"Butter Scraped Over Too Much Bread"
I’ve yet to hear a term more apt for describing the feeling of being stretched too thin than what Bilbo Baggins says to Gandalf the Grey in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. I think just about everyone can relate to this feeling at some point in their lives; when they’re throwing up their hands and calling for a time-out.
Work, relationships, kids, family obligations, household maintenance, even shopping for groceries and the time it takes to drive there all add up to minutes and hours of your day. Life’s necessities have an unfortunate (and annoying) habit of getting in the way of those things we would rather be doing. Even stay-at-home parents who are often perceived as having all the time in the world to themselves fall victim to this. (Believe me, I was a stay-at-home mom for six years and still found myself wondering why I never had any time to write!)
I constantly felt as though I was neglecting something (or someone)and it left me feeling inadequate and deeply unhappy. I would try to do everything all at once and often found myself spending too much time in one area only to find to my disappointment that I had no time for another. It drove me absolutely bonkers never having any time to write but so did the idea of a dirty house, unkempt garden, overdue dinner and—worst of all—time robbed from my family. I found myself wishing that there were at least five of me or at the very least that sleep just wasn’t a necessity!
It’s for this very reason that I cannot stress enough the importance of effective time management in a writer’s life. While the same may ring true no matter what your passion might be, writing in particular requires two very basic essentials that are oftentimes the hardest things in the world to come by: time and quiet. (Well, that’s how it is for me at any rate.)
Whilst stewing in my madness, ending each day feeling like I’d accomplished zilch, I came to realize how vital having some kind of structure really is. So I did myself a favor: I made a list. All of the necessary tasks and also all of the things I wanted to do. Simple as this may seem, this visual representation helped me to sort out my priorities. For example, was it really crucial that I clean every room in the house from top to bottom every day? Well, no. Once I identified those areas that were keeping me spinning my wheels and going nowhere I was able to create a schedule for myself.
Again, this may seem a bit silly on the surface but blocking out timeframes for my activities throughout the day did wonders for my productivity, and more importantly, my peace of mind. Breaking things down and dedicating certain days for certain projects made things much more manageable and it became easier to accomplish more. I extended this idea to my writing projects as well, determining what I would do each day between working on my novel, writing content for my website, the actual posting of said content and research.
Of course, there are days when I’m forced to deviate from this schedule or days when I just don’t feel like doing anything but the effectiveness of the basic principle remains the same. As long as I (more or less) adhere to it, I’m much happier and no longer feel like I’m stuck and neglecting what's important to me.
So if you’ve been struggling with the same frustrations I was experiencing, if you too have been feeling like “butter scraped over too much bread,” I would encourage you to give this method a try. Tweak it to your own needs. Even structuring your personal goals around your current work schedule can be enormously beneficial. There’s nothing to lose but plenty to gain in saving your sanity!
