Hello Writers and Editors
Time management is important. It also gets talked about a lot. But… a lot of that talk is really the same stuff regurgitated. S.M.A.R.T. Goals, using your calendar… Let’s look at things a little differently.
Time management is really conflict management. What conflicts? Well, there are goal conflicts and calendar conflicts (I rarely see the S.M.A.R.T. Goals and using your calendar folks talking about those), but there are value conflicts and even scriptural conflicts.
Really, scriptural conflicts about time management. I can show you scriptural statements that say, “Take no thought what you shall say,” and “consider the lilies”. But I can also show you scriptures that we’re to establish the Kingdom “with justice and judgment.” How do you do that without planning your time? (Note: judgment in this case implies doing things wisely, not a “judgy-pants-fault-finder.”)
Whether you’re a religious person or not; whether you’re a S.M.A.R.T. Goals person or not, there’s one thing we can agree on: we only have so much time to work with.
A Limited Resource
No matter who you are, you have only 24 hours in a day. That’s 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds, and for your health’s sake, sleeping, eating, and other bodily functions are going to take up a chunk of that.
Yes, you can hire people. But that costs other resources.
Yes, you can ‘multitask’. But that’s not as efficient as some folks think.
We have only so much time and so much that we can accomplish. So, we need to bake good choices into how we use what we have.
A Need for Ballance
There’s a natural human need for structure and order. If we don’t have it, we build it (even if we don’t know that’s what we’re doing). As a species, we enjoy having structure. It’s comforting.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we need to be locked in and every moment scheduled. That’s bad too. What we need is a balance, with enough structure to support what we’re doing and enough “maneuvering room” to react to ideas and changes in the world.
In his theory of Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues we need structure to achieve optimal (flow) experiences. He also points out in his book on creativity that the creative folks are the ones that can operate within a structure and still do or discover things beyond what everyone else is doing. That’s what to shoot for.
In The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Stephen R. Covey presents us with the P/PC ratio, the idea that we have to balance our production with maintaining and building our production capacity. If we focus entirely on production (doing whatever it is we do) we burn out. If we focus only on enhancing production capacity, we produce nothing.
Things only get worse if we ignore what we can do and what we should do to focus on things that are outside of our control or seem shiny and exciting that don’t lead toward our goals. Focusing on those things burns energy and resources, producing nothing (even a theoretical ability to produce!).
What we need is a balance between doing(production) and strengthening our ability to do (production capacity). And that includes both learning/skill building and rest!
So how do we find that balance? That’s a big question. For now, let’s focus on the one aspect of balance and our time (hint: a lot of the other aspects to this question have similar answers…). Mr. Covey gives us major insight into finding our balance time-wise.
Covey outlines four levels of time management and organization, running from the typical lists and calendars to setting genuine priorities. But to set those priorities, we have to understand what we can do and what we really want to do (and why we’re doing it).
We need to understand the why of what we’re doing. Not just the “I’m completing my goal” part, but also why it’s a goal of ours.
Understanding and Choice
Managing our time well starts with introspection. It starts with understanding the why, not just the what and how. It also means looking at what options we have and doing our best to figure out where they lead (yes, there are always unforeseen things, but letting the possibility of something unforeseen stop you stops you 100% of the time; any well-reasoned attempt to move forward has a better chance of success!).
Once we have that knowledge, we can start making choices. We can choose the options that actually get us where we want to go (and the places we need to go to get there!). When we know where we’re trying to go, and we make choices that lead in the right direction, we’re already farther along the path than many people get.
This is the point where some of us need the “buck up, have courage, and keep going” speech. Lots of people will give you that one, so I’ll save my words.
Instead, I’ll tell you this. The introspection and analysis phase never really stops. Sure, we’re moving now, but it’s a good idea to make sure we’re actually going the right way. Even if we’re making progress toward a goal, how is that progress in relation to our other goals, especially our big goals?
My team and I have had the S.M.A.R.T. goals discussion more than once. Some of them honestly think I hate SMART goals. That’s not it. What I’m against is blindly following a proscribed path to a goal (even one we proscribed for ourselves) when that path is no longer functional or doesn’t really lead to our greater objectives. If they do, great. If they don’t, ditch them and find something better.
And in that there is a secret. I mentioned we’re not great at multitasking (as a species). Like time, we only have so much attention, and dividing it weakens our ability to do things. But nobody said we couldn’t pursue a path that leads to more than one goal!
"Cheating"
We’re going to spend our time. We’re hopefully doing things that lead toward our goals. What if we could do things that lead toward more than one goal at the same time?
You want to be a successful author, and you need to support yourself until that happens. Choose a job that gives you inspiration for your writing and/or connections to the people you need on your team.
I spent several years working in fast food. I also spent several years working in mental health. No, those jobs didn’t lead directly to a best-selling book, but talk about a source for character inspiration! The job even paid the bills at the same time.
Currently, I’m doing a workup of a village that several stories will be set in (or at least the main heroes are based there…). I realized I could also make some gaming supplements for my RPG friends with the same material. That’s multiple salable products coming from the same bit of work.
It’s true that driving a car while talking on your phone and eating breakfast is dangerous. But being able to use the same work for more than one project/goal is just plain efficiency. That’s the multitasking we should be doing.
The focus of this post is time management (did I mention that?). But you’ll notice I didn’t waste your time with another discussion of calendars and goal setting. Lots of people do that, and I’d be wasting both of our time by adding another of those posts. Instead, I’m saying, figure out where you really want to go, and then build the time management strategy that actually leads there. Without that part, all the other advice is getting you nowhere fast.
If you’ve figured it out. Take a minute to celebrate. If not, take a minute to figure out where you’re going.
That’s it for this one, dear reader. Next week we’ll be posting over at Creating Worlds. If you’re just reading the FMP blog, I’ll see you in two.
