By: A.B. Timothy
In life, we only have 24 hours in our entire day. This means, minus the eight that we are supposed to sleep, we have 16 hours to do things. Most of us probably work full-time jobs, so that takes another 10 (Often times it looks like 30 minutes of travel on either end with an hour for lunch in the middle). Right, so that leaves us 6 hours, great, that’s plenty of time to write! Wait a minute, no, we need to shower, eat, and prepare for the next day. Ugh, okay, we’ll call that another 3 hours. Writing can happen in three hours, and hey, if we bring our laptop to work, maybe we can have another productive half-hour in between bites of last night’s reheated leftovers.
Did I stress you out by making you read that? I’m sorry. But it’s true, right? Isn’t that where a lot of the stress you felt reading that came from? It’s Sunday today, so I have a bit more free time, but I also have deadlines. WordPress, who hosts my blog, operates on UTC-0 time for keeping track of post times and “streaks” if I want to maintain a daily blogging streak with them (which is entirely arbitrary and means very little, kind of like that Duolingo streak you have sitting at 4,000 but can’t even order a sandwich yet). I want to keep it and watch it grow; however, I have a deadline of 5 PM my time to get a new post out. Deadlines like this help keep me on track, which is part of why I engage with them. I know I poked fun at it, but Duolingo does the same thing; it keeps your mind on the fact that you want to learn that new language, so maybe one day you’ll get around to actually taking a class or buying a book. For me, the WordPress streak reminds me that I want to get around to more prose in my book, even if I might not have time for it then and there.
Realistically, I would say, setting aside 1 hour to dedicate to writing every day, or even just three to five times a week, will put you ahead of the curve in productive writers. One day, we may all be able to quit our jobs and write for eight hours a day, market for 4, and go to bed still in our pajamas from the night before! But, until we have that dream again, we need to lock in and work within the constraints we have.
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I want to know: how did your writing go last week? How many words did you write? I hope it was productive and that this week will be just as productive! CARPE UNA SABATORUM!
