Having a baby, as you all probably know, turns your world upside down. One day you’re spending your mornings however you want – for me, slowly sipping my coffee and enjoying my eggs and oatmeal before turning on Mozart or rainymood.com and writing for a few hours – and the next you’re up at 1 a.m. with your first contraction and stay up laboring for 22 hours, then get home at 3 a.m. to have three, maybe four, hours of sleep before the newborn angel wakes you up ready to feast, and all of a sudden you realize that your life of leisurely coffee-scented mornings, classical music, and uninterrupted writing sessions is OVER. For a long time anyway.
Something else that shifts, beyond one’s schedule, is one’s perspective, because B.C. (before children), you have much more of life’s most valuable resource: Time. And A.C. (after children), you have significantly less. I mean, of course you still have the same 24 hours per day that you had before, but only a small fraction of it can be spent on you – after all, a tiny human is relying on you for all of his basic needs, from the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid to the tippy top. Having less time necessitates that you stop and think through how you’d like to manage it.
A few years ago, I read a book that I would recommend to anyone. It’s called The One Thing by Gary Keller, and basically, it’s about discarding distractions and focusing one’s energy on one thing at a time to become more productive and reap extraordinary results. It inspired me to pare down and cut out the activities that a.) weren’t nearly as enjoyable and rewarding as others, b.) weren’t moving me closer to my goals, and c.) could be done just as well, if not better, by somebody else.
Having our son – who’s nine and a half weeks old! – has further crystallized many of Keller’s insights, insights such as:
Success demands singleness of purpose.
You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.
It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.
“Multitasking is a lie.”
“Long hours spent checking off a to-do list and ending the day with a full trash can and a clean desk are not virtuous and have nothing to do with success. Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.”
I realize, yet again, that there have been several items on my to-list that are not virtuous, and therefore have not created the extraordinary results I’m aiming for. I’m aware, now more than ever, how precious my time is and that it’s up to me to manage it wisely by prioritizing the people and tasks that are most important to me. I simply don’t have room for “full trash cans” and “clean desks”!
My main professional goal at the stage in my life is to be a – I’m just going to put it out there! – traditionally published author. This has been a goal of mine for as long as I can remember (I was writing to agents and publishers as early as eight years old!), and while I’ve been close to reaching it, I haven’t achieved it. Not yet. For the past ten years, I’ve been indie publishing, and while I’m so blessed and proud to be part of the amazing and super-supportive indie community, my heart still yearns to have a literary agent and editor who love and believe in my work and become trad published.
So, that, in a nutshell, is my focus. Penning long blogs (like this one, lol…), engaging in time-consuming marketing and time-sucking research spent learning about said marketing, and feeling guilty about not having a podcast and/or YouTube channel as well as a newsletter geared toward all three of the genres I’ve written in (fitness, YA fantasy, Christian women’s contemporary) simply don’t serve me and my One Thing – being traditionally published. While I do love sharing and engaging with other writers and book lovers, spending hours creating content for them while I could and should be writing, querying agents, honing my craft, and editing manuscripts, etc. isn’t how I should be spending the majority of my (now very scarce) free time.
Thank you, dear reader, for indulging me as I’ve rambled and processed – it feels good! I hope that perhaps this has inspired you to take a good hard look at your day-to-day activities and consider which, if any, are holding you back instead of propelling you forward. Whether you have a newborn baby or not, I think it’s healthy for us all to occasionally stop and reflect on the tasks that fill our days and assess which are serving us, and which are distracting us. After all, time flies no matter what; the sooner we decide to take charge of it, the better off we, and our goals, will be!
Time = life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.
– Alan Lakein
As for this blog, I will post when, like today, I feel a particular message burning inside of me that I feel compelled to share (a.k.a. get off my chest :-P). Who knows though – after I reach my current One-Thing goal, I might set my sights on becoming a blogger/YouTuber/podcaster extraordinaire, or an Olympic pole vaulter for that matter, but for now, this writer is choosing to simplify, focus, and chase her One Thing. What’s yours?