The results of my time audit are in and well they are exactly as I had feared – I am a horrendous time waster. Although I don’t piss away hours at the TV or on the phone, I spend several hours in front of the computer willing beautiful prose to spontaneously compose while I stare enviously at other people’s work and I get distracted by every thought that pops into my head – oooh what was the name of that book I wanted to check out, I should see if they have it at the library or I wonder what the weather is going to be like tomorrow or I better check the laundry or I wonder if the mail is here yet – ughhh.

For, four days I kept track of what I was doing in 15-minute increments. In doing so, my awareness heightened for any time I was distracted and landed off task. I started keeping a tally sheet near my desk and every time I took a short break, checked my email, grabbed a snack, checked the weather, and answered the phone (basically anything that threw me off task even for seconds) – I got a tally mark. Within hours I had filled up the sheet and totally discovered my problem, a borderline addiction to distractions.  Here are some ways I am going to work at minimizing all those distractions:

7 Ways to Minimize Distractions as a Freelance Writer

1. Clearly identify goals at the start of the day. Many of you have suggested clearly identifying your daily, weekly, and even monthly goals. Weekly goals include some biggies such as find a new writing market or send out 3 new queries whereas the daily goals are the smaller more manageable ones like finish that blog post or do the background research for that article.

2. Plan to work at your most productive times. The Time Audit also made me aware of my most productive times. I already knew that I am totally worthless from about 2-5pm, so I shouldn’t expect to accomplish something big during those hours. The afternoon (for me) is a great time to catch up on reading, twittering, work searches, and emails or is a fabulous time to head to the gym or just take a nap.

3. Turn off the phone, email pop-ups, and instant messaging program.

4. Close all Internet browsers that are not relevant to the task at hand.

5. Say good-bye to multi-tasking. I always thought the ability to multi-task was a good thing, but it just doesn’t seem to work for freelancing. For me, attempting several tasks at once only results in several unfinished tasks.

6. Change up the workspace. Unfortunately my bitty cheap-o apartment has no room for a separate office space and I am not upgrading anytime soon. I’ve found that I get more accomplished during 2 hours at the coffee shop or library as I do for the entire day at home.

7. Relax. Remind yourself regularly of why you are writing and the amazing life you are working towards. If I can just keep myself on task – maybe I will never need to see the inside of the cube again.

Helpful Freelance Writing Time Management Resources:

How to Stay on Track with Your Freelance Writing Business

Discipline and Persistence = Freelance Writing Success

Managing Performance Anxiety: 5 Tips for Freelancers

Nothing like 180 unread items in my google reader, 92 unopened emails, 3 unpacked backpacks, and at least 2-weeks of unopened mail to make you feel like a total slacker.  Happy 2010.

So I ask all of you – how do you balance all of this?  Some of you have full-time jobs and also write prolifically, keep up with all that twittering, have babies, train for marathons and also appear to live seemingly interesting lives.  I need a serious time management overhaul.  I can’t seem to find time to trim my toenails and “get a haircut” has been on my list of things to do since at least last June.

I am starting 2010 off with a Time Audit to try and figure out where the hell all my time goes and I guess go from there.  Basically you keep track of what you are doing in 15 or 30-minute increments and then identify what tasks you spend the most time on and identify the time wasters.  I am very much looking forward to this task because I have seriously know idea what my time wasters are – I don’t have a TV, I’m not social media obsessed, and I don’t feel like I really waste too much time.  I know I am totally guilty of multi-tasking too much, which can make you super inefficient.  I guess we will see – I just need to figure out where all that time goes and find more time to get working on my life list.

I want to start small in 2010 – please just get a freaking haircut – your ends are disgusting.

Photo courtesy of Rei at Wikipedia