Day 978 - Trying a new schedule for more productivity

I have been re-reading Elana Johnson’s book, Writing and Marketing Systems (Indie Inspiration for Self-Publishers Book 3). She suggests that you track your writing schedule for 60 days, and I’ve actually been doing that consistently for several months.

My IBS is typically worse between 10am and 2 pm, but sometimes the pain starts earlier and sometimes it goes for longer. I’ve been trying to adjust my diet so that I don’t eat the foods that trigger my IBS, but unfortunately there are a lot of foods where I don’t know if they will affect me. Sometimes I simply avoid them, but other times I want to try them and then I pay for it later.

All that to say, my IBS bothers me more days than it doesn’t. And after reading about how Elana had to figure out what worked best for her schedule, I finally decided to try something different.

Instead of trying to have a flexible schedule, and writing in the morning on the days when I feel well, I think I’ll just automatically assume I’m not going to be feeling well in the morning. I’ll plan to do things that I can do even if my IBS is bothering me, such as marketing or editing, and not even try to write in the morning. I’ll schedule my writing time to start in the afternoon, or just whenever I feel better.

I also noticed that when I get up early, I’m just really miserable for several hours as I wait for the IBS symptoms to pass. But when I was getting up later, I only had to suffer my IBS symptoms for a few hours before they started feeling better. So instead, since I’m already a night owl, I’m just going to stay up late and get up late and see how that impacts my writing productivity.

Sometimes it’s hard to be working at night because my brain thinks it’s nearly bedtime and so I shouldn’t be working. But because I tend to feel better in the late afternoon and evening, I want to take advantage of that time to get work done.

I’m not going to become a vampire, but I’m going to stop trying to get up at the crack of dawn and be in bed by 10 pm, which is what I’ve been trying to do.

I also haven’t been very good about working a little on my Hawaii book. I found that I’ll usually just fill the time with work on the Regency instead. So I think I’ll have to move the Hawaii book into my “frogs” for the day.

My “frogs” are a combination of things from Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time and 5,000 Words Per Hour. Eat That Frog says to do the most difficult or important things first thing, while in 5000 Words Per Hour, he talks about “clearing the deck” where you get rid of anything—whether item or task—that will distract you from writing so that you can start work with a clean desk and uncluttered thoughts.

I have certain things I absolutely need to get done before my writing or else they simply won’t get done during the day. I just never get around to them. I have other tasks that are important but not urgent, however if I put them off until later, the thought of doing them will nag at me while I’m writing and distract me. I lump all these things into “frogs” that I do first thing before I start writing.

My “frogs” are usually: exercise, Bible reading, house chores, and 30 minutes of Japanese language study. So now I’ll add about 30 minutes of work on the Hawaii book to the end of my “frogs” list and do that before I start on the Regency for the day. I also have been slacking off on the Japanese study, so I’ll have to discipline myself to do that and not be lazy.

The “frogs” are mostly things I can do even if my IBS is bothering me a bit. Even the Hawaii book is mostly editing rather than writing fresh prose, so I can do that even if my IBS flares up. If I do my “frogs” first thing, then hopefully by the time I finish, I’ll be feeling well enough to do some writing on the Regency.

**

I managed almost 4.5 hours of writing work today, which I think was rather good considering most of it was loathsome editing.

I did almost an hour on the Hawaii book, which was great since I hadn’t done any work on it in several days. I did notice that it was easier to pick up the thread of where I’d left off in the scene since it had only been about 3 days since I last read it and not an entire week, so I think it might be more efficient for me to try to do a little in the Hawaii book every day.

I worked on the Hawaii book before I started work on the Regency, and I did my Japanese work afterward, then started on my Regency. I didn’t notice any difficulty in switching gears from contemporary to historical (which tripped me up before when I was trying to do both series at once), but that might also have been helped because I did the Japanese study in between, so I have to remember to try to do that again.

I almost forgot to do some dictation today, but remembered when I went to blog for today. I did only 13 minutes of dictation and got about 500 words done. It wasn’t as fast as other days, but I have noticed that I tend to be slower at the beginning and pick up speed the longer I dictate, so it’s not unusual.

I hope that with this new schedule, I can slowly increase the number of hours I can work each day. I think I waste some time because I’m tired and find it hard to concentrate for longer hours, but I also know that I’m not very good at switching tasks quickly. If I were more efficient at that, I could go from one task to the next without wasting time, and I could focus all my energy on whatever it was I had to do at the moment, to get it done as fast as possible. I think I’ll need to work on that.

Writing streak: 457 days

Dictation streak: 2 days

My takeaway for today: Try a later schedule that will deliberately accommodate my IBS to see if that can help me be more productive.

My second takeaway for today: Do 30 minutes on the Hawaii book first thing as one of your “frogs” to make sure you get it done.

My third takeaway for today: Doing some Japanese language work in-between the work on the Hawaii book and the Regency might help so that I don’t have issues switching genres.