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Take some time out for yourself. You deserve it.
New Zealand or England. Where will you go first?
Take some time out for yourself. You deserve it.
New Zealand or England. Where will you go first?
On the face of it, that was ridiculous. 2018 saw my average time spent working as 60 hours per week. If it dipped for some reason, like a trip in an ambulance and a hospital stay, I beat myself up and tried to make it up the next week. How much higher could I lift my game? I already clock watched and docked time if I felt I’d wasted it, creating a never ending cycle within a ‘not good enough’ mind-set. I became the worst boss I’d ever worked for and I hated me.
In 2018 I released a whole new series and part finished a new Hana book. I chased my tail in multiple marketing ventures and watched my sales fluctuate. Misery became my office mate for the long hours of duking it out alone. I limped to the end of the year feeling a little like I’d lost my way. But I’d lifted my game, hadn’t I?
My husband asked me a question one day when I commented on my log of ‘hours spent working.’
“What happens if you get sucked into social media or chatting to the kids on the phone for an hour?” He eyed me with the skepticism of an ex technical manager (who often used to feel his merry band of engineers behaved like primary schoolers needing to be coaxed back to the handwriting table.)
“I dock the time.”
He gaped. “You dock the time from yourself?”
“Yep. Shooting the breeze isn’t productive time. I need to lift my game.”
I’m not sure he believed me but he seemed impressed. He asked me if I’d like to work for him as I clearly bear the hallmarks of the perfect employee. Then we remembered I already do work for his business as a very un-glorified PA. The moment passed.
But therein lay the issue; I logged my time and current tasks, but not my productivity. My game sagged. Other than the fact I’d released more books, I failed to count the updating of my website or the growing of my mailing list in the achievements’ section of my life. There wasn’t an achievements’ section at all.
When I started this full time author lark, my son made several useful suggestions. All of which I ignored because…well, we just know better than our kids surely.
His words of wisdom included the following points.
1. Don’t call it work. Otherwise, you’ll come to hate it because that’s how we’re wired.
2. Don’t log hours. Log productivity and achievement.
Oops! Turns out I should have listened to the grasshopper.
Cue mini meltdown, mid-life crisis and not a small amount of pouting.
I went back to the drawing board and as Joanna Penn is fond of saying, “What’s my why?”
It’s clear I’d focused on the wrong thing and skewed my perspective. I didn’t need to lift my game, I needed to scrap it altogether. Because it didn’t matter how many hours a week I worked if it made me miserable. Instead of using a diary, I switched to a 3 page document which I printed off before the start of each week. The document evolved as I continued to use it until it became something workable.
It’s been amazing. Now, I hold a management meeting at the start of every week. I send myself a meeting request and…yeah, I turn up. Sometimes, me even brings me a coffee. The worksheet gives me an overview of a full calendar week with boxes to log those items I complete. The preceding sheet details those objectives I wish to complete and a summary sheet logs whether or not I succeeded.
Hours are still important to me, but I’ve decided I’ll feel satisfied if I hit 40 per week. Being in control of my own organisation has given me the courage to try some new things and sneak other tasks into my week. I’m operating on the principal of staying inside the top two quadrants of my time, urgent/important and not-urgent/important. The first includes deadlines and the second is filled with family time, fun projects and the things that make me feel like an achiever instead of a failure. Learning to say ‘no’ is part of the process of staying out of the bottom two.
You can investigate the Four Quadrants theory of time management HERE
If you’re a creative – particularly a writer – I’ve made my diary sheets available HERE
It’s taken time, effort and testing to produce after numerous tweaks, but I’ve set the cost of the PDF at $2.99 US. It’s less than a cup of coffee and might just help you change the way you structure your writing business.
I’m discovering that whatever your role or project, overwhelm is real and painful. It debilitates without mercy and carries your muse away with it. I wish I’d realised earlier that many of my pain points were self-induced. From the outside, it looked like I was productive and organised. My family were fooled. The saddest part is that I’d also fooled myself.
So, lifting my game this year has involved self-reflection and believe me when I say I didn’t see that coming. I thought it would be other high minded things and not of the introspective variety.
So, my friends. It’s time to go hard, go big or go home.
Watch this space…
K T Bowes is the writer of The Hana Du Rose Mysteries and has 26 books currently in her back list. If you’d like to check out her work, you can do that HERE
She is a little crazy, but largely well meaning.
She’s also a proud member of the Alliance of Independent Authors.
