Happy August!
I come to you sprinting toward the end of my deadline. I have two weeks and many words to go before I sleep, but the end is in sight—just a mountain or two left to climb.
I started July proud of my work in June, having written over 25,000 words.
A personal best.
In July, I bettered my best, writing over 62,000 words in 100 hours across 93 sessions.
Things I’ve Continued: Accountability Sprints
I love my time with my pals from the Women’s Fiction Writer’s Association, London Writer’s Society, and my pals, the OhMGs, on the weekends. The biggest addition was in joining the 7 AM sprints with LWS. Starting out my morning with a solid chunk of work translates into a better, more productive day. I only have the rest of this week as the kids head back to school, but I hope to join on the half-hour to get the morning started strong.
Things I’ve Changed: Moving workouts
I used to try to work out from 5:30 until 7:00 AM time and found myself exhausted halfway through the day. I’ve switched the workout time to 8 AM, so I’m ready for work at 9 AM my time. I also keep my three-pound weights there to combine strength on alternating days. It’s resulted in less stress and anxiety in choosing what activity I should do and spending more quality time with my family in the morning.
Things I’ve Added: My 1000 Blocks Tracker
I’ve been obsessed with the idea of time since reading 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman in 2021.
The idea is that the average human life span is limited, most of us only reaching 80 if we’re lucky. With the knowledge that I only have so much time in this life, in this body, with this dream, I had to change if I wanted my goals to come true.
It corresponded with me getting more serious about my writing goals and dream of being a Commercially Successful Author. If this is what I want, then I need to act as though I already am one and develop the habits and presence of mind to make that the reality.
I learned that there are 1440 minutes in a day, and subtracting sleep, it leaves about 1000 minutes a day to get whatever you want done. When I looked at that, that meant I had about 100 ten-minute blocks of time to do anything with. When I looked at it that way, of course, I should spend it writing as it is my highest priority outside of my family and my health. It was also a good visual to see my day and see how much time I spent on Tiktok and Playing Royal Match (aka more than I should).
So I created a tracker in google sheets that serve as a to-do list and a guilt-free enjoyment time. If I’ve done my writing, cooked, and cleaned for my kids, then I’m free to chill in the evenings, actually enjoying my time with my family and not super stressed by the deadline.
Made in Google Sheets, I used data validation to simply click, and a drop-down menu appeared to color code my activity for the time. The time to the right calculates my total for the day of time spent, and the table on the left is the total blocks/hours I’ve spent for the entire month to date. You’ll notice it’s only from 5AM-9AM, cuz who has time to track all that? #9:30 bedtime girl
Seeing my day visually has helped with the prioritization of what needs to be done. I found I have more time than I thought to get things done, and most things don’t take that long at all. Ten minutes in the kitchen is all I need to tidy up, no need to dread it.
It’s also helped me to see how I can stack things. Yes, I need to clean, but I can also have my kids learn how to clean and care for their home. Since I’ve tracked my time, we’ve had conversations about how long things take and to just do them anyway. I promise you, my living has never been so clean. Don’t get me wrong, it still has toys and things about it, but my kids have ownership they didn’t have before.
As I make tweaks and continue to test throughout the month, I hope to have additional data for how I spent each week and a dashboard to see the metrics of time. It’s not quite ready to share like my Yearly calendar, but I’ll be sure to share the version when it does. You can see an old article I wrote on Medium about it.
Caveats
The final thing I’ll share is that I work from home remotely and have been in the role for six years. This means I don’t have a commute and a greater level of flexibility. Like this tracker, I’ve built systems to keep a pulse on my job, staff I’m managing, and projects that need to be done. #inboxzerogirl
My kids are also home for the summer and not in daycare, so we don’t have drop-offs. My husband also works remotely, so we can pair off when one has meetings or schedule conflicts for childcare. My desk is in the kitchen, so I can manage this zone (for better or worse) to manage their needs. The kids are also older and more independent, so they are capable of snacks and entertainment, along with the daily destruction of the play area.
As I didn’t have to lead direct instruction, I found more flexibility in my schedule to achieve my goals while also being there for my family. I’m just taking advantage of summer hours before the fall term gears up and training increases with my new staff and graduate students.
Goals for next month:
Submitting the manuscript on time (for real this time, lol)
Finding the balance between kids, the book, and work
Making sure to enjoy this thing called life.
That’s all I’ve got. If you tracked your time in blocks, what would you think you spend the most time doing? Drop it in the comments below.
Best -
Bri
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