Beating the Time Monster

Randy Ingermanson is the award-winning author of six novels and one non-fiction book. He holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from UC Berkeley and is the publisher of the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, the worlds' largest electronic magazine on fiction writing, with over 10,000 readers. He lives in southern Washington with his wife and daughters, where he is completing a life sentence in involuntary servitude to two cats and one dog. Visit his prison at Advanced Fiction Writing

BEATING THE TIME MONSTER

I teach fiction writing all the time, and everyone always wants to know about the sexy stuff -- spinning wild plots and creating fab characters and developing great themes and all that.

That's all good and necessary stuff, and I love teaching that. But I'm reminded of a line I read in an old Tom Clancy novel years ago: "Privates talk tactics; Lieutenants talk strategy; Generals talk logistics."

It's possible I've remembered it wrong, but that's the gist of it. The point is that the real pros in the military worry about logistics -- maintaining supply lines, building roads, fixing bridges, and other hideously boring and unsexy stuff.

Over the past couple of years, I've come to see that I need to deal with the boring stuff better. It's not that I suddenly decided to like boring stuff. It's just that I finally realized that the quicker and smarter you deal with the boring stuff, the more time you have to do the fun stuff. And the more money you make, which incidentally pays the mortgage so you can do the fun stuff without feeling guilty.

As a lot of my e-zine readers know, earlier this year I did a series of teleseminars with Allison Bottke on organization and strategic planning and branding. Doing this kind of thing is like eating your Brussels sprouts. It's yucky but it's good for you, so just do it.

I did it and a whole bunch of others did it right along with me and Allison. For those who still need their Brussels sprouts, here's a link.

Lately, I've decided to tackle my out of control schedule. People always ask me how I get so much done. My answer is that I work too many hours. I've been wanting to fix that, and the easiest way seemed to be by improving my time-management skills. So I've been studying hard on that lately.

Time-management is like flossing. Everybody knows they SHOULD do it.
Everybody knows HOW to do it. Everybody SAYS they do it. 98% of everybody is lying.

The funny thing is that there really aren't any secrets to time-management. Really. Do you want to know everything there is to know about time management? I'll tell you right here:

1) Decide what goals you want.
2) Set priorities.
3) Make an action plan.
4) Follow the stinkin' action plan.
5) Deal with any obstacles that pop up.
6) Ride to glory.

It's that simple. Everybody knows these steps. Everybody has heard them a billion times, although sometimes the ideas are all dressed up in tuxedos and you can barely recognize them. Very few people do them.

What's wrong with this picture?

I can't speak for everybody, but I've generally got stuck on Door Number 2 -- setting priorities. Goals, I can handle. I've got great goals. Scads of 'em. Megascads. I have more goals than I know what to do with.

And that's the problem, at least for me. Too many goals, not enough time. The magic trick of time management is to strip your goals down to fit the time you actually have. Because you are not going to be able to go buy some more hours at the Time Store. What you have is what you have.

Let me distinguish between "goals" and "tasks" because this seems to trip people up.

We all have zillions of tasks that come up every day that need to be done. The bills have to get paid; the dentist must be visited; the brats must be driven to soccer practice; and on and on. These are tasks. They're part of daily living. None of these are goals.

Goals are things you want to ACHIEVE, not things you want to DO. Here are some goals:

Climb Mount Everest.
Pay off the mortgage.
Lose 30 pounds.
Write a novel.

All of those are spectacular goals, at least for some people. We all know people who want to achieve these kinds of goals "someday."

Some people actually achieve these goals. The great majority of people who do are people who wake up one day and say, "Forget about all my other goals for the moment, because I really, really, REALLY want to climb Mount Everest." (Or pay off the mortgage. Or lose 30 pounds. Or write that novel.)

The day you do that is the day you focus. This is absolutely critical. Focusing is NOT about deciding that you don't want those other goals. Yes, you still want those other goals. Just not RIGHT NOW.

Focus is about choosing one goal to work on NOW to the exclusion of all others. Focus is about saying "yes" to one goal and "not now" to a thousand others.

The day you decide to focus on one goal is the day that you start making serious progress toward that goal. Because when you decide to focus, you are putting the rest of your life on hold, and you are making the commitment to take action to reach your goal in the shortest number of steps.

This is not easy. It's merely critically important. Listen, if it were easy, the world would be full of Mount Everest alumni, ripped up mortgages, 30-pound-losers, and novelists. The world is not full of those kind of people. The world is full of people who talk about doing those things.

I don't want to step on toes here. The fact is that I'm preaching to myself right now, reminding myself AGAIN that if I want to achieve ANY of my goals, then I need to focus on ONE of them and work at it until I reach it.

I've been getting better at all of this time-management stuff lately, in part because I started using a tool to help me do it -- to remind me to do all the stuff I know that I should be doing, and to remind me to focus on my goals every day.

As far as I can tell, there are about five billion time-management tools out there. My advice is to use whatever works for you. I found one that works for me. It's free. It's fun. And I really, really like it, so I've been telling everyone I know about it, even though it has kind of a dorky name.

It's called Simpleology 101. The reason it's free is because it's the first of a series of three courses on managing your life.

Simpleology 102 and 103 are not free. The folks who created it figure that if you like 101, you might buy 102 and 103. They figured right with me, because I really like 101, so I bought 102 and I'll probably buy 103. But here's the important point: I use

Simpleology 101 to plan my day, every single day.

Here's a link in case you're interested: Simpleology 101

The fact that I use it every day means that I'm focused every day, I'm taking action every day to meet my goals, or else I have a jolly good reason why I'm not. (Some days, life just happens and you need to deal with the unexpected.)

The key thing is that I've focused myself down to ONE GOAL right now.
Lots of side tasks, but ONE GOAL. I have an action plan to meet that goal, and every day, I take steps to reach that goal.

What about you? Is your life focused right now? Do you have ONE GOAL that you're shooting for? Is the goal something you really want, or is it something you're not jazzed about?

Like I said, this time-management stuff isn't sexy. But it forces you to think about whatever goal IS sexy -- at least for you -- and it reminds you to take action to reach that goal in the shortest possible time.

And THAT'S pretty sexy, no?