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| Photo credit: The Lowry, Salford on Flickr |
I've been thinking a lot about that as I juggle my writing with my responsibilities, new and old.
Writing-wise, I currently have three projects I'm tossing around, two with deadlines (one self-imposed, one not), and a third that really wants my attention but has to sit and wait. On top of that are my freelance editing projects, my social media commitments, my part-time job, and grad school. And even before I've started doing all of those things at once—though I will have started by the time this publishes—I've already been thinking a lot about how to prioritize to make sure things get done.
For me, it starts with recognizing hard deadlines vs soft deadlines. Hard deadlines are deadlines I can't move—deadlines in contracts (both writing and freelance) or homework, for example. Hard deadlines I usually get plenty of advance notice on, so when I initially get them I sit down and do some math to figure out how much work I have to do every day in order to finish on time. And then I build in a few extra days, for days when things don't go as planned.
Conversely, soft deadlines are usually self-imposed deadlines. They're goalposts, rather than something someone else is waiting on—or, they're sometimes a hard deadline date with the wiggle room built in. So, if I've committed to finishing a project on the 31st, I'll usually math out so I finish on the 29th, so the 29th is my soft deadline that can be moved if needed, and the 31st is my hard deadline.
Once I've established all I need to do every day for each of my commitments, I prioritize within the day. My to-do list nowadays typically looks like this:
- errands
- writing/revision work
- freelance work
- grad school reading/work
- social media work
Within my grad school reading, I like it split it up between boring reading and fun reading. The boring reading I try to get out of the way first, and then the fun reading I know I can spread out throughout the day, even up until my bedtime reading. Social media work often gets priority unless I can push it off a day without consequence—but I try not to do that too much because I usually have plenty to do the next day too. Freelance work and writing work I generally prioritize the most, because the later in the day it gets, the less energy I have to do it—but those two categories frequently have the most hard deadlines, so I have to get them done. Then errands of course get prioritized and scheduled by how urgent they are.
By splitting up my tasks into bite-sized pieces and prioritizing them from most important to least, it allows me to get high-priority items done even when I have a lot going on while leaving some flexibility for overflow tasks that I can get done on a catch up day.
It's not a perfect system, but it definitely helps. And it's very necessary, for me at least, to keep track of all I need to do.
Do you prioritize your daily tasks?
Twitter-sized bite:
How do you juggle multiple responsibilities with writing? @Ava_Jae shares a few tips. (Click to tweet)
