Hello everyone!
I wanted to take some time to talk about time management, and how I find time to write, work, have friends, and a S/O.
The first thing I realized is that there are only 24 hours in a day. If you take out 7 hours for sleeping, that only leaves 17 hours a day.
As of right now, I still have a full-time job that is not writing, so that's another 8 hours, plus an hour for lunch, and 30 minutes for commuting. Now my total number of hours per week day is down to 7.5.
Now, I also have some personal obligations like working out, making food, taking care of pets, laundry, and cleaning. I schedule about 2 hours a day, even on the weekends, for these tasks.
Now I'm at 5.5 hours during the week. This can sound like a lot of time, but I have friends, family, and an S/O I like to spend time with.
So, how do I find time to relax, play video games, watch TV, go to the movies, write books, and market?
I set daily goals.
This is my life saver. I set a goal of 1000 words a day, which is roughly an hour of writing. This is my writing goal. It's the most important goal, in my opinion. Then I set weekly goals for reaching out to all of you. This means about three tweets a day, one blog post, reading up on how to reach you all better, and at least one Facebook update. While I do tweets daily, I pick one of the other three and schedule 15 minutes to complete my task. I also set aside an hour on the weekends to go over what I've written and how I will proceed the next week.
On average, I spent about 1.5 hours a day on my writing, marketing, and editing.
While my schedule may make your head spin, realize there are other ways to achieve your goals, you just have to be smart about it. Realize how much time you actually have available, and make sure you set aside a few hours to relax.
Remember this: time is the only thing we can give away and never get back. It is our most precious individual resource. Use it wisely.