Trying to Manage Time

The saying is true, time just slips away. Before I know it the day is gone. I look at the writing goals I've set for myself and realize I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped.

Our crit group leader has been encouraging us to keep track of our progress. One of the ladies even created an online place for that. It's a great idea. I flopped terribly with keeping the daily log on line. In my defense, I'm jumping between projects, and logging word count for edits is much harder because most of it is by hand right now. On the flip side, I need to keep track. I need to know how long it takes me to do something so my goal setting, and later, book commitments are accurate. Here's what's working for me.

A couple weeks ago, I started logging in start and stop times, which have turned into in and out times - they're easier to abbreviate with one letter- on the pages I'm editing. Here's what I found out one day.

I'd worked from about 11am to 11pm, with interruptions throughout the day, remember, I have four kids and it's summer vacation. I added up all the in and out times. In that 12 hour period, I got about 3 hours worth of work done. I don't like those numbers. If it feels like I've been working all day, I want more than three hours of work to show for it.

So, I think I need to try some things. Obviously there will be distractions, but I may be more easily distracted - oh shiny! - than others. I need to limit the distractions I can.

My first experiment to find what works, will be disabling things like email, and the wifi on my iPod (that could be tricky. I use the thesaurus app). The same goes for FB and text notifications. My phone will be on so the people who have my children can get a hold of me. So, if it's important, please call.

We'll see how this works. It might need some tweaking, but it's a start.