Ironically, my intended final post for this informal series — the one where I talk about reducing the burden on myself and taking some time off — got delayed nearly three weeks because, um, I was too busy.

So if you’re wondering how that “work-life balance” thing is going for me now, the answer is apparently “still very much a work in progress.”

Having said that, I think I’m at least thinking about it better, and trying to put in place some principles that will help keep me from having more years like this one. Many of which go back to that thing I started with, where I was tracking my time usage and it was tough because there are so few boundaries around my work life: okay, then I need some boundaries.

The first — which I’ve been aspiring to for like two years, but I’m more committed now that I’m actually paying attention to my schedule — is to recover the concept of “weekend.” Doesn’t always have to be Saturday and Sunday (especially since conventions will always interfere with that), but my aim is to have there be two days out of every seven that aren’t work days. Professional ones, anyway; domestic labor unfortunately has to be counted a bit separately from this. But I’m less concerned with the burden that places on me than I am with my job — especially since I’m such a terrible housewife. 😛

How does this interface with that habit I mentioned before, of writing seven days a week when I’m working on a novel? Honestly, it’s been a few years since I actually did that. The Rook and Rose books have required me to sort out a compromise schedule with Alyc, which is usually not a daily thing. As for my L5R novels . . . for whatever reason, possibly having to do with them taking place in an existing setting I know well, those have been very amenable to me writing 1500 words a day five days a week instead of 1000 per day for seven days. It actually comes out to slightly more progress each week, and it gives me time to let go of the book and think about other things. That used to be a problem for me, but as I’ve gotten more novels under my belt, I think my capacity to pick up an idea again after a break has improved. So the next time I draft a book, I’m going to see if I can maintain this approach, because I think it would be good for my overall mental health.

(As a note, discussions of productivity — like Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less — often note, well, what it says in the title. This is why some companies are experimenting now with four-day work weeks, too. So it’s entirely possible that working fewer days will in fact produce better results for me overall.)

Second, I also need my work day to end. This is one place where my weird schedule bites me on the ass: it’s been true for as long as I can remember that I’m often at my most focused and productive late at night, so historically, that’s when I’ve done my writing. The problem is, that screws with the rest/reward effect; when I finish a day’s work, I just head straight to bed. Which obviously is rest . . . but I’m not sure it gives me the psychological reward of setting my job aside and doing something else enjoyable. (Especially since I’m prone to continuing to think about the story as I get ready for bed and wait to fall asleep.) Plus it means that whatever I do earlier in the day, I’ve still got Other Work hanging over my head, instead of being able to fully separate from the job.

Now, this isn’t nearly so much of an issue on the days when I’m not attempting to draft or revise something. I can do that work during the day, and that’s what I’m trying to do. But it takes discipline — not to sit my butt down and get started (I’m pretty good at that), but to stop when I’ve done enough. If I don’t start working until later in the day, bedtime operates as a safety net, preventing me from going more than X hours. If I start earlier, it’s easy for that damned Inner Puritan to point out all the tasks I haven’t done yet and still have time for and why am I being so lazy? But the notion that if you just get super organized and work hard you’ll ~catch up~ is a lie; there is always more to do, and you can burn yourself to ash trying to reach the finish line.

There are two main places where I’m working on imposing this discipline. One is during the hour or so of TV my household usually watches in the evening: although I’ve often doubled up that time with some kind of clerical task that doesn’t require much focus, goddamit, that should be a relaxation hour, not a chance to do more work. Putting down the computer and the phone and actually paying attention to the TV is good for my concentration in general — the same horrifically atrophied muscle I’ve been trying to redevelop through meditation.

The other and even more significant instance of discipline is email. I’ve been having intermittent success with a setup where the first work I do each day is half an hour (I set a timer) of Nothing But Email. After that, I may answer messages that genuinely demand a quick response, but anything else gets left for tomorrow’s half-hour, or the one after, or wherever they fall in the priority stack. Apropos of the above re: work days, I actually do this even on days I’m otherwise taking off, because if I don’t then the tide starts to win against my shoveling. If I stop for more than about two days, it tends to look like the Augean Stables when I come back. But I think that I can largely maintain equilibrium on this front if I do half an hour five days a week, plus spot pushes when more is required — and not treat email as an all-hours claim on my time (which, as we all know, tends to just generate Even More Email).

From there, it’s a question of following a similar “this much and no more” ethos with other writing-related program activities. For a while I was making use of a free online kanban board, and I should get back to it; that helped a lot in terms of giving me somewhere to record the endless random tasks that should be done eventually, without having them rubbing shoulders with the stuff that needs to be done soon. My board setup has four columns: To Do (the master list), In Progress (for stuff with multiple steps), On Deck (for items that I want to do soon, selected from To Do or In Progress), and Do Today (for my actual daily goals, selected from On Deck). The important thing here — psychologically as well as digitally — is to move stuff around; if something’s not getting done today because I ran out of time or an obstacle interfered, it goes back to On Deck or To Do or wherever it properly belongs. It doesn’t stay in Do Today. And if I’ve done everything from Do Today? Go me! I am not required to move more things into that column just because the day hasn’t ended yet . . . though if they went super fast and I legitimately have a lot more work time left, I may add one or two.

See, that’s a thing I’ve been noticing, as I push myself to take more days off than just weekends: by restricting how often I’m working, I’m more willing and able to stay focused and productive for a longer period of time. I try not to take that too far, of course, since it’s hardly an improvement if I work a fourteen-hour day. But instead of a week in which forty hours of work get fragmented here and there from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. across all seven days, I’m more likely to have a day of solidly-packed productivity which I then walk away from. That’s actually how this blog post is getting written, in fact: after a good five hours in which I accomplished a bunch of other things, I still had some steam left over for this, and by doing it now, I give myself freedom to not do it later tonight or tomorrow.

But that “do the work and then relax” pattern is indeed going to be a challenge when I go back to writing a novel. I’m going to have to leave that one as a question mark for now, because I don’t know how it will go. Maybe I’ll be able to write in the afternoon! I was often able to do that with the L5R novels, but again, that might be because the familiar setting (plus the short length) means they’re as close to “easy mode” for me as drafting a book can get. Even if I can’t make that shift in general, though, having weekends off will hopefully help.

As will having time off between things. That’s the last component here, which I’m still tentatively feeling my way through: saying no to stuff, even when I’m the one proposing it. After several years of actively trying to write more short fiction, this year I told myself I was allowed to let it slide. As a result, I have only two flash stories and two short stories, which isn’t much . . . but that’s okay. (Also, I appear to be writing poems instead: fourteen of those so far.) It means the pipeline for next year will have fewer publications in it, but it also means I’m spending less time and mental energy on the tetris of submitting to markets. I really needed that time and energy back, at least while I recharge. And that novel I was going to write on spec this year? I’ve officially told myself that’s not getting started before January. Which may mean it gets shunted aside by something else with a contract attached — but I’ll live with that if it happens. I need the time off much more than I need that draft.

Here’s the dark side to that decision, though: time off is time that doesn’t earn me money. Short fiction doesn’t pay a ton, but it does add up, to the tune of as much as a couple thousand dollars a year. I haven’t gotten around to making print editions of the Doppelganger novels again; that’s money I’m not bringing in from those sales. I haven’t proposed a new class to Clarion West, though I have several ideas; more potential income left on the table. And I can’t pretend these things don’t matter.

But you know what else will hurt my income? Me burning out to the point where I can’t write at all for an extended period of time.

I’m not so strapped for cash that I need to sacrifice my well-being on the altar of capitalism. So I’m not going to. I’m going to corral my job into more limited pastures for a while, and see what comes of that in the longer term.

(Or at least I’m going to try.)