Why Too Much Time Can Be A Curse When You’re Trying To Write A Book

If only I had a whole year with nothing else to do but write. Then I would finally finish my book. Have you ever wished for that? Then I have bad news: The free time wouldn’t help you.

I spent years writing books when I still had a full-time job. The time for writing was always short on average days. I used my lunch breaks, the time before I had to drive to work, and my evenings to get ahead.

So basically, I had two full-time jobs. Most days, I would fall into bed at night tired to death. The only time I got enough sleep was on the weekends.

I knew I couldn’t go on like that forever. At some point, I would have to decide whether to continue with this double burden or take full risk and quit my job.

Fortunately, after a few years, I could afford to quit. The income from my books had exceeded the income from my full-time job, so I took only a small financial risk.

That was eighteen months ago. Since then, I’ve had every day entirely free for writing.

Before I quit, I published a book every two months. Today I release a book every two months as well.

You’re probably surprised that I haven’t increased my productivity, even though I suddenly had a lot more free time. But I’ll tell you what: I was lucky that my productivity stayed the same because it could have fallen dramatically.

If you read “The Shining” by Stephen King, you know what I’m talking about. In this novel, a writer takes his family to a hotel in the mountains for the winter. There, as a caretaker, he is supposed to make sure that the house survives the winter because all the other people leave the hotel and don’t come back until the next season starts.

The job as a caretaker in an abandoned hotel in the middle of nowhere seems like winning the lottery to the writer. He plans to spend most of the day writing and finishing his book. He believes that he can concentrate fully on his work once the hectic pace of everyday life is over.

He really does sit at his typewriter every day and write. His wife hears the clatter of the machine day in, day out.

In the course of winter, the writer becomes insane and ultimately a danger to his family. I’ll spare myself a detailed summary of the book’s contents because what I’m talking about here is something else.

One day, the writer’s wife looks at what her husband has written in the past weeks. To her horror, she discovers that he has typed this one sentence repeatedly: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

He’s gone insane. In the story “The Shining,” it is the house and its dark past that drive the writer crazy. Writing couldn’t keep him from going mad. He was unable to turn his free time into productivity.

Even if we don’t have a poltergeist haunting us at home, too much time can become a curse for our productivity.

Unstructured time is aimless

The reason why a lot of free time does not automatically lead to more productivity is simple: if we have eight hours available and we plan to write for three hours, we tend to postpone writing until we only have three hours left.

Our minds want us to believe that it is better to start work later and rest, play or watch TV before. This would not be a problem if we actually sat down at the computer and wrote in the last three hours.

But unfortunately, after five hours of inactivity, all momentum and motivation have completely disappeared. The inertia has made us even slower, and the more the day progresses, the harder it is to persuade ourselves to start.

When I had my full-time job, I knew that I had to use the three time slots I had to work. If I missed one of them, I couldn’t make up for lost time later.

But when we have almost unlimited time, we keep telling ourselves that we can make up for what we are putting off now. This is usually a mistake.

Fortunately, I knew about this psychological mechanism when I started writing full-time. That way, I didn’t fall into the time trap.

All you have to do not to be deceived by all the free time is to set up a strict schedule.

I reserve the morning exclusively for writing. All the rest, I have to do afterward. Conversely, I reserve the afternoons for other things, such as shopping, cleaning, marketing, and such things.

So I know very well that I won’t have time to write in the afternoon. If I don’t use the morning for writing, I won’t be able to catch up later in the day.

Anyone who imagines life as a freelance writer, like a perpetual vacation, should know that this is not true. You can’t work whenever you want. You have to work whenever you can. If you do not, you will fail.

The only way you can really make the most of your time is to start the day with a plan and then stick to that plan.

What is not planned for will probably not be done.

If you ever get the week or year off you’ve always dreamed of, be careful and remember this article. Time is only on your side if you use it wisely.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.

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