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Is time management difficult for you? Most writers aren’t as productive as they could be; procrastination is a challenge. Task triage can help.

Let’s look at three tips which will help you to manage your time, so that not only do you have more time for your writing, you get more done.

Choose Your Goals and Commit

Your first step is to choose goals and commit to them.

Successful writers take their time in setting goals, but once they’ve set them, rarely change them. For these writers, setting a goal is a commitment to themselves.

Struggling writers set goals quickly, and forget about them just as quickly.

Therefore, take your time in choosing at least one goal. Then, tell yourself that barring serious injury or death, you will persist until you achieve the goal.

Triage Tasks: Only Do What You Can Do

Once you’ve set a goal, you need to chunk it down. For example, let’s say your goal is: “I have a Web site by ___________ (a date three weeks from now.)”

You need to chunk this down, because you can’t “do” a goal, you can only do tasks.

Just make a list of tasks: “buy a domain name, get hosting, write the content for four Web pages, create the site, get it online”.

Add each task to your calendar or diary, with an estimate of the time the task will take.

Certain tasks, such as “write the content for four Web pages” will need to be chunked down even further, so that each chunk takes less than half an hour. Efficient chunking, slicing up tasks, is the secret to eliminating procrastination.

But what’s triage? Triage means only doing what YOU can do, and outsourcing or delegating the rest. In our example, you could outsource everything except the writing.

Just Show up Every Day: Results Are Cumulative

“Time management” is exactly that; managing the time you have. Once you’ve set a goal, keep going until you achieve that goal.

If you do, then goal setting and achieving will become a habit, and your life will become easier for one reason: you’ve taken control of the only thing you can manage in your life — yourself.

Avoid second-guessing your goals once you’ve set them. You’ll find that if you just keep completing your tasks, that everything you do is cumulative. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill. It starts small, and then gets bigger.

Just show up and complete your tasks.

Setting goals and task triage is the secret of successful time management for writers.

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