Day 27: Getting more work hours a day
I got a late start today, and I spent some extra time blogging that I hadn’t intended to do. I’ll see how much I can get done today.
I also had a realization while walking today. I spent about 9-10 hours a day working when I was in biology research full-time, but now that I’m writing full-time, I don’t spend the same amount of time working on my writing and writing-related activities. I did some calculations.
I sleep about 8 hours, although lately that has been flexible since sometimes I wake up after 6 hours and sometimes I wake up after 9 hours.
After I wake up, I take about 4 hours to do home chores that I want to get out of the way so I can clear my To Do list and have nothing else to do but my writing, at least until I have to start cooking dinner. These home chores include my personal hygiene, my quiet time with God, cleaning the house, laundry, washing dishes, daily exercise, gardening, breakfast/lunch cooking. I don’t always have gardening, laundry and cleaning the house to do everyday.
Then I do some writing until I have to cook dinner. Cooking and eating dinner takes about 2 to 2.5 hours. I write for a few hours more.
For the first couple weeks of the month, I hadn’t been spending time refilling the creative well so now I make sure to spend at least 1-2 hours on that. Otherwise I feel antsy and distracted and I’m not very productive at my writing, plus I’ll usually work fewer hours.
Then it takes me about an hour to get ready for bed.
Total, my non-writing time is 17.5 hours, which means I only have 6.5 hours a day left, and that needs to include writing, checking my email, and breaks during writing. I used to work in biology for 9-10 hours a day (which included a 1-hour lunch break), so I should at least have 8 hours a day to work. Just because I’m home writing, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t work just as hard and just as many hours on my writing as I did at biology.
Somehow everything else has become more important than my writing, which is how I make money and is the work God has given me to do. I need to find a way to get more hours for my work and make it more of a priority in my time management.
I’d prefer not to cut back on sleep because I know from past experience that lack of sleep makes my creativity wane and I don’t get much done on my writing. If I only do 1 hour of reading a day, that brings my work/writing time up to 7.5 hours, but that’s still not enough.
So my conclusion is that I have to find a way to cut back on home chores.
I don’t like doing a ton of house cleaning on weekends, but I think I just have to suck it up and do it if I want to make sure I have enough time on weekdays to write. So I should defer some of my home chores to Sundays. I’ve made up a schedule to alternate what I clean each week, so I’ll see how that works. I still will do laundry every weekday since we hang our laundry to dry, but that’s only 15 minutes to hang it and 15 minutes to take it down and put it away.
Only a couple weeks ago, I started doing my cooking planning for the week on Sundays, so if I continue doing that, hopefully that will cut down on the time it takes for me to cook during the week. I can also plan to cook on Saturdays and Sundays so we can eat leftovers during the week. It was easier in the wintertime when I could make soups and stews, but in the summer, hubby doesn’t like to eat soups, and we both detest salads, so I’m stuck figuring out other things to cook.
So for the next few weeks, I’ll try this and see if I can increase the amount of time I have to work each day.
Now it’s time to work. Today I’m doing the spiritual and romantic arcs for volume 9.
***
I got done the spiritual and romantic arcs for volume 9! I also started on Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis) on volume 10, but only got partly done with it.
I took a break to eat and ended up spending about 2.5 hours reading. I was so distracted! I finally got back to work, but it’s now getting late and I want to get to bed, so I didn’t get as much work done today as I wanted.
I’m worried that I’m not able to focus for long hours like I did at the beginning of the month, and wondering what I can do about that. Even if I do manage to get more hours of work time per day, if I spend it goofing off, that’s not good, either.
Time spent writing: 3 hours, 6 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 16 minutes
My takeaway for today: I need to find a way to get more hours for my work and make it more of a priority in my time management.
I also had a realization while walking today. I spent about 9-10 hours a day working when I was in biology research full-time, but now that I’m writing full-time, I don’t spend the same amount of time working on my writing and writing-related activities. I did some calculations.
I sleep about 8 hours, although lately that has been flexible since sometimes I wake up after 6 hours and sometimes I wake up after 9 hours.
After I wake up, I take about 4 hours to do home chores that I want to get out of the way so I can clear my To Do list and have nothing else to do but my writing, at least until I have to start cooking dinner. These home chores include my personal hygiene, my quiet time with God, cleaning the house, laundry, washing dishes, daily exercise, gardening, breakfast/lunch cooking. I don’t always have gardening, laundry and cleaning the house to do everyday.
Then I do some writing until I have to cook dinner. Cooking and eating dinner takes about 2 to 2.5 hours. I write for a few hours more.
For the first couple weeks of the month, I hadn’t been spending time refilling the creative well so now I make sure to spend at least 1-2 hours on that. Otherwise I feel antsy and distracted and I’m not very productive at my writing, plus I’ll usually work fewer hours.
Then it takes me about an hour to get ready for bed.
Total, my non-writing time is 17.5 hours, which means I only have 6.5 hours a day left, and that needs to include writing, checking my email, and breaks during writing. I used to work in biology for 9-10 hours a day (which included a 1-hour lunch break), so I should at least have 8 hours a day to work. Just because I’m home writing, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t work just as hard and just as many hours on my writing as I did at biology.
Somehow everything else has become more important than my writing, which is how I make money and is the work God has given me to do. I need to find a way to get more hours for my work and make it more of a priority in my time management.
I’d prefer not to cut back on sleep because I know from past experience that lack of sleep makes my creativity wane and I don’t get much done on my writing. If I only do 1 hour of reading a day, that brings my work/writing time up to 7.5 hours, but that’s still not enough.
So my conclusion is that I have to find a way to cut back on home chores.
I don’t like doing a ton of house cleaning on weekends, but I think I just have to suck it up and do it if I want to make sure I have enough time on weekdays to write. So I should defer some of my home chores to Sundays. I’ve made up a schedule to alternate what I clean each week, so I’ll see how that works. I still will do laundry every weekday since we hang our laundry to dry, but that’s only 15 minutes to hang it and 15 minutes to take it down and put it away.
Only a couple weeks ago, I started doing my cooking planning for the week on Sundays, so if I continue doing that, hopefully that will cut down on the time it takes for me to cook during the week. I can also plan to cook on Saturdays and Sundays so we can eat leftovers during the week. It was easier in the wintertime when I could make soups and stews, but in the summer, hubby doesn’t like to eat soups, and we both detest salads, so I’m stuck figuring out other things to cook.
So for the next few weeks, I’ll try this and see if I can increase the amount of time I have to work each day.
Now it’s time to work. Today I’m doing the spiritual and romantic arcs for volume 9.
***
I got done the spiritual and romantic arcs for volume 9! I also started on Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis) on volume 10, but only got partly done with it.
I took a break to eat and ended up spending about 2.5 hours reading. I was so distracted! I finally got back to work, but it’s now getting late and I want to get to bed, so I didn’t get as much work done today as I wanted.
I’m worried that I’m not able to focus for long hours like I did at the beginning of the month, and wondering what I can do about that. Even if I do manage to get more hours of work time per day, if I spend it goofing off, that’s not good, either.
Time spent writing: 3 hours, 6 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 16 minutes
My takeaway for today: I need to find a way to get more hours for my work and make it more of a priority in my time management.
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