Finding Time in Our Finite Lives to Write the Stories and Books We Feel Called to Write

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Time is a heavy topic—an elastic, sometimes scary, and slippery one, too. Time is finite, and each of us is living out our days knowing that every hour forward is moving toward less time left. Like I said, heavy. In part because you can’t talk about making time without thinking about running out of time, or never having enough time. And so we must make the time—and find the time—to do the things we say we want to do.

Working with writers as we do, Grant and I know the pressure people feel around time. When you’re young, time is measured more around all the pressing things—of raising a family, of a full-time job, of caretaking an elderly parent. When you’re older, you may have more freedom, and more time, but then time is measured in the awareness that you don’t have forever to accomplish the things you want to get done in this life. In other words, our relationship with time is never truly fluid and easy.

This week on the Memoir Nation podcast, we interview time-management expert Laura Vanderkam about making time to write. One of her insights is to think about time not in daily increments, but instead in weekly increments.

Laura recommends thinking in weekly increments, which looks something like this.