This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 104: Protecting Your Time.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And today we are essentially talking about boundaries.

Now, if you’re anything like me, boundaries present you with a… let’s say unique challenge. It involves certain very complex and difficult things, such as saying no, respecting yourself and your own time, not being a people pleaser, and being seen, among many other things, and we’re going to talk about all of that in today’s episode. Now, if you don’t struggle with any of those things and really your biggest problem is getting away from your kids long enough to write, don’t worry, we’ll talk about that as well. We’re going to talk about all of that right now. Get it? Because that’s the name of this show.

Okay. Moving on. I feel like we’ve talked about time management on this show before, and how we can choose how we spend our time. Like at this very moment, you have chosen to listen to this episode of the Write Now podcast, whether it felt like your choice or not, you chose to set your alarm this morning, or maybe you chose not to set an alarm. You chose to go into work today. You chose to drop off your kids at daycare. You chose not to go into work today. You chose to go to your 8:00 AM class. You chose to spend the time you had set aside for writing, playing Stardew Valley on your phone, or scrolling and scrolling, and scrolling through Instagram. This is something that I struggle with, hugely. The idea that we choose how we spend our time. I spent years and years of my own life and my own career feeling like a victim to time, like a victim to my career. I saw myself as a helpless little cog in a machine that was too big for me to control, let alone affect. I had to make money so that I could pay rent and eat food, so I didn’t really have a choice. Yeah, I could choose not to work and starve to death in a gutter somewhere, but that’s not a very appealing choice.

Perhaps you are wiser than I was, perhaps you all, all ready know that we have a choice in how we spend our time. None of it’s free from consequences of course, nothing is. But we do have a choice in how we spend the time that is ours. I realized that I was griping about having to go to work and having that eat up eight, nine, 10 hours of my day, and then the few hours that I did have to myself, I would spend scrolling on social media. I would spend avoiding doing the thing or things that I actually wanted to do. And I realized that more often than not, I was choosing distraction, just as I felt like a victim at work, someone who was trapped in a cubicle for eight to 10 hours with no option to do anything else, that’s how I felt during my free time as well. “I’m so tired,” I would say after a long day of work, “I have no choice, but to scroll through Instagram.”

Right before the pandemic hit, I spent some time in Orlando, Florida with my very, very good friend cat and over bowls of delicious [inaudible 00:04:19], and a little Vietnamese restaurant, we found ourselves talking about how easy it is to get addicted to being a victim. This is a huge topic that, A, I’m not equipped to address because I do not have what I feel is the requisite degree in psychology, psychiatry, whatever it is, but also this is probably not the space for it. But the big takeaway from that conversation was that sometimes being a victim feels good. Being a victim to time and circumstance and society. We give over our responsibility, we give over our choice-making, our autonomy, our power, and thus, we are completely absolved from consequences. We get to complain, because nothing is really our fault, because we didn’t have the power to make the choice voice. I couldn’t have worked on my novel; I had to work. Couldn’t attend my nieces volleyball game because I had to work, or I couldn’t write because I had to attend my nieces volleyball game. You can see how complicated it gets.

I am going to admit to you right here and right now that for years and years, I chose to be a victim of my circumstances. For years and years, I chose to be distracted, because it meant that I was not responsible for creating my art, or for letting myself down about not creating my art. I told myself that I was getting more out of my distraction than I was out of potentially creating. I’m going to say that again: I was getting more, or I perceived that I was getting more out of my distraction than I was out of creation, because whatever we’re choosing to do, there’s a reason; we’re getting something out of it. Now, sometimes what we’re getting is fulfillment and creativity, joy, and rest, and recharge and relaxation. But sometimes what we’re getting out of it is an excuse to not create, to not fulfill our creative destiny, to put it off until tomorrow, or tomorrow, or tomorrow.

So what about you? What are you consciously or unconsciously avoiding and why are you avoiding it? And while we may not be able to control how much time we have, we do have control over how we use it. As Gandalf says to Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Now, one thing that Gandalf does not mention is how to protect that time, and I think that’s what a lot of it comes down to when we decide how to spend our time, do we commit to it? This week’s episode is all about protecting your time, but in order to protect that time, we first need to choose, and then commit. I was thinking through some of this, and this is where I realized that I fell short, because while I am really great at keeping commitments to other people, or at least I like to think I’m great, I am terrible at keeping commitments to myself.

If I commit to a speaking engagement, I am there early, I am there with coffee in hand, I have my laptop, I have my presentation prepared, I have all of the cords and dongles that I need to connect to the AV equipment. I honor that commitment. If I commit to picking up a friend from the airport, back before the pandemic, in the olden times I was there early, I was in a prime parking spot, that’s important to me. It’s important to me that I don’t let other people down, but for some reason I am 100% okay with letting myself down. If I commit to doing something for myself, whether it’s reading 50 books in a year or setting aside 9:00 AM to noon on a Saturday morning to write, it’s so easy for me to flake out on myself. It’s so easy to move the rest of my around, and spend that time washing dishes, or paying bills, things that feel important at the time. Even when I reserve time on my calendar and I set aside a giant chunk that says, “IMPORTANT” in all caps, “Must do” I still find a way to stand myself up.

Now, the reason why I do this is rooted probably in a whole bunch of different things. And again, I don’t have a psychology or a psychiatry degree, and this is just my own observations about my own behavior, so I want that caveat. But I think it’s rooted in avoidance procrastination, self-sabotage, resistance and fear, which, if we’re being honest, are kind of all the same thing. I think there’s also a healthy dose of low self-worth and low self respect, and maybe even some broken trust in myself, because when I don’t show up for myself, when I don’t show up for my commitments to myself, I’m essentially betraying my trust in myself. I’m betraying myself.

So my question to you right now is: does this resonate with you? Does this feel true for you? Are you nodding along and saying, “Oh my gosh, I am terrible at honoring commitments to myself”? or are you the kind of person who is able to set aside time and make the commitment to yourself, and to do exactly what it was that you planned to do during that time? If you’re in that latter camp, what does get in your way? When it comes time to write, are you faced with screaming kids? Meetings that run late? A phone that will not stop ringing or dinging with notifications? Construction, or snow blowing outside of your window? A spouse or a coworker who just simply will not stop interrupting you? No matter which camp you’re in, and you know what, maybe you are in both of them, I have some encouragement for you. Whether the culprit is internal. So, ourselves, or whether something external to us is getting in our way, so the screaming children, the demanding coworkers, the constant phone ringing, the answer is protecting our time. And I know it may sound hard to believe, but this is something that we can all do.

Now, if it’s something internal. So if you are the one who is getting in your own way, I think the first thing to do is acknowledge that. Sometimes we as creators are our own worst enemy, and before we can resolve an issue, we need to acknowledge that it exists. You can write it down on paper, you can journal about it extensively, or you can even just sort of look up to the ceiling, think for a moment, nod to yourself and say, “I’ve been getting in my own way,” and move forward. I think that if you’re like me and you are terrible at making commitments to yourself, the best thing we can do is to begin with setting very small and very achievable goals, sort of like incorporating flour into bread dough; we’re going to very slowly begin to reincorporate trust in ourselves into our lives. We’re going to show ourselves that we can show up for ourselves, we can commit to ourselves, and we can do that by insert your very small goal here.

I have very recently had a huge epiphany with small goals, and this is part of why I wanted to share this with you today. I had to show myself, I had to prove to myself that I could show up for myself every day and write. I started with a goal of 2000 words a day. And I said, “You know what? I can do that. If I really push myself, I can do 2000 words a day.” And the first day I got 600 words, and the second day I got 448 words, and on the third day I was like, “I can’t do this. I’m constantly letting myself down.” And so I re-established my goal. And now my goal is very manageable, and it’s very simple, and it’s very doable, and that is the key. My daily goal is now two pages of my script. If I want to go over that, or if I have the energy, or the time to go over that and write three, four, five, six, a million pages, that’s fantastic, but I just need to get in my two pages a day, and I can feel good about myself, and I can feel good about reaching that goal. And every day it adds up. That’s what we forget, maybe I think, or at least I do.

I don’t want to project any of this onto you, so I apologize if that’s what it feels like I’m doing, but I am the kind of person who, if you say the word, “Habit” to me or, “Building a habit,” I just get this gross shiver of horror, because at some point in my life, I associated habit with drudgery and, “Should,” but you know what? I enjoy writing my two pages every day and it makes me feel good. It makes me feel fulfilled. And it makes me feel like I’m actually making progress. Something that is small and doable. What is that for you? Is it 10 words every morning before you go to work? Is it 100 words every Thursday morning? What is something small and actually doable that you can do? And here’s the kicker; how will you yourself accountable? If you don’t love and respect yourself enough, and I say this from a place of love, because I am exactly the same way, I have very low self-worth and self-respect, and I don’t honor my commitments to myself, have an accountability partner, a friend, a sibling, a parent, a grandparent, a coworker who you will say, “Hey, I’m committing to writing 10 words a day,” or, “I’m committing to writing two pages a day. Can you just check in on me every once in a while?” If that is something that helps you, then please do it.

Now, if your issue isn’t self betrayal so much as it is an inability to focus, maybe ADD, OCD, please be patient with yourself. Hydrate, breathe deeply, practice good sleep hygiene, caffeinate, if that helps you to focus, take your meds, if you have them and maybe even get an accountability buddy to help you, if that is something that is helpful. Either way, be kind to yourself, give yourself plenty of grace and forgive yourself if you slip up and let yourself down. Now, for those of you whose issue is external, instead of, or maybe in addition to internal, your answer is going to be boundaries. Boundaries are a fence or a wall, depending how permeable you would like it to be that you put up between yourself and your creative work, and the very noisy, distracting, and bothersome world around you.

Now I’m coming at this from my own experience and my own issues. And you will come at this from your own experience and your own issues, but I’ve always had difficulty setting boundaries. Maybe this is something that is easy for you to do, which I’m a little bit jealous. I was raised to live in sort of a servant mindset, to put my own needs after everyone else’s, to put everyone else first. And it sounds good. And it sounds like a noble thing to do, but it also means that you spend 100% of your time tending to everyone else around you, and your own wants and needs go unattended. Wants and needs like writing for yourself, publishing your novel, getting your poetry out there, putting your memoirs paper. I’m not setting out to blame anyone, because again, I’m no longer a victim to my circumstances, and I get to choose now how I spend my time. But I was taught that everyone around me was more important than me. Which in a way is great. It keeps us humble. It keeps us helping one another, it can be fantastic, but it also means that when I set aside time to work on something, if someone else comes to me and needs help, I will drop literally everything to go help them. And this is not conducive to the life of a professional writer, or someone who wants to be a professional writer.

I take everyone else’s problem seriously, but I do not take myself seriously. In order to set up boundaries around your creative time, you have to respect yourself, and you have to respect your work. Now, if you are a parent, I’m not telling you to, “Well, ignore your children and let them starve to death.” If you are a caretaker for a sick or elderly member of your family or community, I am not telling you to ignore that person’s needs and selfishly focus only on yourself, okay? That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is: do your duties and caring for the people who need you, but that cannot happen 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour, 60 seconds a minute. You need to set aside time and to protect it. You need to take your creative work seriously, and you need to take yourself seriously.

Now, if you are a parent to a newborn baby, you might not be in a season right now for writing, and that is okay. I’ve talked about creative seasons before in episode 96, and so I encourage you to listen to that, to determine whether the season is right or not for you to focus on your creative work. But if you are in a writing season right now, if you are in a period in your life where you can set aside time to prioritize your creative work, then I want you to do it. And I want you to honor that commitment to yourself.

So if external time protection issues are what you’re struggling with, perhaps one of these ideas will help; so setting your calendar as unavailable, turning off your phone or setting it to Do Not Disturb Mode, signing out of Slack or Discord, or Twitter, or Instagram or wherever it is that people are demanding your time and attention, closing your office door and if possible, locking it. And if you don’t have a door, see if you can get out of other people’s line of sight. And yes, I am suggesting that you hide. Virginia Wolf has a wonderful book called A Room of One’s Own, in which she talks about the importance of the creative space. And even Stephen King talks about in his wonderful book On Writing the importance of closing the door. Maybe for you, it’s something like investing in sound canceling headphones, which I did, and they are amazing because I’m so easily distractable. Finally, and this is the clincher: learn how to gently and firmly say no. This hearkens all the way back to episode nine, way back from 2015, episode nine of the Write Now podcast, which is called, “Saying Yes to Writing” in which I talk about how saying yes to writing means saying no to so many other things.

Saying no is really hard for me as a people pleaser. All I want to do is say yes and make people happy. “Sarah, will you run this charity bake sale?” “Yes, I’d love to.” And then I ended up having to run a charity bake sale, and that takes away time from writing. Saying no is almost physically painful for me, because part of me is asking, “Oh, who do I think I am? Who am I to deny others access to me? Who am I to deny them my help?” But when I say that out loud, do you hear some ego in there? Like, “Oh, people need Sarah or they’ll die.” That’s not true. People are just fine without me. Now, again, this does not apply to you if you are the parent of a newborn. That newborn baby is dependent on you. Okay? But I’m talking about silencing my phone. I’m talking about getting off of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, turning off my notifications. If it’s an emergency, there’ll be able to get through to me. But if it’s a distraction I’m closing the door.

Time is our most valuable and limited resource, and your time is important. Your time deserves to be protected, because you deserve to be protected. You deserve to live out your dreams as a creative individual, as a writer, as a poet, as a memoirist. Like I said earlier, saying no, every time I say no, it feels like a small death. It feels like I’m letting someone else down, and my heart plummets, but I’ve started doing it. And I’ve realized that the world goes on without me. And I can sit here and focus on my creative work. It’s not easy, but it is so important. So whether it’s internal or external factors that are getting in the way of you protecting your writing time, I hope that some of this advice today helps.

I would love to know in the comments for today’s episode. So if you navigate to today’s episode, episode number 104 of the Write Now podcast and scroll all the way down to the show notes for today’s episode, there is a comment section; I would love to hear your thoughts. I would love to hear what gets in the way for you. Is it internal? Is it external? Or are you already good at protecting your time? Is this something that you didn’t need help with? And if so, let us know what you’re already doing that helps you to protect your time and to set aside time for your work as a writer and creator. Again, those show notes are out at sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com. And this episode is episode number 104: Protecting Your Time.

Those of you who have listened to the Write Now podcast before, know that I am able to make this show available to you for free via the generosity of my patrons out on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows you to donate $1 per episode, $2 per episode, $10 per episode, $700,000 per episode, whatever works for you and your budget, so that I can go on and create this show. My patrons help me cover hosting costs and other costs associated with podcasting, including now transcribing each episode, so that it can be available for everybody, no matter what accessibility level.

So, special thanks this week go out to patrons Amanda L. Dixon, Laurie, Leslie Madsen, Regina Calabrese, Sean Locke, TJ Bricke, Tiffany Joyner, Leslie Duncan, Ricardo Lugo, and Sarah Lauzon. Thank you all so much for your generosity and your thoughtful giving. I truly appreciate it, and I would not be able to make this show without you. If you are interested in becoming a patron, you can do so in two ways; you can go out to my websites sarahwerner.com, that’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com, navigate to the show notes for this week’s episode, episode number 104 and click, “Help Support This Podcast.” Alternately, you can just go right out to Patreon at patreon.com/sarahrheawerner, all one word. So either way, I truly appreciate your thoughtful giving.

If you are not in a financial place where you can support the show, you can support it in other ways. The best way you can do that right now is just by telling someone else; another writer, a friend who’s been thinking about writing a novel, or a screenplay, or an audio drama, let them know about this show. Building our listener base is a wonderful and beautiful thing, so thank you in advance for doing that. If you haven’t listened yet, last week, I released my very first audio book onto this RSS feed, so if you haven’t listened yet, last week’s episode is called The Writer’s Mindset Manifesto, and it is everything that you need to break through the current barriers that keep you from creating your best work. So I’d love for you to give it a listen. It’s completely free. It’s out on my RSS feed, so wherever it is that you are listening to this very podcast, you can also listen to my free audio book. So I hope you enjoy it, I hope you listen to it and yeah, just let me know your thoughts.

And with that, this has been episode 104 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I am going to honor my commitments to myself.