Time is Money: A Writer’s Guide to Productivity and Goal Setting

 

Harnessing the Power of Time to Create Your Best Work

Time is money. There was a time when that phrase meant nothing to me. I once saw it as just a tawdry cliche overachievers used to make the rest of us feel small. Now, as a 36-year-old man who finally found the confidence and ambition to pursue what I love to do, there isn’t a phrase that resonates with me more than that. Writing is about more than creativity. Many people don’t understand this right away—I sure didn’t—but it also takes discipline to be successful, much like any other line of work. Taking those ideas rolling around in your head and turning them into things people want to read takes discipline and an ability to force yourself to sit down and transform those fleeting ideas into compelling narratives. As with any other venture, your most precious resource is not your computer, not your pens or notebooks, but time. The quality and efficiency of your work depend on good time management skills. In today’s article, I intend to share some personal insight and tips I’ve found helpful to help writers, and creatives maximize their productivity, set reachable goals, and stay motivated through even the most demanding projects.

The Cost of Wasted Time

   

Recently, I sat in my office late at night, tormented by the blinking cursor on the screen in front of me as I struggled through the first draft of a novel I was trying to write. I’d look at my watch occasionally, a brief respite from the incessant blinking of that cursor. Minutes went by, then turned into hours. Those hours turned into days, and the days into weeks as I sat there day after day, tinkering with the same sentences and the same paragraphs. Progress felt like an impossible dream. Deadlines, self-imposed as they were, came and went with little to no progress. Frustration and self-doubt crept in as I questioned if I was even meant for this. As I sit here today, I know I am, and I sit here today having learned a crucial lesson in my development as a writer. Time is money. That’s not just a cliche. It’s words to live by, a phrase that promotes accountability even if you’re just starting out and not making money yet. If you don’t treat time as if it is money, you’ll never make money doing what you love, no matter what it is. Just like any money investment, time can be made to work for you or it can be wasted. The choice is yours.

Setting Clear Deadlines: Your Compass to Productivity

One of the best pieces of advice I can give as a writer if you want to increase your productivity is to set a clear and realistic deadline for every project. I struggle with this to this day, but whether it’s a short story, blog post or a novel, a clear and realistic deadline, one that you keep sacred, to quote Jerry Jenkins. I’ll link Jerry’s website and YouTube channel in this article. He has some informative videos and information about writing and everything that goes with it. I’ve learned a lot from Jerry, and you can too. He taught me a lot about deadlines and how creating a deadline and keeping it. Deadlines haven’t always been my strong suit, and it took going through the difficulties of starting a writing career to realize how much of a problem it was. I’ve set myself up with a Monday deadline, save for holiday weekends, for the first post of the week. This post will probably go up sometime on Tuesday. There are exceptions, but at the very least, I have been able to increase my overall posting frequency over the past month. Save for the occasional distraction with a story or novel idea, I’ve been pretty consistent. Unless you count other writing projects as procrastination, I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better at staying committed to my goals, and you can too.

To make deadlines work for you:

• Use a calendar: Mark down specific dates to complete certain goals

• Be realistic: If you set deadlines that are too rigid, it may lead to burnout and encourage procrastination. 

• Track progress: Regularly review your progress to stay on track. Adjust if need be.

Prioritize Tasks to Maximize Efficiency

The writing process is often made up of a juggling act of projects, responsibilities, and deadlines. You spend your days either drafting, responding to emails and social media messages, or researching your next piece. All these tasks need to be done to be successful as a writer or creator. The key is prioritizing those tasks so that you can get everything done without burning out. I recall vividly when I started my blogging journey trying to speed up the process with a bunch of posts at once. The result? Mediocre content and a loss of confidence in myself that caused the sizable gap in my production. I’m just now getting back on track. Long story short, priorities are important.

By the time I’d made a few posts on my blog, it was no secret I had the creative energy needed to be a writer and to be successful at it. What I lacked—and am still working on finding as I write this—is a way to channel that energy effectively and efficiently. I find it helpful to break things down into categories based on urgency. 

As an example of my breakdown method, getting the story for fiction or the main premise for a blog post on paper, no matter how rough it is, ranks first for me. I find research and outlining to be frivolous in the drafting stage. Not everyone will agree, but that’s how I work. I like to get a framework of what I want to say and how I want to say it, then I worry about the facts.

Once I have the framework and a rough idea of where I want to go with the piece I’m writing, I will put together a rough outline for structure. I tried the full discovery method for a while, but I have ADD, and writing fully by the seat of my pants doesn’t work for me. It took me forever as a fan of Stephen King to admit that, but eventually, I swallowed my foolish pride and started putting together at least a rough outline for anything I write. A rough outline satisfies my brain’s need for structure while allowing the right half of my brain to do its own thing within the parameters of the outline. Before I write the first draft, however, I need to ensure I know what I’m talking about.

Research is a step that I used to downplay. I used to subscribe to the “write what you know” theory and followed it to the letter. The problem was, I didn’t know half as much as I thought I did. I also subscribe to a theory that basically states you either succeed or you learn something. My initial foray into blogging was definitely the latter. I don’t recall where I heard this tip, but I heard or read somewhere to not publish something that would essentially be a first draft. This made me realize how important editing is, and how much I downplayed that as well.

To err is human. To edit is divine. Where I heard that one, I don’t remember either. But it definitely holds true. Like research, my foolish pride caused me to downplay the importance of editing despite everything I’ve read and seen in videos and such. I don’t like to admit such vanity, but there was a time where I didn’t feel my writing required editing. Oh how wrong I was. Sometimes it takes meeting the right people to realize the mistakes you’re making.

I have a friend who is a writer and editor. Thanks to our conversations about the process, I realized everyone needs an editor. She is a talented writer in her own right. I will link her book here for those who enjoy historical fiction with some dark themes. I will warn you, it gets dark, but she is very talented. She helped me realize that everyone who writes needs to also edit and edit ferociously—another paraphrase from Jerry Jenkins—to be successful. To summarize, no one is perfect, and editing is essential to any writer’s success. The more I wrote and the more I learned, however, the more I realized I had a lot to learn about maintaining a blog. The worst part, at least for me, is the internal workings of coding and making sure the search engines pick up what I’m writing.

I’m not afraid to admit it, I stink at coding. SEO and Google Search Console were foreign concepts in the beginning. I sat there wondering why I wasn’t getting noticed until I looked into the Google Search Console and realized my pages weren’t getting indexed. It’s a problem that I’m slowly working on even as I’m writing this article. To the point of task priority, I surmised that writing the content should come first rather than worrying about whether Google was seeing it. After all, Google can’t see what’s not online. Writing and blogging, like anything else, is a step by step process and should be broken down and treated as such.

Breaking Projects into Manageable Steps

 Whether it’s writing a novel, preparing a presentation, or drafting a blog post such as this one, the sheer scale of large projects can be intimidating. This brings me to another tip I gleaned from Jerry Jenkins. How do you write a novel? One word at a time. That’s the idea with any project. One step at a time. If you can break your project down into manageable steps, you give yourself a goal to reach, a stopping point if you need a break to prevent burnout, and a sense of accomplishment to keep you motivated. As you check these smaller goals off your list, you’ll be able to stay motivated to complete the next task and before you know it, you’re done. I have always thought of every event in my life as a stepping stone to where I am now. The same thought applies to any project. Each smaller goal is one step closer to completing the ultimate task. 

For example, I have divided the process for each of my articles and stories into clear stages:

• Write the first (rough) draft on the first day

• Let it sit for a day to give my brain a break and allow me to approach it with a fresh perspective

• Write the second draft on the second or third day with the first draft as a reference point. This allows me to naturally self edit as I go along.

• Edit, polish, and post by the end of the third or fourth day.

Each completed step, as I mentioned, would give me a sense of accomplishment and motivate me to complete the next step. Not only am I more efficient, but I’m also more apt to pay more attention to detail, and that improves content overall.

Actionable Tips for Managing Time Effectively

Time management can be the most undervalued but also most difficult aspect of any process. Here are some practical strategies for time management that I’ve implemented and am in the process of refining and perfecting so they work for me:

• Start your day with a plan: Begin with a priority list. I usually make this list as part of my morning pages that I write with my coffee every morning. Perhaps I’ll detail that process in another article. This can be a simple itemized to-do list that you tailor to your goals. Starting your day this way can help you get off on the right foot and feel productive from the moment you start your day.

• Embrace time-blocking: Set aside specific parts of your day for the different parts of the process. Writing, editing, and research should have their own dedicated time slot. This ensures focus and prevents distraction.

• Minimize distractions: This is the hardest one for me. The modern writer’s process is full of potential distractions. My favorite way to combat this is to set a timer—usually for about an hour at a time—in focus mode (no notifications) and with my other devices out of reach. This creates an environment that is much more conducive to concentration and focused work.

• Reward yourself: Celebrate small milestones or steps completed with a small reward. Personally, I reward myself with an hour of gaming or my favorite shows for every task completed. Whatever you enjoy that gives you a break, that’s your reward for reaching your goals.

Final Thoughts

Time is a double-edged sword. If wasted, it can be your worst enemy. If used properly, it can be your best friend and bring out the best in you. Remember, every word written, every project completed, brings you closer to the top of the mountain. Setting deadlines, making priority lists, and breaking projects down into smaller, more manageable steps can be the difference between dreams and reality. 

As I look back on my journey, which has been relatively short compared to some others, I realize the value of time and how much of it I wasted in the past. The past is exactly that, however, and cannot be changed. So from now on, I have made it my mission to bring life to the mantra, “Time is Money” and encourage you to do the same. Make every day a great one and make every second count.