You’re Busy—Here’s How to Write Anyway

People love saying they don’t have time. Between all the excuses there are for not doing something, not finding the time of day is the best one there is.

While “I was too tired”, “I forgot”, or the blunt “it wasn’t important enough” may put you in a negative light, “I couldn’t find the time” shields you from criticism using an aura of importance and—to an extent—martyrdom.

I have spoken to not one but two(!) people who claimed they had always dreamt of writing a book. But when confronted with the simple question of “so why haven't you?”, they quickly resorted to “I just never found the time”.

And I have to agree, time is a hard-to-come-by resource, especially when we reach the inevitable point of adulthood. Being an adult often entails such time devourers as a job, children, and other responsibilities.

As a person who values their peace and quiet and therefore never had children, I often find it difficult to question the ‘no time’ excuse when spoken by parents; you don’t have to be one to learn from observation that their lives are complete and total chaos. Add to that lack of sleep, a job, and other responsibilities, and you are almost tempted to believe them.

But I will still argue that any person who claims to never have the time to write—but genuinely wants to—is a liar.

The Time Thieves

Terry Pratchett wrote The Thief of Time, a brilliant comic fantasy novel, and while I respect Sir Pratchett immensely, he got one detail wrong. It’s the Thieves of Time—plural.

Time thieves live everywhere, from the screens of our phones and computers to the unnecessary drive to Tim Horton’s for the same coffee you could have made at home.

The most famous among time thieves lives in your pocket—your phone. You open it to Google something important (like how many calories there are in a peach) and before you know it, twenty minutes go by as you scroll away into infinity.

The problem with time thieves is that they are not activities we plan into our day or even acknowledge, and therefore they go unnoticed. Since no one plans how long they’ll watch funny videos on Instagram or listen to a podcast about another podcaster that the main podcast’s host criticizes for popularity (yes, I am writing this for a specific person but hopefully the joke is still funny to you as well, because there are in fact podcasts like that).

Because we don’t plan or even acknowledge these activities, we never stop to ask ourselves what portion of our day gets wasted on them.

Now, are you supposed to quit social media cold turkey or never go out for a coffee again? You could, but that’s not a must. Time thieves don’t have to be fully eliminated, but they can definitely be controlled. And in order to control them, you have to observe them first. For that, you’ll have to do something no one likes doing.

Observing the Time Thieves in their Natural Habitat

To start battling your time thieves and getting to write that book you’ve always dreamt of writing, you have to study them first and figure out what you’re up against.

This is advice I’ve given friends and coachees, both employed and entrepreneurs (especially the entrepreneurs): start timing everything you do.

Yes, it sounds tedious, and maybe even ironically time-consuming, but it is the most enlightening activity you’ll ever engage in.

Get a notebook at hand, physically or in an app, then time and record all of your activities from the beginning of your day until it ends. You don’t need to do it for weeks on end, but for a couple of days, a week at most, to understand how your day really looks.

A friend of mine who is a freelance marketing strategist, video maker, and social media manager in one, has claimed to be too busy to enjoy her weekends.

A closer observation uncovered that her ‘busy’ mornings start with driving to get a coffee, then drinking it while enjoying “just one” video by her favorite YouTuber, then about half an hour of reading trashy comments on the videos after the fact.

Throw another few minutes of Instagram scrolling into the mix and BAM! It’s already noon and you haven’t started your workday yet.

Engaging in self-research like that for a few days will uncover hidden secrets and give you a realistic analysis of where your time goes.

Analyzing the Results

Once you end up with this document—a detailed report of what happened each hour in your day, how long you spent scrolling, washing the dishes, and running to the local grocery store for an emergency mid-week energy bar run—the truth can be revealed.

What you’ll do next is analyze the data in search of all the blocks of time that were spent on something you can honestly deem as not important, like that podcast I mentioned before.

A pro tip is to use an organizer with the day broken down into hours. You can then mark the beginning and end of each activity, then rate them by importance, and color-code these blocks of time in your schedule accordingly.

Having a visual representation of time spent doing something you labeled as not important can be a powerful reality slap to the face.

A Sacrifice to the Gods of Time

Unless you’re a CEO in Tech with a mega-efficient morning routine who fasts every Monday and takes calls while on their treadmill, I am willing to bet you’ll identify quite a lot of time on less-than-important time spending. This is time that could be spent doing something more meaningful—like writing that novel you’ve been telling everyone you’re working on but never started.

Once you uncover that time, you will have to face some hard questions. Questions of sacrifice.

Sacrifice doesn’t mean dedicating all available time to writing, but if it’s something that you truly want to do, it will have to come at the expense of other activities that might not serve you.

This is where you’ll have to get honest with yourself and prioritize. Prioritization is a challenging task on its own, but you’ll quickly find which activities are non-negotiables (like going to work, buying groceries, and spending time with your family). When the non-negotiables are established, it becomes pretty obvious which activities can be compromised.

You might find that if you don’t take scrolling breaks at work and finish your tasks earlier, you’ll end up with an additional half-an-hour to spend on writing each day. Or, perhaps, that if you group all the short trips to Walmart into one weekly trip, you could save two hours a week. These blocks of time can become your new writing windows.

Conclusion

For most of us, writing is a hobby, but it’s one that requires time and dedication. And if you’re truly serious about ever writing that book, you’ll need to put some work into finding the time for it.

It really comes down to looking at hard facts and asking yourself difficult questions, but like people much smarter than me said before—when there’s a will, there’s a way!

Now, do some research into your time spending, find ways to optimize your day, and most importantly—get to writing!