Hi!
So, today I want to talk about priorities. And let me start right out by saying this is not going to be a sermon about time management or a lecture about how if you want to write (or do whatever) then you will make time for it. I hate those. I have exactly zero use for anyone whose advice is to not sleep in order to achieve a goal. Fuck that. Twice.
Ahem.
Anyway, no, this is sort of the opposite of that, actually. I recently looked at some things from a different angle, and took the chance on doing something a lot of us tend to not even consider. And before I get into details, let me say right upfront that I’m fortunate to have a pretty flexible schedule at my day job, more so than a lot of people. If you don’t have the same sort of freedom, you can still consider my experience and apply it to whatever you can do in your life. Likewise, I’ll be talking in terms of writing a lot, for obvious reasons, but this advice applies universally.
So. Here’s the deal. If you have a job/schedule/life where you have any control over your own schedule and a job you do only for the money, you’ll likely relate to my before-world. For years I’ve done what most of my coworkers have done, which was to get up as early as I could stand so I could get to work as early as possible so I could be done with work as early as possible. That meant for a long time I was getting to work around 8 o’clock, so I was finished by 4:30. Getting out of work around 4:30 gave me a good three hours to write after work on my three designated writing days each week. (I have things I have to do at home the other two.) I have coworkers who get to work by seven every morning without fail, which is the earliest we’re allowed, for the same purpose of getting the workday out of the way as fast as possible.
I found I wasn’t in the mood to write after work on a lot of my designated writing days. I was exhausted. My brain was mush. Even when I tried to force myself, it just wouldn’t come most days. I found excuses, made plans with friends, anything I could to give myself a reason not to write.
I decided 4:30 must still be too late in the day. Maybe if I could get out by 3:30 instead, it would be better. So I tried dragging my ass out of bed even earlier. I tried showering at night before bed instead of in the morning, laying out my clothes ahead of time, pre-packing my lunch, anything I could to streamline my morning and get out the door faster. 7:00 was tough for me, because I have a full hour commute to the office, but I started managing it at least part of the time.
And you know what? I was still mentally exhausted at 3:30.
And finally, FINALLY, I accepted what seems like it should have been obvious all along: I wasn’t tired because it was 4:30 in the afternoon. I was tired because I’d been sitting in front of a computer in a soul-sucking office for eight hours. I’d already used up my energy and motivation.
So I asked myself, if I was going to get up at five am regardless, and was going to be out until seven pm or later trying to write, what difference did it make which part of that time was spent at work vs. in a chair at Starbucks? So, I did something that most of my coworkers still seem horrified by, and changed my schedule. I kept getting up at five, but instead of racing out the door, flying through the Starbucks drive through, then hitting the highway, I go inside Starbucks and sit my ass down. I write until 8:00 and then leave for work. I get to the office between 9:00 and 9:30 and leave between 5:30 and 6:00. It’s the same number of hours more or less, except the writing comes first.
I did it entirely in the hope that I’d be fresher and more productive with my writing, and I am, beyond anything I imagined. But it’s had benefits that go well beyond my intended or expected scope.
First of all, when I say I get up at five, I actually mean it now. Before, getting up at five meant that’s when I set the alarm for. But most days I actually got out of bed at 5:27 after hitting snooze three times. Then the shower, then the makeup, then thinking about clothes. Yes, I wanted to get to work as early as possible so I’d be done as early as possible, but there wasn’t any immediate motivation when I didn’t actually want to go to work. I don’t mind my job most days, but I don’t leap out of bed excited to go do it, either
But when I’m getting out of bed to go write? That, it turns out, is different. I very rarely hit snooze anymore, usually only if I was up later than I should have been the night before. I have actual motivation to move quickly in the mornings, so I’m out the door way faster, usually before 6:00.
And my writing productivity has gone up exponentially. Before, I had three official writing days a week, the days when I didn’t have to go straight home after work. Of those three evenings, I usually had plans with a friend on one, and often couldn’t find the motivation on at least one other. I usually got real writing done only one of those days a week, then tried to make it up on the weekend, which kept me from getting other projects done on the weekend.
Now I write five days a week, because leaving work at six still gets me home early enough on my need-to-be-home nights. I’m literally writing more every day now than I was managing most weeks before. I get so much done on weekday mornings I don’t feel any obligation to write on the weekends at all most weeks. Even better, I still want to write most weekends, so I get a bit more in anyway. For my fellow writers, I’ll put it into specifics: my average has gone up literally every week since I started this, but right now the overall average is between 9k and 10k words a week.
The other unexpected benefit is I have a better attitude at work. It’s amazing how much better your mood is all day long when you started the day doing something for yourself rather than for someone else.
This whole process has had the unexpected result of sending myself a message that my writing is the most important thing I do. And that doing what I want to do for me is more important than what I do for someone else in exchange for money. I thought I already had a pretty healthy self esteem, but this whole process has shown me how much I was still giving a big corporation the best of myself and leaving just the tired, sloppy seconds for myself. Shouldn’t we always give the best of ourselves to ourselves?? It seems like the most obvious thing in the world, but almost nobody actually practices it.
And sure, if you’re a parent, or a business owner, or are personally passionate about the work you do, you might well have good reason to give the best of yourself to someone or something else. But you want to know a secret? Because that’s who or what you actually care about the most, you’re still taking care of yourself first by attending to what you care about. My job, though, like the majority of people, is just something I do for money. I sell my time in 8 hour blocks to a company who pays me an agreed-upon hourly rate for them. I don’t do a bad job, but I don’t work there because it’s my life’s passion. The fact that I’m now giving the best of myself to my passion, and letting my employer have what’s left, has made a huge difference in my life.
I still leave work without the energy to write fiction most days, but I’m not as tired as I used to be either. I find I have time now on those days I don’t have to go straight home to work on other projects. I’m writing this blog post after work, in fact. So I’m not just super productive with my fiction writing, but I’m also making more progress on my million other personal passion projects than I was before.
And I have not once had to convince myself that sleep is overrated. I’ll admit I’ve cut out wearing makeup most days, but that’s the corner I’ve decided I’m willing to cut. Sleep, for me, is non-negotiable.
I mentioned my coworkers are, for the most part, fairly horrified at my decision to deliberately work until six every day. One of them, though, has decided to try this same thing for himself. It’s a little different for him, because he was always a late in-late out person anyway, but that was because he’d stay up late and sleep in. He’s been trying getting up earlier without coming to work earlier, not do work on any special project but just to have some time for himself to do whatever he wants. He reads, goes for a walk or a run, whatever he feels like. And he’s said he also has a better attitude all day now that he’s starting his day for himself not for someone else. It’s amazing the difference in your whole day when you’ve already had a good day before you start in on the things you’d rather not have to do.
It seems to be human nature to want to get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first so we’ve “earned” our fun. And that makes sense when you’re talking about binge-watching Stranger Things. But I had to realize that writing wasn’t binge watching. It wasn’t going to the movies or going to dinner with friends. Writing is work. It’s work I want to be doing, work that I enjoy, but it’s what I ultimately want to be my job, and that, for me, was never going to happen until I treated it like it already was my job.
I’ve learned it’s important to consider our assumptions, and be willing to shake things up. It might be valid to make myself earn a few episodes of my favorite show, but making myself earn my writing time was diminishing it to the status of a hobby, or even a waste of time, no matter what I might have said to the contrary.
Are you devaluing something in your life? Is there a change to your schedule and/or priorities you have the freedom to make that might fix that? If your answer is even a tentative maybe, I say try it and see! It’s made a world of difference for me—it might for you, too!
That’s it for this time. See you later!
~Sara