Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Time Management

Okay so this was actually my husband's suggestion for this post. At first I rolled my eyes at him and then I took a hard look at my life and realized that everything I accomplished does come down to time management. I know I gave you a low down once on how my schedule works and that pretty much remains the same. Except here's some things that have changed: My daughter is a heck of a whole lot more active, I do formatting on the side, I've just gone back to school, and my other pen is quite busy. So what do I do to manage time? A few things. I use a combination of things that keep me on track. Maybe you will find something that works for you.

The first thing I do is the Bullet Journal. Now I've taken this technique and tweaked it so it works for me, my notebook is a combination of the Bullet style and my random notes. Every day in the morning or the night before I write down what MUST be done (top of the list) and what should be done if I have time (bottom of the list) This normally looks like this (with the bullets being check boxes):

  • Dishes
  • Laundry
  • Dust
  • Sweep
  • 1 hour on school work
  • workout 
  • 1 hour one editing Twisted Redemption
  • 1 hour on InDesign
  • 1 hour writing
That's a mild day and some days I get everything done, other days I get through chores and editing. As projects come and go the list changes, but the idea stays the same. So what an hour of work? Really? Does that include the time that I play on fb? Check sales? Check blog posts? No, no it doesn't. You see that's another thing I use. The Pomodoro Technique: 25 minutes of solid work 5 minute breaks. This works great during nap time for me. I close down every browser except for my Kanbanflow board. 

This board comes with a timer and allows me to assign tasks to put that time towards. I love this because it means I can see how long it takes for a project. Example? The first round of edits I did on Twisted Redemption (addressing all comments and fixing a lot of smaller things) Took me about 15 hours of work. To read through and get Druid Blood ready for Betas took me about 10 hours worth of time. Now I have an idea of how much time to allot towards Black and White Desires when it comes in and other projects that are similar. 

Like all people some times I take on too much, keeping with these let's me see when I have taken on too much and how to avoid it next time. When someone comes to me and says "I have this huge editing job, can you fit it in?" I look back at the last similar job and see how long it's taken me and say yes or no. It's great, if you're struggling I suggest you try some time of the techniques above. Even if you alter them to work for you. 

No comments:

Post a Comment