Meet Your Writing Goals With Four Time-Management Tools

In order to succeed as a professional writer, you must be able to set and meet deadlines. If you are looking for time-management tools to help you stay on track with your writing goals, read today's tip of the day from The Productive Writer by Sage Cohen.

Following are some suggestions for a range of different approaches to time keeping and deadline management. Some are visual, some are interactive, some are high-level, and some are drilled down. Whatever your time-management style is, chances are good that you’ll find something that works for you. I generally use a mix of all of these to fulfill various needs, to appeal to the various facets of my brain and personality, and because I hate to miss a deadline or fall behind.

A month-at-a-glance whiteboard calendar (with dry erase markers) can help you stay on top of key events and deadlines happening in any given month by:

I use mine with color coding, so at a glance I can get a picture of the textures of commitment for any given day, week, and month. My system looks like this:

Red: client, editorial, and teaching deadlines and events

Blue: personal commitments such as: social engagements, houseguests, family travel, doctor’s appointments

Green: literary commitments such as: readings, lectures, classes, workshops I am leading or attending.

What does your system look like? Why not start experimenting today to find out?

For a year or two at a glance, I recommend using a write-on-wipe-off annual wall calendar. I’m talking about one that stands as tall as you do and has enough space in each day’s square to write the most significant event happening or due that day. I like to think of mine as a patchwork quilt, where I piece together my own pattern of work, family, personal development, and rest. You can capture and plan the big picture of your writing life by recording:

With this panoramic view of your commitments, you can see everything on your plate across the rolling hills of many months. This helps you more easily plan for and monitor ongoing goals, such as making one public appearance every month or meeting a long-term deadline.

A computer calendar can include great detail about what’s happening every day. This is where I track the hour-by-hour, nitty-gritty action items of what I expect to accomplish in a day. Some advantages of this approach include:

Nothing says I value your time like a shared calendar where events, commitments, and deadlines can be viewed and updated by everyone involved, at any time. Businesses typically use a program like Microsoft Outlook for this; if you’re working independently, Google calendar is a great (and free) way to go. Use it to:

This excerpt is from chapter seven of The Productive Writer. Buy this book and you'll learn: