​I’ll be blunt: I’m a bit of a hyper-aware mess. It’s clear, if you’ve got a keen eye: I bite my nails when stressed, my face is a blotchy mess, and I can’t stick to one task for longer than twenty minutes, and that’s at a stretch! Plus, at the time of publishing I've just been diagnosed with Shingles, so I wasn't as 'on top of things' as I thought.
​I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Just last week our Prime Minister took the unprecedented step of addressing the nation on TV. Sure, we see Jacinda Ardern quite a lot at the moment, giving press conferences almost daily, travelling from place to place to check on progress and what our country needs to be prepared for this Covid19 monster, but a direct address is rare. The last I remember happened after the March 15th Christchurch Mosque Attacks almost this time last year. She looked us straight down the camera and assured us she’s looking out for our wellbeing. Unlike some other political leaders across the world, I believe her. She’s not in this for her own gain, political or otherwise. She spends a lot of time away from her fiancé and her own bubba on the quest to slow this pandemic down and soften the blow on our small country, and we know: Jacinda’s got this.
(Side note, I feel like our Prime Minister is part of our extended family, hence the first name basis. Our previous heads have had nicknames in our house – John Key = Jonkey, Bill English = Binglish. Jacinda is Jacinda because she’s guided us through some of our toughest, most personally challenging and desperate times. She’s not afraid to put herself out there. She’s visible, she’s kind, she’s relatable, and at times, hilarious *queue the East Coast Wave!).
So if Jacinda’s got us as a whole, how can I make better use of the time I’m left with? Not by obsessively checking news headlines, that’s for sure. And what about all those people that are now jobless, in isolation, or otherwise at a loss for what to do?
First of all, back up, and take a good deep breath of some clean, clear air. Take another for good measure. Now, read on…

Some of you out there will have been toying with writing, or the idea of writing. It doesn’t matter if you’re serious about a career at it, or just enjoy it, this applies to anyone. You might enjoy poetry, writing short stories, non-fiction, fiction, journaling, screen-writing, anything! You might have written before, or this might be a fresh start for you. It doesn’t matter. This post is about the intent, and that might relate to something other than writing too. My key point here is stepping away from mass panic buying and toward something, anything productive that settles your mind. Cue quote from Peter Drucker: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Take hold of your future and make it work for you!
So…
What can you do to switch from Covid19 jitters to a productive mind set? (The highlighted sections in this post include links to some of my blog posts and resources that you might find helpful!):

1. Firstly, decide what you want to do. If you’re unsure, grab a sheet of paper (or similar) and throw ideas down onto it. Mine would look something like: writing (new to writing? Start here!), drawing, painting, crochet, sewing (I’ve got a great idea for Easter Bunnies for my nieces and nephews!), reading (try these!), veggie garden…
2. Next, grab a highlighter, or put rings around the ideas that excite you. The Easter bunnies would be my first choice. If you’re looking at something that could provide income, give those an extra ring.
3. Now you’re going to set a goal and make a plan. It doesn’t need to be complicated or even tidy, the point is to set down your intent. You might require materials, you might need to write out a procedure or even create a business plan. You might want to dedicate a block of time per day to your project, or even keep regular work hours. When this is done, put it somewhere visible to remind yourself of your intent.
4. Create a workspace. Dedicate an area to your project so you can come and go from it as you like. You may be lucky and already have office space, you may be able to carve out a corner of the dining room, living room, or your bedroom. I find it best if I don’t have to unpack and pack up every time I want to work – that puts me off and I don’t end up doing any!
5. Now, some sage advice: don’t overdo it! That’s a sure way to get sick of something really quick. Set your time, and stick to it. I give myself a minimum and a maximum and aim for somewhere in between. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t meet your minimum one day, balance it out the next, likewise if you go over another day because you had to complete a step. Be productive, but not obsessed or unhealthy about it. Good old moderation will see you through.

Some extra tips: timetables, calendars, allocating blocks of time (click here to see tips I use) ​to certain tasks, monitoring progress, sharing with others – any or all of these things could be useful to you. I’ll suggest journaling as a healthy way to monitor how you’re feeling. I’ve got a Quick Tip blog post on Journaling that might help – it’s quick and easy and only takes around ten minutes a week to work through.
And remember to breathe!

​So, it’s time to get your project on! It’ll keep you in a routine, keep your mind occupied on something meaningful, and potentially create some income. Now grab that paper, and let me know how you’re going in the comments. If you need a hand or advice, feel free to drop me a comment in the box or hunt me down on social media. Here are my links.
 
Until we catch up next time,
Emily.

P.S. Get in touch through the comments section if you'd like more tipes or ideas, or if you have some to share with others. Together, we'll get through this!

​Procrastination; it’s in my genes (along with hoarding things with potential future usefulness, and the inability to consistently put things away). It proved my downfall in 2019. I met my single goal, spending a certain number of hours on writing-related activities, but I didn’t get much actual writing or publishing done. I grew my author platform through trial and error, especially on Instagram and Twitter, but as for actual writing? Wa wa, that’s a no from me. After April, I only dabbled and didn’t publish! No, not good enough.
I wish to be capable of regular blog output, I wish to publish short stories regularly, and offer free content, but wishing doesn’t get you anywhere without structure and commitment. You can have all the hopes and dreams in the world, but if you don’t lock yourself in with dedicated time and get that bum in the chair, like 2019 me, you’ll only accomplish a mere fraction of what you’re capable of.
My intention for 2020 is to up my game bigtime. To accomplish that, I’ve spent a considerable number of hours and oodles of energy researching and developing my 2020 prototype planning documents. I’ve run with the excitement of it and come up with a workable plan. You can learn from my hard work and save yourself that graft by using my ideas as a base to build your own.

​I started with research, and lots of it. Without conscious thought, over the last year I’ve been pinning to my Business Tools board under the heading Time Management. There were lots of ideas that sparked interest, but it wasn’t until I sat down and really read through closely that I realised lots of the points fit together. I jotted ideas down across multiple sheets of paper, drew up rough ideas for planner pages, timetables, journal pages, and more. I had to find those magic elements that could work for me, and it took a considerable amount of time to work through them – far more than the couple of weeks I set myself. I could have rushed through and started 2020 with a less than perfect plan, but the likelihood of it succeeding would have been quite low. Instead I allowed myself that extra time to get it right, and do you know what? I’m excited about what I’ve come up with. I admit it’s not pretty; it’s practical, a test-run, a bit scrappy, and has correction fluid bits that normally drive me nuts, note paper glued in, and it’ll look worse once I’m through with it. What it looks like doesn’t matter (I’m ignoring my perfectionist side right now!); the point is that four weeks in, it’s working. I’ve never been so productive, not even when the motivational fire burned bright. Seeing my goals on paper every day, splitting them down into manageable chunks, and taking those small steps, man do I get a lot done without realising it. I’m also smashing my new time goal! Part of it has to do with self-review, but you’ll have to wait until next week for my second Quick Tip (out next week) to discover this wee secret!
Another great strategy I came across during research is Time Blocking. I found this great tip on Pinterest, sourced from productiveflourishing.com (you can read about it for yourself here… https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/590604938619194355/). The essentials are that you break your time into four blocks: Focus Blocks (for when you’re in the zone, and at your best), Social Blocks (when you’re in the right mind-set to meet other people), Admin Blocks (work you can do when you’re not at your best, but can still work productively), and Recovery Blocks (recharging time such as exercise, meditation, reading…). I’ve set myself up a chart that I can refer to throughout the day with task ideas under each. If I feel my self slipping from Focus to Admin, I can switch over and pick a task. When I plan each day, I try to include something from each area so I can switch when I need to. It helps, too, to think of the Recovery Block as part of a productive work day (so long as the whole day isn’t recovery block!). Reading, for me, is an essential part of my recovery time as reading feeds writing. When I’m reading, I’m learning more of my craft, analysing how other writers develop their stories, and what I do and don’t like about the way they tell stories. It removes some of that guilt that I get when I feel I’m being unproductive. It’s about changing that mind-set and being kinder to myself.
I have to admit, though, that setting up my new system has been fun; time-consuming, but fun.
 
In my former life as a primary school teacher, planner books were an essential element referred to throughout the day. They are about accountability and a visual record of what my class worked through over the school year. At the beginning of the year and each term, as a team, the whole school staff looked at overarching themes for the year, set-date events, etc. That staff was also split into three groups, (syndicates covering a few year-groups each – junior classes, middle classes, and senior classes), and looked ahead term by term together, roughly three monthly, but also down to weeks at a time. So, I’m used to a year calendar, for the broad stuff, term plans for looking closer at each subject area, and weekly plan pages for the day to day and routine stuff.
Now you’ll note that I said former teacher. It was the paperwork side of teaching that overcooked me in the end, and much of that came down to the depth of forward planning required, followed by mountains of testing, assessment, and reports. The stakes were incredibly high, along with the pressure to be perfect. While I like a timetable and a daily plan, I struggle to produce such things too far ahead of time because I love to break the pattern. I love the ‘teachable moment,’ running with a student’s question, but in the current teaching climate in New Zealand, that leads to essentials missing their required time. Oh, and I HATE it when I fall behind and my future plan suddenly looks very different to what I’m actually doing. It feels like doing the work twice as I’d have to change that long-term plan to reflect what I actually did. I also like to do things differently each day, to run with ideas, and largely to please myself, which isn’t exactly embraced in a school setting. That’s why I’ve got a planner that looks as it does. It’s about what works for ME and how I like to do things.

That’s the bare bones of it. I’ve got scraps of memo cube tucked in reminding me of things, for example, the fact that December and early January were so heavily loaded up with family and school things for my children that I was exhausted and hardly did anything productive (except create my new planner format). I’ve noted to allow myself more time before then. And, if I want to make a pretty journal, I’ll have to start planning ahead in November. I’ll let you know about some extra elements of my planning book in coming weeks too.
Here are the key things I need to point out to make this work for you:

1. ALWAYS work back from your goals. Look at the big picture and chop your down into manageable chunks or steps that you can chip away at from week to week. See my Quick Tip on Goal Setting for ideas on this: https://emilylarkins.nz/one-writers-life-blog/quick-tip-1-goal-setting-the-easy-and-doable-way
2. Reflecting on the past week and looking ahead to the next really helps. See my next Quick Tip on Journaling!
3. Allow yourself plenty of time for setting up, but when you come to deciding time limits on goals, hustle yourself! I won’t go into depth on this, but you can read about Parkinson’s Law here https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/590604938619613175/. This is a fascinating theory, and one that makes complete sense to me. The gist is, aim to be productive, and don’t allow too much time for procrastination – Time Blocking helps with this.
4. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you don’t meet a certain goal one week, reflect on it, work out what you could have done better, and reset that goal in the coming week/s. We can’t be perfect 100% of the time.
5. Track yourself. Keep a visual list or similar, to see where you’re at with your goals and how you’re using your time. If you tick a goal off, feel that achievement, celebrate it, and set another.

​And that’s it. Planning and time management don’t have to be massive ordeals. Even setting those goals and keeping a visual track of where you’re up to will help with productivity. It doesn’t have to be expensive, terribly time-consuming, or even that pretty. It’s what’s inside my 1B5 that’s invaluable to me. It’s my ‘stunt journal’ if you like; I intend to create myself a gorgeous book for next year!
 
So, if you want to increase your productivity, keep better track of goals, and feel better about the way you work, give my Time Management strategies a go.
 
Happy planning!
Emily.

​Do you think this could help you become more productive? Do you like the idea of Time Blocking, or breaking your goals down? Let me know in the comments below, and don’t forget to look out for my quick tips, out now, and coming soon!

Put simply, a goal is something you aim for; a dream you want to achieve, that you can tick off when you’ve done it. They give us something to work toward, and a sense of achievement when complete them.
Whatever your dream, you either won’t get there, or it’ll take much longer to if you don’t set a firm goal with a date to achieve it by. How do I know this? I’m the Queen of Trial, Error, and Procrastination, or at least I was in the past. I struggled to even think one up, and if I did, I failed to set a date, and I didn’t write it down. Long story short, I pretty much pushed myself out to sea in a small boat with no way of steering toward where I wanted to go, if you get my drift.
This year I’ve changed my errant ways. Read on to see how I intend to correct the error of my 2019 ways in 2020.​

​So how does one ‘set a goal?’ I won’t profess to be an expert on this, but I can offer advice and tips from what I’ve done. I’m not the first to write on this, so if you’re not convinced, do some research. Here’s my method:

1. Learn from the past – look back on previous years. Did you achieve what you expected to? If so, how. If not, why not? Last year I set a time goal. I achieved it on average, but in hindsight, had I set a productivity goal, I would have progressed further with my writing, which is what I really wanted. Lesson learned the hard way.
2. Brainstorm – what would you like to achieve? Think big and broad, and don’t limit yourself. Do you want to publish a regular blog, book or story? Would you like to set up a writing space, query agents, run a marathon, or start a business? Write down all your dreams.
3. Estimate how long each idea could take. You don’t have to be exact. I grab three or four highlighters, assign each colour a time estimate (for example, one month, six months, one year, five years +) and get highlighting.
4. Narrow down. Depending on how much time you can dedicate to your goal/s, you’ll find some will work for you now, whilst others might be best saved for later. It’s likely there’ll be a standout for you, an idea that sparks excitement. It’s easier to be motivated by something exciting rather than difficult. However, if there’s something urgent but you’re less passionate about, set an incentive (perhaps a smaller, more exciting goal) to reward yourself with. You could do both goals alongside each other, or keep the more exciting goal for a treat after the first. Make it manageable.
5. This is the KEY FIRST STEP TO ACHIEVEMENT: Write your goal/s down and set a date to achieve it by. Do it somewhere you will see it every day, better yet, go for multiple places. I’ve got mine written on my desk, as well as in my planner. Make your goal/s visible.

​Alright, I know, you know, the whole world may as well know, I didn’t post news in November. I wrote a whole blog, twice. I revised and edited, I chopped and changed, I wrote it, and I hated it, so, no blog, damn it, but more on my failures in a bit.
It’s hard to believe we’ve entered 2020. Not only has a new decade begun, but this year brings big things in the Larkins household – first and foremost, a fifth birthday. I’ll officially have two school girls, thus, hopefully, more time of the useful kind for writing. There will also be a fortieth (not mine yet!) in my house, and then there are the significant family birthdays that somehow stack up into the perfect storm for this year! Three 65ths, a 60th, a 30th, a 16th, and more. Lord help this introvert!

​The end of 2019 also saw the change of hands of the original farmhouse on the family farm. We’ve cleared out much of my grandparents’ things, and my grandmother allocated family treasures. I’m a bit of a family-tree nerd, so I know a little about my grandmother’s grandmother and I’m thrilled to inherit some of the treasures she brought over from Ireland to New Zealand many decades ago. My grandparents were also unintentional collectors of local history had never threw out anything that might have a later purpose. Beyond the family heirlooms, we found many treasures of interest to the local museum, including my grandfather’s Peninsula Borough Driver Licence, and memorabilia from the long-since closed Hoopers Inlet School. It was a long, dusty, and fascinating task that has made room for the next generation of farmers, my sister and her family. It’s been a lesson in adaptation for all of us. My grandfather’s grandfather built the house, and each generation of farmer has lived in it at some time or other. We’ve had to put aside the strangeness of touching things that we weren’t allowed to as children, such as the arrangements of artificial flowers and treasures on the sideboard, and let go of it being my grandparents’ home, to allow space for the future.

​Christmas brought the usual – over-stuffed-with-sweetness children, shopping, gatherings, gifts, and honouring the reason for the season. What I hadn’t realised in the past was just how much time it demands. Last year I set a goal (a very loose resolution) of working on my author business for a certain length of time per day. That meant recording my hours daily, and I can say truthfully, that in December I did not meet that goal. With Little Miss finishing up at Kindy, picnics, final school assemblies, shopping, wrapping, cooking, gatherings, having children home, and then a husband on holiday, my use of time tipped wildly in favour of family rather than work. I’ve enjoyed it though, and found that I naturally needed to step back from many of my work duties over the holidays. I’ll have to factor that in for this year too, now that I have a new schedule, but I’ll write about that in a bit.

The only other thing of note I’ll share for the end of 2019 was something that gave us a bit of a shock, literally! Between Christmas and New Year, we had a few stormy days with hail, thunder, and lightning. It’s not a common thing on the Otago Peninsula – more of an every-few- years kind of thing. Well! We had two days of storms in a row, and the second day absolutely hammered the Dunedin area with over three-hundred recorded bolts. It was absolutely relentless and ended up right on top of us. There were multiple emergency services callouts to homes and power poles hit in the city, and we got the fright of our five years in the home we built when one of the large Macrocarpa trees just thirty metres away got hit. It was an instantaneous flash and bang, so bright and loud. It scared us good and proper and unsettled the children right on bedtime. After the storm I went investigating and found that not one but two trees had been struck, looking much like an enormous bear had raked it’s claws down the trunks. No doubt I’ll end up using it in my writing – it’s too good not to, but I’m in no hurry experience that again!

​Last year as a writer surprised me for two reasons – one good, one surprisingly not so. I set a time goal for each day (and ultimately an average for the year to beat), and hit it (yay)! On the other hand, I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I thought I would. I expected to publish a novel and several shorts, write a fairly regular blog, and keep up with my news. One of those things I managed, and I got a few shorts out, but failed dramatically in the publishing stakes. Now that I’ve been prepping for this year, I understand a lack of concrete goals being at the core, and failure to implement a regular routine. Upon reflection, I set a goal and achieved it, but it wasn’t enough. I had ideas of what I wanted to get done, and foolishly expected to do it. Yes, things changed up on me with childcare, but I could and should have done better. So clearly, for this year, I need to step up my game and make changes. Big ones.

​Believe it or not, I need to think bigger, not so much in terms of wants, but in goals and planning. I’ve already started, perhaps a bit later than I should have (I’ll need to factor in thinking about 2021 much earlier, perhaps in November), but I’ve put a bit of research and thought into all of it and come up with a plan. I’ve got goals, too. They might be a bit of a stretch, but I won’t know until I try, and I’ll consider this a trial year for goals (last year was for time). They include some pretty exciting freebies, more regularly published short stories, and getting my novel, The Weight of Expectation, published (I will, I really will!). I’ll still have two little charges at home a couple of days a week, but with both of my own children at school I’ll have a dedicated number of days to work just on writing. I’ve got lists of things I can do with kids at home too (like planning and idea gathering), and looking ahead, I can factor in days that’ll be high-load days, and low-load (like December!). I’ve got the opportunity to create balance, now I’ve just got to execute it. Beyond looking at the year, I’ve researched deeper on productivity and discovered the importance of journaling, reflection, and breaking the year into months, weeks…and so on, looking at the long-term, but also breaking up goals. I intend to blog about this in deeper detail, but I’ll hint at MANAGEABLE CHUNKS.

I’ve also got to balance family and work – like all parents do. It’s slightly tricky, given that I work from home. As an independent author, I’m not working to other people’s deadlines, and I have the opportunity to dedicate my time as I see fit, but less work means less productivity, so… I’ve got to find the best balance. I’m confident I can do that more efficiently than I did last year.

In short, from last year I learned:
Measuring time isn’t everything – goals are important – and to go along with that, big goals need to be broken down into steps, as does time. Rewarding myself with things that feed my writing is a sensible idea – like reading and making the most of the mobile library (because I avoid going to town wherever possible).
Making the most of the dedicated writing time I have (like JK says, protect your writing days!), will be essential. Knowing what to do with those grabbed moments (like when the toddler’s sleeping), will be useful too – visuals will help me. Rewards might too. I’ve activated my awareness, now I’ve got to follow through.
So, in short, the lady that ‘doesn’t do New Year Resolutions,’ has made some (cringe), but I’ve only ever avoided such things because I struggle with the idea of failure. It’s time to toss that silliness out and lift my working game. If I want to succeed as an author, I need to step up and do it otherwise the dream will be lost. What will keep me going is just that: The Dream.
Time to go out there and get on with it. 

New short tips blog posts monthly.
Free Flash Fiction Fridays - a new quick read every month, and best of all, they're FREE!
Short Story Sunday - every second month I’ll endeavour to publish a new short story (starting in February).
New-look prompts - on stunning new backgrounds, and searchable chronologically or by genre. The first are already up on Pinterest with five new prompts weekly.

​Have you set goals for 2020? Do you want to learn about the discoveries I’ve made around goal setting and time management, follow Emily Larkins, Author on social media.
Please share your ideas and discoveries in comments.

Have a great month,
Emily.