Planning Your Plan

When I was still working a day job, I managed to get some writing done during (most) lunch hours, and in the evenings, after supper, while the TV nattered in my ear with whatever show my husband and I was watching. I didn’t really plan when I write, I simply wrote in whatever time slots I could.

Then I retired. You’d think I’d get a LOT of writing done, right? Now I had entire days I could devote to it!

It didn’t happen like that. I’m not sure exactly what happened when, but somehow I seem to have less time for writing than I had when I was working full time.

Once I retired, I expected myself to keep the house a little cleaner, to spend a little longer than half an hour to put supper together. Planning our vacations became my chore, as did income taxes, stocks, and any household errands that came along. I was supposed to go the gym several times a week. And then a long-time friend and I started MoonPhaze Publishing.

Last week I considered how frustrating my ‘To Do’ list had become. The chores assigned to each day had no inkling how long that chore might take me to address it. Some days, just cleaning out my email took 2 ½ hours, yet this chore was jumbled together with 6 other similar chores in a 1 hr time slot.

I studied my list and realized the whole thing was like that; In a 1-hour time slot for MoonPhaze, I had at least 6 chores listed, and the same for research, travel planning, ect. A hard day at the gym might take 2 – 3 hours, while a soft day might only take the 1 hour I had allotted.

No wonder I was so frustrated!

I rearranged my list. I divided my chores into 6 basic ‘types’, and slotted one day a week for each ‘type’. (The 7^th day is for ME!) MoonPhaze, research, errands all have their own day of the week for me to concentrate on them. Some things, like the gym, cooking supper and doing the dishes are still listed daily, of course.

And when do I concentrate on writing? In the evenings, after supper, while the TV natters in my ear. After all these years, that’s the time slot my brain is used to working with.