Managing my Time by Linzé Brandon

I have recently been asked how I manage to do what I do, and while I work full time. Here is my story - on time management

I won't lie and say that it is easy, because it isn't. A few years back I had my own business doing consulting work and that taught me one thing: time management. When you work for a boss, you pitch up, you do the work as expected and go home.
But as a business owner, it is more complicated. Since I had been the only one in the business I did everything: the work, keeping the accounts, invoicing, marketing, etc. I learned that it was not just about priorities, it was about doing what I want to do - and doing the things I needed to achieve that.
I closed the business due to economic reasons, but those years taught me a lot about what I wanted, and how to go about achieving it.

This was also the time, give or take a month, that I started writing.

So here is how my days typically go:
We, Francois and I, get up at 5am to get ready for work. I work from 6am to 4pm on weekdays, except Wednesdays when I leave at 3pm and Fridays at about 1:30pm. So a fairly normal 45 hr week.
With such a long day, we have an early dinner - about 5:30 pm and then I make lunch boxes for the next day, take a shower, see to my personal email and social media responsibilities.
If there is time I will read a bit, but from 9pm I will write until I go to bed at 11pm.
I never watch TV, with the exception of the odd soccer game over the weekend - I am a Manchester United fan. So when people chat about TV shows, or movies, I am clueless, but it doesn't bother me at all.
Weekends are for chores, other endeavours, and social obligations, but when they are done I read and/or write. I have been doing this for years.
I never go anywhere without either a computer, my mobile phone (it has an app I can use for writing) or a notebook and a pen. Most of the time, at least two of these will always be within reach.
One of the reasons I appreciate the members of  my writing group, is that they feel the same about their writing. It is a passion, and we use the time we have available to us to work at that goal.
Of course, real life interferes but it is not the end of the world, we deal, we move on. But the end goal remains: I am a writer, therefore I write. That is why every member is now a published writer, and we had so much fun with the STORM anthology.

Like me, they decided that writing was important enough to them, that to sacrifice time doing some other things is worth every word we write.

Read more on how to be a writer here.