplined. It left me wondering how to
juggle commitments with writing and wondering how to decide which writing
projects to put first.
And
then I had an idea.
One
of my evening commitments was taking a financial course. One of the assignments
was to begin and stick to a budget. I’m a nerd, so I found that fun. Let me say
this: a weird thing about a budget is that you suddenly feel like you have
extra money. Once
you see what you have and where it’s going, you often have some extra left over
to throw at whatever you want, particularly debts.
I
discovered that I could take those principles and apply them to time and
writing. Yep. It’s a Time Budget. Not
a schedule.
A
schedule plans each hour or half-hour of every day, and you slot projects into
that. The Time Budget lines out your
projects. You decide which ones get priority, in which order—preferably
whichever one has the closest deadline. And then, time becomes money. ;) Each task
gets an allotted amount of time per day. Spend only the minimum time on all the
assignments except your highest priority one. Or maybe focus on that one alone.
Throw every
bit of spare time toward that highest priority project, even if it’s
just ten or twenty extra minutes, until it’s done. You spend your time as if you’re spending
money to pay off a debt. The payment of that debt is the finished
project. Ta-Da!
Welcome
to the Time Budget.
I’m
super excited to experiment more with this idea, and I want to share it with
you as well. I’ve already tried it for one project.
My
friend and I were tossing ideas around for each of our short story ideas that
we wanted to enter in the same contest. Originally, I’d been sporadically working
on the story on Saturdays, but my friend proposed that we finish the Rough
Drafts of our stories in one week, then reconvene for feedback. I knew I was
already busy with commitments that I couldn’t break, but I said I’d do it. I
dropped all my other writing projects—critiquing, blogging, and novel revision.
I flung all my spare time at my short story, including the twenty minutes I had
in the mornings after I was ready for work, before I had to leave the house. I
set myself the goal of writing 800 words per day for 5 days, to reach the contest’s
4,000-word limit. My Time Budget
looked like this:
Guess
what?
At
the end of the week, I had completed a 3800-word short story. I did it, even
when I didn’t think I could.
You
can too! Even if you cut out everything just to work on one thing, it is still a
discipline, and it’s one that you can move forward on and see progress in.
Now
that I’ve completed those projects, I can re-prioritize the chart to match my
new deadlines and jobs.
Below
is a Time Budget template that I’ve
created for you. Download it and fill in each of your projects in order of
their priority and then give every bit of extra time to that piece until it’s
done. Watch
your wordcount build and your projects get completed. :D
I’d
love to read and answer your questions. And if this Time Budget works for you, I’d love to hear about it in the
comments!
Ready? Set? Write!
…
“I'm writing a book. I've got the page
numbers done.”― Steven Wright
…
Comments
Post a Comment