Last week I talked about goals–something you want to achieve and can control. If you want something, set goals that will help you achieve it, and then make a plan that will make you meet those goals.
So how do you plan? Sounds like a rhetorical question, but I’m curious. For the past five or so years I’ve been making schedules for myself, which originally started back when I read Time Management from the Inside Out and thought her “time maps” were intriguing. Mainly, putting everything onto my calendar ensures that I actually make the time to do it. I still tend to slide into the realm of “I can do 15 things after work tonight and still get to bed by 10” if I don’t look at how long things actually take. (There is some part of my brain which thinks the rules of time don’t apply to me.)
That covers the “how much writing time can I wedge into this week” and “can I really jog, swim, and play tennis?” elements of my plan. Now it’s time for the bigger picture.
More recently I’ve been playing with a timeline program, because I couldn’t find any free project management tools that were nice to use. I wanted to lay out a year’s worth of writing. Like my daily schedule, this is another area where my brain tries to overreach. Hey, there’s a story a week challenge. Wouldn’t that be fun. Ooh, Nanowrimo. Haven’t done that in a while. Oh, and I should write that cool book about the nifty thing. Sure, I’ll just finish up this revision and then draft the next book and then I can do that new book and these fifteen short stories and maybe I should try poetry and….
Conveniently I know about how much time in a week and (roughly) how long it takes me to write something. Which means I can sit down with a map of the year and say, ok, this short story will take me this many weekends. This outline can take up these weeks. This first draft will be done by x, so after that I can start something new. And so on.
Also conveniently, no one but me actually cares about the deadlines I set for myself, so I have the flexibility to change my plan whenever I want if something unexpected (like an open anthology or a workshop I decide to attend) comes along. I don’t think I’ve ever ended a year with the same plan I started with. My life is not nearly as draconian as this post makes it sound.
So back to the non-rhetorical question. How do you lay out what you’re going to work on for the year (or five years, or month, or whatever)?
I love the “15 things after work” bit. I do the same thing. It’s so easy to fall into that trap.
I look at my list then split it into two parts – what I need to do and what’s left “in case” I work faster than anticipated. At least it lets me focus on what’s critical. I also don’t feel so bad when I didn’t get to that crit or read that short story because it was on my “wish” list.
Good luck with 2012. 🙂
Yes. My to do list program has a section called “today”, and I really try to only put things there if they have to be done today. I can always look at the rest of the list if I run out of things to do.