What To Do When the Work Piles On Top Of You

A productivity post, because this week I need it

Being a writer is HARD HARD HARD, and not just the art of it. That’s hard too, but it’s a different type of hard - an intellectual, emotional, problem solving kind of a hard. But the other part of writing that is hard is just the grind. Finding the time. Using the time. 

Sometimes I am completely on top of my time management and I happily do my 500 words per day and do my admin and my teaching and have time over to float around the library with a coffee and make a nice dinner before my kid gets home. But sometimes I either screw it up or I just have TOO MUCH WORK ON and everything feels like it’s crunching around me and I start to panic. GRIND. CRUNCH. NO TIME. 

Personally, I am currently in a crunch time. I feel I have complained about this before. If I’m honest I’m struggling to remember a time when I didn’t feel either spread far too thin, or else panicked that I had no work and no one would ever employ me again and we would all starve. It goes with the territory. This week I’m preparing to go on holiday, and the marking is due, and the next draft is due, and my husband’s been ill so I’ve had to do the nursery run, and everything feels particularly hard. 

I present to you a suite of tools to use during these grind weeks - when everything feels as if it’s falling on top of your head, and everything needs doing and nothing is getting done. I am assuming that you don’t *just* write, here. I don’t know anybody that just writes! Maybe like one person? But almost everyone has jobs and kids and side hustles and teaching and publicity commitments and… just stuff. Personally, I write, and I teach writing, and I tutor English, and I have a toddler. So. Much. Stuff. And it makes you panic, which makes you less productive, which makes the problem worse. This is how I break the cycle.