Avatar photoSteven Savage

Productivity: When Does Your Week Start?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I want to ask a seemingly obvious question – when does your week start? I mean for a lot of my readers the answer is “Sunday” since it’s the first day of the week we all sort of use. But that may not be the real answer – for many of us the week ends on Sunday and starts on Monday if we’re part of a normal US work week. For many of us even that doesn’t apply.

So when does your week really start and end? Why ask this? Because it’s a key to getting things done, and it’s best illustrated with two stories.

  • I use Scrum-style personal time management. Part of that is having Sprints, similarly-sized periods of work you plan and have reguarly. I used to use a month-long Sprint, moved to two weeks, then moved to a week as my life had gotten more variable. Originally my “sprint weeks” started on Sunday and ended on Saturday – which ruined my weekend. Now my “real” week is Monday to Sunday.
  • I’ve worked with development teams who use Scrum, and their Sprints are two weeks long. Despite having the usual workweek, their Sprints start on a Wednesday and end on a Tuesday. Why? Because Wednesday worked better, since no one wants to do elaborate planning Monday or Friday, and Tuesday and Thursday were basically Monday and Friday Junior. Wednesday was perfect (and worked really well).

So look at the way you plan your work for the week. What day is really the best day to end your week and make sure things are done? What day is really the best day to start your week and make sure you know what to accomplish. Your answer isn’t necessary going to be mine or anyone else you know’s – it’ll be yours.

The best day to end your week is one where you can catch up, round up, and plan for the next week. That could be a quiet Friday each week, or a raucous Monday when you figure out where you are after the previous week.

The best day to start your week is one where you can dive in and get going, knowing where you are and what is ahead of you. Maybe that’s a Wednesday, a hump-day where everything is clear and you can get energized. Maybe it’s a Saturday, and your “real” week starts with the weekend to relax.

But there’s more. Consider the other ways you can apply this “best time”:

Daily. What times of day do you work best? Are you a morning person? Evening person?

Monthly. What’s the best day of a week or a month to look at long-term plans?

Yearly. What month in a year is good to assess your big picture goals? Or to take a break from your elaborate plans.

Either way, start by looking at your week, your own personal week, and asking when it really ends and begins – in a way that’s best for you. With that knowledge, you can rethink your whole plans – and like me, you might be surprised.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Update 10/19/2019

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Whew! Life is a bit calmer here so let’s get to the update on my projects! Less than I’d like, more than I expected!

So what have I done since last time?

  • Way With Worlds: The new book has been outlined – I’m covering Gods and Deities as that’s a popular subject – and one that deserves more coverage if only because its too easy to resort to tropes.
  • Chance’s Muse: Is in the first run edit! If all goes well, I can still drop it late November/early December!
  • A School Of Many Futures: I’m back to writing, doing a mix of writing and editing to get my mojo going. September 2020 looks likely, but maybe I can catch up! It’s definitely a hell of a lot better than the first draft, and bluntly, better than my first book – by chapter two our cast is dealing with a troubled teenager from a magical bloodline, and by chapter three or four we get our first mysterious death . . .
  • Seventh Sanctum: Still not a lot of progress on Python. I feel bad I’ve ignored this, but as the site is doing its job, being a few months behind or not dropping a generator for awhile is OK. I have plotted a few possible generators beyond the idea stage

What’s next?

  • Way With Worlds: I plan to start working on the new book next week!
  • Chance’s Muse: Finish up two runs of editing. At that point it’s ready to format (and hopefully that goes well)
  • A School Of Many Futures: Continue to work on Chapters 1 and 2 until my creativity is working again, then dive into writing like crazy.
  • Seventh Sanctum: Keep pushing to get back on track! Finishing Chance’s Muse may help.
  • General: I’m trying an evolved version of my current planning technique, which I call “Nested Scrum.” This should reduce context-shifting and stress!

Steven Savage

We Have To Go Smaller

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

If you’ve followed my updates or my newsletter, or just heard me ranting, you know that I’ve been very busy lately. Because I was so busy, I kept trying to power through the draft of my next novel, a School of Many Futures. Sadly, the powered through version felt off, emotionally disconnected. When it’s a sequel to your first novel, and a skewering of the “special school” genre, you want proper emotional connection, if only so the jokes land point-first.

So I began looking over what had happened to the writing, because this bloody well didn’t feel like my last book.

I had a good outline, using a mix of my own techniques and the snowflake method. That had helped me write.

My writing was fast. I can easily put out 2K words or more an hour. The outline helped.

But everything felt off. That’s when I figured out what had happened – I had written to the outline, but not engaged emotionally with the contents. I had missed the fine details, the feelings, the subtle connections. Being tired from so much going on, I had written, but I hadn’t written well.

With that revelation, I asked – how do I get back into the swing of things?

Well, the problem wasn’t with the outline, it was with the scenes. So with that in mind, and with a few ideas from Randy Ingermanson, I decided to rewrite each scene. I set out specific goals:

  1. Each scene would be a “Crucible” as Randy put it – there had to be a reason to be there.
  2. Each scene should be a relateable scene, and give us a character viewpoint.
  3. I would rework the chapters slowly so I really recovered my connection with the story and characters.

In short, I went smaller.

The result? The result is the rewritten work already feels much better – literally like a different story. Characters are more alive, stakes clearer, and even some of my outline has changed as I’ve made discoveries about my creations. Getting smaller made things bigger.

(By the way, I don’t think this negates my earlier advice of “power through when writing.” I had to do this to find my flaws.)

But there was an additional lesson here. Sometimes while redoing scenes I found a sequence didn’t work. Or a paragraph didn’t. Or a sentence didn’t. Sometimes I had to go even smaller in my focus.

We often get caught up in the big picture, not realizing it’s made of many smaller pictures, a network of them. Sometimes we have to ignore a story to work on a scene.

But maybe, there are times we ignore a scene to get a sequence of events right.

Or we ignore a sequence of events to get a paragraph right.

Or we ignore a paragraph to get a sentence right.

There are times we have to think smaller or we just don’t connect with our works. We get lost in the big picture with no idea what it’s made of. We become ungrounded trying to follow an outline. We get lost while knowing where we’re going.

So next time you’re writing and it’s not working, stop thinking bigger. Think smaller. It may just make your work the next big thing

Steven Savage