How to Find Time to Write [KOCPU #5]

Our lives are busy.

I’ve heard people talking about “killing time”. One of my friends used that expression a lot, and I never understood it.

Why would you want to kill time? We have too little of it already.

Sadly, my friend died before his 60 year birthday.

Maybe there’s a message there.

For the rest of us, our lives are busy and it’s hard to find time and energy to do something extra like...

...writing a book :)

You probably know all the usual advice like:

• Stop watching TV.
• Don’t read the news.
• Limit your Facebook time.
• Shut down Skype.
• Don’t check your email every 30 seconds.
• Tell your dog not to nag you, he’s just been out.

You’ve also heard some say that you should go to a cafe, tell your spouse and kids you’re busy (good luck), and to get up earlier or go to bed earlier.

That will help you, but it didn’t do it for me.

I wasn’t able to write focused until I came up with a system.

I tried allotting two hours for each task, four tasks a day. It didn’t work. Oh, yes, the first day, but already the second day I was too exhausted to get any work done.

Here’s a trick I found working for me:

Track your time.

Why does that work?

Let’s look at a daily situation first, one of the usual ones, where you don’t track your time.

You’ve decided to write a chapter in your new book.

You’ve opened up your favorite writing program, and you’re writing… But you hit a stop, and you look out the window to find inspiration.

None found, so you check your email, go to Facebook, Skype a friend… You’re having a severe procrastination fit.

Because that was the easier solution.

Now, if you’re tracking time, you’ll have to stop the timer every time you go doing something else. And you have to convince yourself that it’s worth breaking a good work rhythm just for checking emails outside of its allotted time.

Tracking time makes you work harder and more focused.

You can use one of the numerous free timers, or a Pomodoro egg timer.

I have ADD. Still, I manage to work focused many hours per day.

Oh, and by the way, having a timer running also shows your spouse that you’re busy. If you reply, “One second, honey, I have to pause the timer,” every time your spouse wants to show you interesting pictures of cats on Facebook, they will eventually understand that you’re serious about spending some time working.

Another thing that works wonders is this:

Make it a daily habit to write at the same time for the same amount of time.

If you write 30 minutes daily, say, every morning before you even fetch your email, and you write 40 words per minute, you’ll manage to write 1200 words per day.

That means you could have a short nonfiction book ready in five days, without breaking a sweat.

Or you could write a short story in ten days.

What if my writing sucks?

Write anyway.

Even the most horrible writing can be edited and policed and end up being a good book.

But if you don’t write, then there’s not the slightest chance that it will end up being a good book.

So that’s my advice to you:

• Make time.
• Track your time.
• Write 30 minutes daily, at least.
• Write daily.
• Make it a habit.

That should take care of your time and energy problem. Next up is the lack of knowledge...

The Other Posts in KOCPU:

Publishing On Kindle? Find Your Category [KOCPU #1]
Research for Your Kindle Book [KOCPU #2]
Writing an Outline for Your Kindle Book [KOCPU #3]
Make Writing Easy [KOCPU #4]