Debbie Ridpath Ohi interviews Christina Katz (Writer Mama) about time management for writers.
What advice do you have for writers who are “time management”-challenged?
I’d tell them there is no such thing as time-management challenged. What we are probably talking about is that most left-brained time-management techniques don’t work for right-brained people. So people are not actually “time-management challenged.” They are likely right-brained trying to live in a left-brained world.
What I think what we’re dealing with here, Debbie, is a classic permission issue. If a right-brain person is waiting to be more like a left-brain person before they can master time, they are going to be waiting for a long time. But if they explore and experiment with what works for them within their current work context, and strive for their own definition of time-management success (assuming it harmonizes with those around them), they will start to thrive and be more productive.
This is something I’ve been dealing with for years, and I’ve only recently found the key to routine and time management. I really think it’s down to having a “do it now” attitude, and taking the small steps—consistently—toward getting a task accomplished. I’m not always consistent, I still have times when I blow it or something comes up that throws me off for a few days. But it doesn’t take long for me to get everything back in order.
Now, I’m talking exclusively about housekeeping in this case. I still don’t manage to get writing time in every day, but it happens more and more. It’s become a matter of discipline rather than fighting off the procrastination that is a response to constant nagging guilt over the state of my kitchen.
I don’t know exactly what Christina means by right-brained time management techniques, but I know how it feels to wrestle with left-brained techniques; I’ve been doing that all my life. Understanding that I need to take a fluid approach to tasks has opened my eyes, and I’m a lot more able to get things done, including writing. Writing scenes as they come to me instead of sticking a one-line scene idea into an outline, planning for a few minutes at a time, putting the story in order once it’s all there in front of me instead of writing from beginning to end, are all ways I’m working with my right-brained modality instead of against it.
