Sunday Surprise: How to bring consistency in your writing with Time management?

Hello all!

Good morning!!!

Before we start the discussion of our Sunday surprise, I would like to share a small experience with you.

A few days back I was thinking about what to write as my next post and I decided to share my own experience. I hope this would be helpful for all of us who want to write good articles but due to their schedule find it bit difficult to manage time. So, here in lies our surprise - today, I am going to share couple of tips from my own experience about how I usually manage my time for writing various things with time available.

Here are the few questions or challenges or reasons we give ourselves to spare time from writing:

  1. I am a full time employee so, how I can spare time (working from 10 AM to 7 PM)
  2. Why should I spend my weekends to write for something that would not give me money?
  3. Oh God! Why a day has only 24hrs? I need 28hrs in a day. So that I can spend time to write something.
  4. I am a speaker and travel a lot - I can't write as I don't have time. Although I have every intention to write.

There might be more points in addition to points shared above. However all points speak out loud for themselves and that is - How to manage your schedule?

I am not an expert who can solve these problems or can provide the solution for these challenges/issues. But, I can definitely share tips about how I am managing these in my personal and professional life.

Let me share one short story that taught me a lot: when I was a kid - I was famous as a late comer (a person who does not finish tasks on time). This problem was growing as time passed. Whenever my mother asked me - why it was happening this way? I always gave lot of excuses so as to save myself from any punishment. But the problem was getting compounded with each day and I would get late for schools and I was punished as well. Then my mother stepped in and prepared a Time- table for me (a daily work schedule, what was to be done and at what time?). She instructed me that I should follow it strictly. And you can imagine, that day was a game changer for my life. It transformed my life entirely. Now, I was a disciplined boy who completed tasks on time and who knew how to manage his schedule.

I am not going to suggest you that you go and prepare a proper time-table for yourself but, I want to share these points instead with you:

  1. Most important part of managing your day/schedule is - how you divide your tasks? In my view - divide your tasks in order of hardest towards simplest. Hardest task should be the one that need your full energy, complete focus and skill-set. So, choose your hardest tasks once you're in full energy (the best time for this task is start of the day). For simpler tasks (I am not defining it here as definition of simple task may differ from person to person) - the best time when you are wrapping up your day and want to conclude something.
  2. Another important point is - do a task at a time - do not try to do multi-tasking. When you try to do multiple tasks at the same time - you are distracting youself from concentrating on a particular task. For an example- if you are writing a technical article - you should not be active on your social media account and/or your phone. I suggest, switch-off your phone or just take important calls, close all your social media applications.
  3. Setting up a duration of time is one of the best things you can do to manage your time/schedules. I suggest, first set a target time duration to complete a particular task (hardest or simplest doesn't matter) and then set a break time (I usually take breaks after every 30-minutes while performing any task). If you did not set up goal, try to set a goal according to your priority of tasks.
  4. Another important thing is preparing a ToDo list. Try to write down all of the tasks you are working on and the tasks you are willing to start and then priortize all these tasks. Set a scheudle for each task and try to complete the same. Do visit your ToDo list on timely basis to manage the priority order or to know - how many tasks are remaining.
  5. Select your favorite day - This one I love the most. Select your favorite day and on this day do whatever you want to do. It might be related to your professional work or related to your personal commitments.

 

All the suggestions above are from my own experience - I am not saying that you should follow these but I would like you to try these at least once. I am sure that you will get benefits from these.

Best of luck and have a great writing.

 

Ninja Gaurav Arora

- Ninja Gaurav