Scheduling Your Writing Without Driving Off The Road
Written by Ryan on January 24, 2010 – 6:09 pm -
We’ve all been there; those months when you carefully plan out your writing and editing work, and then something unexpected strikes. When you plan out your trip with the assumption that you’ll have to drive 80 mph or faster to get to your destination, anything unexpected can lead to disaster.
I learned this lesson the hard way this month, and it’s going to require a couple of all-nighters and a lot of coffee to meet all of my obligations this month.
I know I can accomplish what I need to accomplish before the end of the month, because I’ve done it before. However, if I’d just planned a little better, I wouldn’t even be in this situation.
Plan Your Writing Work With a 30% Buffer
My typical mode of operation each month is to plan out enough writing work to account for about 90% of my available writing time. The problem with this approach is that it assumes every month will be a perfect month where you will always have the amount of time to work that you expect you’ll have.
What happens is that essentially ‘life’ happens. Family gets sick, major life events like funerals or weddings come up, or the worst thing that could happen to an online writer happens - you burn out.
The moment you burn out, work that used to take an hour takes several, and a sickening feeling comes over you as you realize what’s happening, and as you watch your precious work hours fade away.
Plan For a Hard Month and then Overachieve
Instead of accounting for 90% of your estimate work hours, cut back your planned work to only 70% of those hours. On a bad month, this allows for a stress free month even when the unexpected occurs, because you can give up 30% of your work hours and still accomplish what you need to accomplish.
Even better, on a good month, you’ll easily finish everything you planned, with lots of time left over to finish extra tasks - and come out shining like a hero.
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