Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Tracking down the minutes and hours

After the last log, I decided that I should track my time in detail.

Despite my best intentions, I just wasn’t finding the time I wanted to write.

It feels almost wrongheaded to say that. I am the master of my own time. I’m working for myself. Surely I know what I’m spending my time on?

Well, yes. But, no.

I set out each week and every day with a priority list. It won’t be a surprise to anyone who has read my previous Writer’s Logs to know that business priorities have been sitting at the top of the list in order for me to earn money to pay the bills.

If you, like me, struggle to understand why there doesn’t seem to be enough time, time tracking is a great way to really understand what time you are actually spending on everything. It is completely irritating to do as it involves at the end of every hour noting in a journal or online document of some kind exactly what you did in the previous hour and breaking that down into component parts if you did more than one thing.

For example, from my time tracker on a Monday 10am:

• Doing an online shop – 15 minutes.
• Social media for the business – 30 minutes.
• Writing article for the business – 15 minutes.

Eventually there is a complete weekly record of how much time is spent on what.

What did my time tracking show?

My creative writing time in total that week came to just under three hours, all of which I did in three sessions – a short session at the beginning of the week, another short session and a longer one at the end of the week for around 4k of words.

That doesn’t sound too bad on the face of it except for the fact back in November I was managing to do at least 3k every day, with 20-25k of words a week.

While I appreciate that the intensity of that type of writing is not possible every single day, especially on the days when I am not feeling well, I would like to get back to doing a consistent 1-1.5k of words a day.

So, if my time wasn’t spent writing, what am I spending my time on?

Well, a lot of it is going to writing business articles for my website. That activity is taking me much longer than I estimated it was taking. A good chunk of time goes to social media marketing for the business on Bluesky, Substack and LinkedIn. I had a plan to get the YouTube channel up and running this month so that has the potential to add even more time, as to get the algorithms to play ball you have to be social on social media (not to mention the actual content creation).

Finally, I am doing a lot of coaching sessions, typically between 3-5 a week. With prep time and follow-up that is at least a half day gone. Networking also takes at least a half day because it inevitably also includes travelling.

I also get distracted a lot when I’m writing anything. If I stop to gather thoughts and my Dad messages me, I’ll turn my attention to the message. I might google something and go down a rabbit hole for a while. I’ll get a little stuck and wander off to YouTube to watch a video only to find myself watching another and another…

My main reflection though is that I was setting myself artificial boundaries. I was trying to keep my business work in normal working hours – between 9-6 typically. And I was only writing then in the margins of the day – in the evenings when I was already tired, or at the weekends, trying to cram some words in around cleaning and household errands. Just like I used to when I was working in my previous jobs.

Wasn’t this why I changed career track? So I could have more time and focus on my writing?

Having established where the time is going, what am I going to start doing differently?

I’ve stopped this week with the boundaries. If I want to spend an hour writing a story in the middle of the day, I’ll do that. After all, what is the point in working for myself if I can’t give myself permission to take the time to write what I want to write when I want to write it.

But that also means giving myself permission to write a business article in the evening if I am so inspired, or if I need to because I spent the afternoon writing a story. I do need to watch the balance of this to make sure I’m not just working constantly.

I need to focus on getting a stock of business articles written ahead of time to enable me to free up time for other projects – like the YouTube channel which I’ve conceded is not happening this month given the amount of networking I’m due to do this coming week.

Indeed, this past week was also not the best time to start a new approach as I lost a day to catching up with a friend (it was their birthday) and so then had to pack everything else into the remaining time.

Revisiting my way forward in April

While I am already making some changes, looking at the week ahead, I know April is going to be where my new way of working really comes into play more.

And this is just in time as the friend who has done the copy edit has just returned the novel to me.

I will find time this week to kick off getting some book cover art, thinking about my marketing plan, and going through the copy edit to understand where they’ve pointed out the sentences have gotten clunky or where I am over-using a particular phrase or word which starkly stood out to them, and therefore would to any reader. I had hoped to get the novel published in April, but May is more likely by the time I’ve commissioned cover art, finalised the copy, and hopefully sent out to people for a pre-read.

Regardless, I have started to write more again this week, and I am pleased about that. I’m much more aware of my time and that is no bad thing since in the absence of a time machine, I can only make the most of the time that I have.

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