Five Ways to Have More Time to Write

The (satirical) guide to stealing time

WE all know how much time life takes up. It’s distracting us from the real joy of being creative! I mean, if we had more time we could just write and create all day long. Imagine having so much time that you could actually sit down and have a coherent thought!

Here are FIVE ways you can make more time.

1. Get a wife

We all know the saying. “Behind every powerful/amazing/successful man is a wife who is bloody exhausted and needs a month at a spa.” It’s true! In fact, behind some very mediocre men, there are women feeling pretty much the same. So I suggest getting one of your own!

Wives are amazing! I know, because I was one! I was one of those wives who had a memory bigger than Google — you know what I mean? Remembers all the birthdays to every family member, friend and children’s friend, remembers what day the kids have to have the library bag, sports uniform, tennis racquet, lacrosse stick, bathers and towel, packs lunch and recess and knows all food preferences (Child 1 likes hommous and vegetable crudites, rice crackers, one whole piece of fruit and only a particular type of cheese, cubed. Child Two likes a Vegemite and cheese sandwich with wholemeal bread, fruit salad, homemade muesli bar. Well…this week anyway!), knows exactly what is in the fridge (down to the last floppy looking carrot), knows exactly where everything is in the supermarket (and if they change the aisles, BEWARE!), knows when she last cleaned, when the sheets need changing, when the trees need pruning, which bins to put out on bin night, where the partner’s wallet/keys/phone/t-shirt/work shoes/laptop are. Even what the neighbour’s dog is called. That kind of wife. Because with a wife like that you can just sit back and, well, WRITE!

2. Move

It might seem drastic but I can tell you from personal experience that moving can really increase the time you have to be creative. My own experience of moving 15,000 km is perhaps a little extreme, but stay with me! I used to have a full time demanding job, family (I was that wife, remember?) and a pretty exhausting commute (45–90 mins depending on traffic). I moved.

Now I have a three-minute commute EVERYWHERE! I have moved to a place that has a ‘traffic jam’ of 10 minutes at peak ‘hour’. I ride my bike for three minutes to get to work. It’s three minutes' walk to the grocery store. It’s an even shorter walk to the local pub and my favourite restaurant (over the road). This means I have so much more time to spend being creative!

Of course, going to that extreme may not be your cup of tea, so perhaps move to a smaller place. It would save so much cleaning time (particularly if the wife thing hasn’t worked out). The five-bedroom, three-bathroom mansion you live in after making your eleventy-gazillion dollars writing could become a small apartment with two bedrooms and one bathroom, giving you much more creative time in the day!

And just think of the savings! You could sponsor a starving creative who hasn’t read enough of those articles yet and has no clue of the secret recipe of how to make piles of cash writing stuff that makes people’s eyeballs dry up. You’d be doing a public service as well as have more time!

Of course, with your eleventy-gazillion dollars, you could also move to a serviced apartment where people do all the cleaning for you, giving you so much time you could sponsor two starving creatives with all the extra revenue you’ll earn.

3. Sell your children

Okay, maybe not sell them. But shipping them off to boarding school could be great! No more school runs or making lunches or sport on Saturday mornings. Just long hours of uninterrupted creative time. With your smaller place, you don’t really have room for the kids anyway. And that eleventy-gazillion dollars needs to be spent on something! I mean, you can’t really be throwing it away willy-nilly on five starving creatives! They have to do the work themselves! Find their own secret-saucey stuff.

And you don’t need to be worried about the kids. They’ll be just fine. Boarding schools are pretty amazing nowadays. They have their own rooms (no Harry Potter cupboard-under-the-stairs like my sister had), it’s close to sports training, they're surrounded by friends, they get fed well by people who are chefs, they do their own washing. Your kids will learn so much! And they’ve definitely cracked down on all those initiation rites that we’ve all heard about.

It’ll toughen them up anyway. They may even have more creative time themselves now they’re not spending all their time harassing you about what’s for dinner and where that favourite pair of jeans is hiding. It’s money well spent!

4. Throw away all electronic devices

Despite the fact that you have made your eleventy-gazillion dollars using online platforms, building your legions of followers, sending thrice-daily emails to the legions, reading thousands of words on your screen, typing gazillions of words on your screen, it is sapping your time! Get off those little time suckers! Throw them all away!

Well, maybe keep one because, ‘future earnings’, you know. But seriously, they are sucking away all your time! Don’t watch interesting and thought-provoking Netflix series. Don’t even think about opening that HBO Nordic app! Don’t spend time listening to clever podcasts that make you laugh, just go cold turkey and spend all that new spare time being creative! Creating your own pearls of eyeball drying wisdom!

5. Use the date line

This is a very sneaky way to make more time. You have eleventy-gazillion dollars so money isn’t really an object. Perhaps instead of an apartment, you can buy a boat, complete with crew, and just keep sneaking time by sailing over the International Date Line. I mean, all of a sudden you are in yesterday! You just sail over an invisible line and you’ve made more hours! Brilliant!

You’d also have lots of creative time because you’d be floating around in the Pacific Ocean with only a few islands nearby. The crew would be catering to your every whim. Your wife is at home, running things. Your kids are in boarding school having a great time. You don’t have any electronic devices to distract you.

It’s just you, the crew, and the big blue!

So there you have it! That’s not so hard, is it? Completely and utterly achievable! Now, I’m just going to hail me a crew member to grab me that Guinness…it’s thirsty work giving advice!

Lisa likes writing. In fact, Lisa didn’t know quite how much she loved writing satire until she ran into the MuddyUm Pirate ship whilst floating in the Pacific on her giant yacht which she bought with her eleventy-gazillion dollars. She enjoys stout very much and hopes to one day have a couple with her newfound pirate friends.