I’ve been tracking my workflow via calendars and stickers for two months now, logging word counts in multiples of 750 words, an hour spent focusing on a major Brain Jar/Freelancing Task, and non-fiction posts/content developed for Patreon and Newsletter distribution. I’m doing quick reports here because I’m still wrapping my head around what’s possible and probable when work around the full-time job, which is proving trickier than expected for a variety of reasons.
November and December felt like wildly different months, so I was surprised to discover that the space available for work is consistent across both months. I’ll generally get 20 ‘productive’ days in the month, with the non-productive days most likely to follow evening commitments and major anxiety spikes that disrupt my sleep patterns and wipe out the morning routine. December proved to be slightly better than November, heavily buoyed by the extremely productive last week, but setting my expectations around working anything more than 2/3 of a month is probably inviting disaster.
Similarly interesting is the way my focus ping-pongs — I’ve often written consistently for a stretch, then panicked about the fact that I’m behind on Brain Jar work or a freelance deadline and switched focus to that instead.
That switching is a failure of my default assumptions around work. My original plan was doing writing in the morning and Brain Jar design, layout, and marketing work in the evening, but it’s pretty clear that’s not happening at all. I’ve got two good hours before I head to the day job in the morning, and that’s pretty much it for the day. As a result I’ve been working reactively, focusing on whichever deadline is on fire and out of control, and doing just enough to get it back to a controlled burn instead of putting it out.
This gives me something to work on in January, likely via a rethink of habits. The current plan is to split the week into zones — probably four days of writing focus, two days of Briain Jar, one day of Patreon and Platform work (probably a Sunday, where I’m most disinclined to do writing work judging by these work patterns, although I may just progress through that cycle during productive days and leave the non-productive to their own devices). My partner’s recent adoption of the Fly Lady zone method of house maintenance inspired this approach, as I think there’s something to the cycling areas of focus week by week and making incremental progress towards your goals.
The big wins get their own monster sticker or (in December) a gold star, marking the fact I pulled off something. In November that was clearing the time intensive work of my second-last freelance commitment. In December, that was delivering the RWA workshop in the first half of the month, and uploading Brain Jar’s first release of 2022 to the printer on the 29th. I took on a lot of freelance gigs just prior to starting work, a bulwark against the impending unemployment, and clearing those decks is going to do a lot to ease my stress levels (although the day job and omicron spread through Australia seem poised to grab that anxiety space instead).
Which brings us to January, which is a goddamned tricky month. The festival finalises its program over the next couple of weeks, which I’m expecting to be a shitfight of unbelievable proportions that results in stress and overtime under the best of circumstances (which 2022 seems unlikely to deliver). There’s two major family birthdays this month, so my calendar will have extra family commitments, and extra time management as disrupted routines and commitments fire up after the disruption of the holidays.
Despite all that, I’m going to try and push for 21 productive days across the month, with a fairly aggressive schedule of books to get out and things to write across the month. Mostly in a “let’s see if I can push for this” way, rather than an “everything will fall apart if this doesn’t get done.” A lot of this will involve saying no to things as much as possible, and hoping like hell I sidestep any kind of illness amid Queensland’s first real spike of Covid cases. My writing workload is increasingly pitched towards the 10 good days of writing word count, and likely to be split between Digest work, doing some extra work for some older releases, and my PhD projects (which will get the lion’s share of the effort once the BWF program gets delivered).