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No time to produce? Try These Ideas

By Michael Stelzner

What time is it?
Where did the time go?
I need to go, I’m out of time.
Have you got the time?
Can you spare some time?

Pulled this way and that?

Ring, ring.
Beep, you’ve got mail.
“Honey, can you come help me?”

Feel like you have no time?

The good news is you can find extra time.

If you are writer, or just need more time, consider these suggestions:

  • Car Time: Listen to books and podcasts in your car and utilize that 40 to 60 minutes a day more effectively. OR, dictate your thoughts into a recorder.
  • Lunch Time: First, take one! Make it at least 30 minutes and get out of the office. Try and relax and not work. When you go back, you will be refreshed.
  • Early Lunch: Leave for lunch at 11:30am. When you get back, the office will be quiet because everyone else is at lunch.
  • Wakeup Time: Try getting up one hour earlier for a limited time. Force yourself to be productive with the new-found time.
  • Arriving at Work Time: Get in the office 30 minutes earlier than normal. Shut the door and get productive before everyone else arrives.

How have you found time?

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Freelance Writing, Writing White Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Hi Michael, just stumbled onto your site. The extra hour at the start of the day is arguable my most productive. Roberts tip on blogging, I'm going to set up. Thanks
  • When I was still working on a company, I spent almost 3 hours of my time at car everyday. My office was an hour and half car driving. Usually I use it to sleep so when I arrive at home I feel more fresh and able to do sonthing else, including writting. But then I found that I better use that time, especially the time when I go to office, to learn something from my podcast radio. That's the time when my brain was fresh and easy to learn something.
  • Another idea - try keeping a blog, open at all times. If you have the Google Toolbar, you can "send this" to Blogger and cut-paste your ideas that way. Flock (based on Firefox) has a built-in "Blog This" feature which will sign you into Blogger or any other service you have.

    Blogs are a great way to just get it all out of your system. And keep tabs on it as well.

    I use Blogger, Gmail, and Desktop Search to be able to find anything I've ever blogged. Blogger sends it to Gmail, which automatically archives it, then Desktop Search will search emails as well as my desktop - so my posts are easy to find.

    But the time saver is being able to blog, even if you have to stop and pick up the idea again - it's already half started. Use an outline so you can figure out where you were headed with that idea...
  • Whitney
    I use IBM ViaVoice. Absolutely love it, and it would be hard to make me change because I have six years invested in developing my "voice profile". Having put so much effort into developing the profile, the software's recognition rate is somewhere between 85% and 90% accuracy, which is higher than the average they advertise.

    I have acquaintances who swear by Dragon and say they would never switch -- for pretty much the same reasons I'm attached to ViaVoice. When you spend that much time developing a profile, you don't want to have to start over...no matter how good or how usable the other product might be.
  • Whitney - What software do you use? - Mike
  • Whitney
    I've been using voice recognition software for years. Fire it up, put on the headset, and you can dictate notes or drafts or e-mails while you work around your desk filing paperwork, sorting through mail/junk mail, changing out pages in a dayrunner, cleaning, whatever.

    Since some of my best ideas come to me while I'm working on these more mundane tasks, I get to take advantage of creative inspiration AND get the gruntwork done.
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