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Agree? Disagree? Stop sounding off to your computer screen! Instead,
share your point of view on this subject with our readers.
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Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep... Hello. I'm late.
Do many of your conversations, meetings, letters, and presentations begin like this? Then maybe you, like me, are a time addict.
Here. Just take this simple test and decide. You know the rules for these self-tests, right? Answer more than two questions in the affirmative, and you're marginal; three or more and you're in trouble; 4 or more and it's time for detox. - I can never can get enough time
- I'm irritable and unreasonable when I run out
- I spend a lot of time thinking about how to get more
- I know my whole life would be better if I had enough
- I remember when time was not such a big problem
- I use a planner or other device to protect my supply of time from others
I know, I know. One more thing to recover from.
But listen, I was once like you, only worse. I was a self-employed freelance writer. My whole business was built on time--that's what I billed for. What I didn't factor in were the sneaky standards and expectations of quality I defined my character by, and those were what undid me in the end.
Writing, itself, is fairly simple. Take a little of your education, some attitude, and a little style. Add whatever you know about the client's product, audience, standards, and voice. Alternate meetings and research with review and synthesis. Procrastinate if you have time for it. Deliver a draft and begin again.
But writing time, plus service, divided by age and gender always equals a big problem. I'm of the generation raised to excel no matter what, to deliver what was promised, to disregard personal sacrifice, and always to ask, "But was it good for you?"
This doesn't even work well in intimate relationships. It took a long time to realize it wasn't working in my business.
Here's why: Once you've ingested whatever the client had to offer, you have very little control over its transformation and reemergence. It can happen at any time, in the midst of a cocktail party, a phone call to a loved one, an argument, a dream. And if you're dedicated to service, you put down your drink, the phone, the argument, the dream, to "just jot a few ideas down".
The dilemma is not about whether providing good service is of value--it is. The dilemma is this: If your life is your work (and vice versa), how much of it is billable time?
All right, some of it's simple. Rushing around looking for a clean skirt, ironing my corporate blouse, clicking OK on the Print dialog box, swallowing another slug of coffee, tying the dog out under his favorite tree, running out in my wool socks to start the car, stuffing papers into my briefcase, scanning the work surface one more time in search of...who knows? (I'd surely remember as soon as I was in transit), jumping in the shower, turning off the coffee pot, getting dressed, locking the door, running back in to get the three copies of the draft off my printer...clearly, none of this was billable time.
But what if, as I drove in to the meeting, always slightly over the speed limit, I reached that hyper-calm state of too little sleep, too much caffeine and stress, and the fatalism of "it's too late to worry about it", I suddenly realized that the opening paragraph no longer worked?
Did the time I took to pull over, hand-write the quintessential opening onto three draft copies, and search for a gas station with a working phone so I could call in to say I was "running just a bit behind, but on my way" did that count as billable time?
To try to master this pervasiveness, I plumbed my depths. Just what was going on when I wrote? I wanted to establish a value for each step, assign separate hourly rates, and, not incidentally, master each skill and my ability to move between them. I developed log forms for all the components--meeting, reading, analyzing, synthesizing, drafting, revising, editing, finalizing. I detailed each quarter-hour increment on my log forms.
I went nuts. I'm a writer, not an accountant. Beyond a certain point, my writerly self insisted it was a mystery, and best left shrouded.
This was a windfall for my clients, who reaped the benefits of my increasingly disciplined work, and whom I charged the lowest rates out of my loathing of the whole slice-and-dice process.
Then, I tried using a planner to control my time. I figured it would help me be more prompt for appointments and start my work sooner. You know, each morning you spend 10 minutes planning your day, writing down tasks and intentions, and assigning them priorities?
And then you have to transfer yesterday's undone work to today's "first-priority" category. For a perfectionist, this was another kind of torture: taking the time to analyze and anatomize failure. I suppose if I'd stuck with it, I'd be a better person today...Nahhhh.
Keep in mind that, according to this system, all tasks, every day, have to be part of your master plan for life, so that everything you do merges with and amplifies your essential values.
Right. At 43, I still ask myself what I really want to become and how to blend wildly divergent talents into a coherent whole. I still yearn to be a star basketball player, an itinerant storyteller, a stay-at-home mom, a better lover, spouse, and friend, on a spiritual journey, healed of all my wounds, a world-traveler, a teacher...in this lifetime, mind you.
How was spending time restoring my spirit by staring out at the garden, or walking out into the cool morning something to schedule or to set a time limit on? Who was to say whether or not it was a necessary part of the writing process? All my planner did was make it clear that, however such time contributed to my person, it wasn't, ethically, billable time.
Finally, I did what all the really successful addicts do. I admitted I was powerless to manage my time well, and turned it over to a higher power. I took a job.
Now, it's easy. For a specific time every day, five days a week, I'm in an office, and I do whatever the company needs me to do. My boss has made it clear that he expects me to balance home and work life and I'm happy to try this novel concept out. He also does me the honor of assuming that he's getting my best effort at all times (and he is). He doesn't ask for an accounting, and I don't give it.
I spend the entire day writing, editing, proofreading, and planning, and I'm happy as a lark. I'm also more productive than I've ever been in my life, now that the focus is off those dreadful efforts to quantify my time, assign it a price, and provide bills to itemize it.
When my day's over, it's done. I don't pull over during my commute to write down ideas, I compose poetry. I don't dream of elegant solutions to installation problems, I just dream. When I'm with my family or friends, I'm on my own time, not on call.
In my book, that's called serenity. CATHY LAWRENCE is a former freelance writer who now manages her time so well that she made the deadline for this article.
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You've been asking for an easy
way to share these articles with friends
since Day One. To which
we reply, "Uncle!"
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