The biggest thing getting in the way of your writing

It's time to reclaim our time

Have you every heard anyone say “Yeah, I feel like I have enough time to write—I’m pretty much doing as much writing as I’d like to be” ??? Yeah, me neither.

Everyone I talk to wishes they had more time to write. Including me.

I started to think more sharply about time after I went on a writing retreat in March. While I was gone, I did a few things besides write—I prepared and ate meals, I exercised, and I read and journaled a bit. But other than that, I wrote—I read printed pages, drafted by hand, and revised on the page and on screen.

During the 3 full days I was on retreat, I was awake for about 16 hours. I didn’t keep track, but if I assume a very generous 6 hours for eating, moving/tending my body, reading, journaling, and an evening chat with my spouse, that means I spent ~10 hours with my butt in the chair, eyeballs on my novel. That’s a LOT of time.

My writing desk at the Porches Writing Retreat

Living one’s normal day to day life—with jobs, caretaking, and chores—does not allow for 10 hours of writing per day, even for me, a self-employed person with no children and a lot of control over their time. But I came home excited about my novel and wondering if it was possible to spend more time on it in my day to day life.

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In the 2,024th year of our lord, time is a complicated thing. Scarcity and busyness are hallmarks of our culture. These days the most frequent answer to the question “How are you?” is “Busy!”

We have jammed calendars and to-do lists that go on for pages. The burden of things we have to do is infinite, while time and energy are both very much finite.

One of the things I am most sure of in this phase of my life is there isn’t time to do it all. There isn’t enough time to read all the books and visit all the places I want to. There isn’t enough time to spend with the people I love or have all the fun that I want to.

So how, in this era of scarcity and peak busyness, could a human being find more time to make art?

Today I want to tell you an important secret: There is more time than we think there is, than we’ve been told. The time is actually all around us, ripe for the taking.

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There are things we absolutely have to do—we have to work our jobs, take care of the beings around us, and take care of ourselves.

But there are things we DON’T have to do. There are places our time is bleeding away without our even realizing it.

According to its screen time tracker, I spend anywhere from 2 to 2.5 hours a day on my phone. Yes, phones are necessary—we need to connect with our people, listen to hilarious and entertaining podcasts, and look up that recipe for dinner. But I am CERTAIN I do not spend 2 hours a day doing necessary stuff on my phone.

How many times have you picked up your phone for a specific reason and then got lost in some other distraction? I do it All. The. Time. Time that could be much better spent.

Our phones can serve as a kind of anesthetic, a place to retreat to when the real things around us feel too much. Self-soothing isn’t a crime, but there’s a fuzzy line it’s too easy to slip over, where the control goes from our hands into somebody else’s. Where our valuable time gets frittered away without our noticing. We weren’t put on the planet to consume—we were put here to create.

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Many people feel they have to do everything on their to-do lists before they can engage in creative work. But as Oliver Burkeman writes in Four Thousand Weeks, the only thing checking things off our to-do list earns us is the chance to do more things on our to-do list.

Many people (by which I mean me) seem to feel as if they start off each morning in a kind of "productivity debt", which they must struggle to pay off through the day, in hopes of reaching a zero balance by the time evening comes.

Few things feel more basic to my experience of adulthood than this vague sense that I'm falling behind, and need to claw my way back up to some minimum standard of output.

It's as if I need to justify my existence, by staying "on top of things", in order to stave off some ill-defined catastrophe that might otherwise come crashing down upon my head…

What if – and personally I find this thought almost unthinkable in is radicalism, but still, here goes – what if there's nothing you ever have to do to earn your spot on the planet?…

Make no mistake: paying off your imaginary productivity debt completely – in other words, working so hard and so efficiently that you no longer feel like you're falling behind – is literally impossible, not just grueling and unpleasant.

—Oliver Burkeman

We live in a culture that insists on our constant doing, that tricks us into thinking our worth is based on what we do rather than who we are. That we have to earn our free time, our creative time, our rest and our recreation. But we don’t and we can’t.

We’re never, ever, EVER going to finish all the stuff we have to do. EVER!!

What’s on your to do list that can wait? What can you put off till tomorrow so that today you can spend some time on your art?

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I’m spending more time on my writing now, thanks to two simple strategies.

1. I’m putting my phone away

In a drawer, on Do Not Disturb, for as long as I intend to write.

And here’s a non-shocker: when that thing is out of sight, I look at it less, pay more attention to what’s right in front of me, and feel better overall.

2. I’m calendaring it

I don’t remember signing a blood oath with Microsoft Outlook, but I live and die by those goddamn notifications. If it’s on the calendar, it’s happening.

We’ve got dentist appointments and school events and a zillion meetings that could have been emails on our calendars, so why not writing? When the notification comes, I put my phone in the drawer and my Butt in the Chair.

A lot of you are looking at the above and thinking, well isn’t it nice for you that you have all those hours free every day. Well, I hid all the other calendars, but yes, I do have more time than the average person and also I’m here to tell you that you don’t need hours every day to get anything done. Elizabeth Gilbert writes in 1 hour chunks. Again, some of you may be thinking I haven’t had 1 straight hour free to myself since the 1980s. I get it. Good news: you don’t need an hour.

15 minutes counts.

Think about it—how many things can you get done right before you go to bed or in the few minutes before you leave the house? A compressed time frame can spur us to greater action.

First thing in the morning or over your lunch break or after dinner, set a timer for 15 minutes and dive in. You will be absolutely amazed at how much you can do in that container and how good it’ll make you feel.

We have come to fill those little time gaps with phone junk. I guarantee you that you will feel better after spending 15 minutes on your writing than you would after spending 15 minutes on social media.

Use a timer, even for 15 minutes.

Bleed is a real thing. We start an activity, then think of another one, then jump to that, which leads us to another. Many times I sit down to do one task that’s supposed to take ten minutes and an hour later look up disoriented and bewildered, as if I just walked through a car wash.

Set. A. Timer. Commit to opening the file and looking at it, then set the timer and hop to it. If you use your phone for a timer, set it down out of arm’s reach when you begin so you won’t reach for it. Or use one of the many other timing devices around you (I favor microwave).

The seltzer & books I brought to residency. I drank all the seltzer and read basically none of the books.

Before I go, I want to tell you one more story about my retreat.

There were two other writers there. I learned their names upon arrival, but for the next two days, we didn’t speak.

Only one time were we all even in the same room: it was a little before 7 am and I was waiting for the kettle to boil. Leslie was making her breakfast and Renee entered just as I was pouring my tea. “The trifecta!” I declared, then bolted.

Later I found the below note from Renee, who had still said nothing more to me than her name.

I happened to run into Renee as she was loading her car on the last day. I asked how her time was and she said, “I knew I needed this time, but I didn’t know how much my soul needed it."

"Mmmmmm,” I replied and waved goodbye.

I know only 3 things about Renee: her name, that she liked cinnamon bread, and that her soul needed a retreat. But she may be one of the best friends I’ve ever made on retreat.

She reminded me to be generous—to share your cinnamon bread when you can—and that time is our most precious and most limited resource. We can’t befriend every stranger we come across. But we can do the things that matter.

Keep writing, friends.