My Schedule

Last month, I talked about what I’m currently working on. However, was pretty vague about when a lot of it would become available to you guys. To be completely honest, I still can’t give hard dates for most of my work just yet. The best I can do is assure you that work is indeed happening.

That got me thinking though. I thought some of you might be interested in knowing the rough schedule I follow when it comes to getting this stuff done. I say rough schedule, because my various health problems make it hard to commit to locked in time slots for various things. Sometimes I can do a lot of work, sometimes I can’t. When I can do the work is just as unreliable as the quantity of work I do too.

That being said though, I’ve found that keeping a loose, basic idea of what needs to be done on any given day does help me get through things much more consistently than if I just winged it and let my health problems pull me around by the ankles. The end result being that some days I work three hours and some days I work all day and in the long run it balances out to something resembling a plan.

So, here’s the gist of how my work through the week is structured:

Monday

Mondays are generally the weekdays I take the easiest. I generally try to get as many of the smaller things I need to do during the week out of the way on Mondays as I can, freeing up more time to commit to writing, recording and editing later in the week.

Typically this means things like emails, non-work commitments, paperwork etc are the focus on Mondays. I don’t usually do a lot of actual writing these days, but I do make sure old episodes of Stories Across Borders are converted to a new format and queued to go up on YouTube now. Right now, that’s a cycle a day but this will become an episode each Monday once YouTube releases catch up to here. 

Tuesday

Tuesday is when actual writing and podcast stuff starts. Book work comes later in the week though, it’s the smaller things that get done on Tuesdays. On fourth episode weeks, I usually write the story for the SAB episode on Tuesday to allow plenty of time for Jon to go over it (and time for me to make changes). On weeks when I don’t need a story for the podcast, I use Tuesdays to work on articles and blog posts like this one or to get work done for my upcoming series, Epilogue. Up until recently that has meant researching and outlining but I’m about ready to start actually writing now.

Wednesday

On Wednesdays I’ll wrap up anything I didn’t finish writing on Tuesday. I’ll also use a little time to edit things or to tweak anything I feel like needs some improvement. After that, I switch my focus to the book I’m currently working on. I’ll generally spend anywhere from 3-5 hours working on the book in these writing sessions.

Thursday

Thursday mornings I often have various appointments. Once those are out the way it’s back to focusing on my book if I’m able. I’ll spend another few hours writing and will also often use this time to make changes to things from the previous day. My drafts are living documents and go through a lot of little tweaks, edits and changes on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

Then, much later, I typically record Stories Across Borders on Thursday nights. Usually I record with Jon. We have time zones that are basically opposite to each other. So, with his schedule being what it is, that means I usually record at 11:00pm or so.

Friday

Friday is another day I often have appointments in the mornings. It’s also the day I devote a sizable chunk of time to editing the audio for SAB. On a good day, editing only takes about 3 hours. On a bad day, it can take six or so. For every ten to twenty minutes of audio, it will take around an hour of editing. Honestly, this is the single worst part of running the podcast. That’s why I put it off until the end of the week even though it’d be more practical to do it earlier. The looming deadline motivates me to actually do it.

Saturday

Saturdays are reasonably low on work for the most part. I sometimes get some extra writing in on Saturdays to make up for any time I wasn’t able to spend writing through the rest of the week. If I’m having guests other than Jon onto the podcast for an episode, I’ll probably also end up recording on Saturday morning as well.

The only consistent task for Saturdays though (and the most important) is making sure that week’s SAB episode goes up. That means reviewing the episode, making sure its title image is made and then getting it uploaded onto the site.

Sundays

I’ve actually stopped doing work on Sundays for the most part unless I find myself struck by a serious bolt of inspiration suddenly or have a large amount of catch-up to do. I have a bad tendency to feel guilty about any time I spend that isn’t on something productive, but I used to work myself into the ground a little too often. So I’ve gotten a lot better about how I allocate my time.

Rest is just as important as the work itself if you want to produce quality work. I try to remember that… even if I’m bad at it.

There you have it, a basic idea of how I plan my work weeks. It’s not exact and it’s subject to change depending on my health and when appointments come up and things like that. There’s also some stuff like going through the books, shows etc we discuss on SAB and writing my notes for those episodes which is usually spread throughout the week.

I’m still working on perfecting my time management skills to create a good balance between work, rest and recreation. But I’m getting there. I also highly advocate other writers - and anyone else really - to try the same thing. Obviously everyone will have different schedules to go with different lives. But, I find having a general idea of what you’ll be doing each day makes keeping everything in balance a lot easier.