In my twenties, I worked for a tiny company in London organising medical conferences and events all over the world. One day, one of my colleagues was fired for breach of contract. She left the building with her belongings minutes later. And suddenly, every event, project and action on her list had to be taken on by somebody else. Namely, me.  

My work calendar – and by default, my life calendar – changed in a flash. I hadn’t planned on being in Bologna for an event that weekend, but there I was. I hadn’t anticipated organising a whole new series of meetings in London that autumn, but it was now on my to do list – along with all my existing work. My carefully curated work schedule was ripped up in an instant, and rewritten with new terms. 

And life went on – as did the work.

In my latest book, Summer on Seashell Island, divorced Dad of two, Leo, is suddenly left looking after his daughters for the whole summer while his ex-wife is away on honeymoon. He heads home to Seashell Island hoping his parents will help out, only to find that they’ve decided to extend their trip of a lifetime, too. Suddenly, Leo has to find a way to manage his business, hundreds of miles away from his office in London, while also looking after two young children full time, without any help from grandparents. Something more people have now experienced than I’d expected when I wrote it! 

The point is this: life changes. 

Often suddenly, and with little warning. In the weeks since I last posted here, talking about how to keep writing during a pandemic, the world has changed beyond all recognition. 

Eleven weeks ago, the country went into lockdown in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic. Pretty certain that the schools would be closing shortly thereafter, my husband and I had to find a way to work full time while also homeschooling and entertaining our two children. 

For over two months, that was our New Normal.   

This week, while lockdown continues across the country, my kids have actually gone back to school. The school hours are slightly different, and both kids need dropping off and picking up at very precise times. We don’t have access to any of the usual clubs and playdates that normally fill out the week, but we do have some child-free hours during the day in which to work.   

We’re calling it the New New Normal.   

In seven weeks time, the kids will be on summer holiday for another seven weeks, without any school work to do, and probably without the family visits, trips and days out with friends we usually enjoy. That will be the New New New Normal (or just Hell, I haven’t decided yet).  

Every time one of these changes of season comes around, I stop. Sometimes, like with the pandemic, I have to take some time to process what’s happening and make sure my family is okay first. Other times, I need to pivot quickly and come up with a plan to ensure everything happens on time, like when my colleague was fired.  

But every time, it involves finding a New Normal, for however long that season lasts. And since I know I’m not the only writer out there who finds themselves needing to do this, I thought I’d share my process here, in the hope it might help.  

So, if you’re working on finding a New Normal as we ease our way out of Lockdown, here’s my 7 stage plan for mapping it out in under an hour.

 You Will Need:

• A print out of a weekly calendar, split into half hourly or hourly segments. (You can download a weekly calendar here, or make one up in an excel document, or draw it by hand in your bullet journal.)
• A pencil and eraser (trust me on this one)
• A timer
• A lot of paper for lists, and a pen to write them
• Highligher pens

Start with the fixed points

In any given week, there are going to be timed events you cannot move. Right now, for us, these things include school runs, weekly meetings, my daily family video call, my daughter’s Guides zoom meet up, and so on. Set your timer for 5 minutes and make a list of these.

Look to your priorities

What really matters to you? If you’re doing this exercise – or if, you know, you’re human – the chances are you don’t have time to do everything you dream of doing in a week. So you’re going to have to slim down your expectations.  

The way I do this is to start with a massive brain dump, listing everything that I could possibly want to do. (If you need some ideas to get started, this list of brain dump prompts from the GTD website is great.) 

Set your timer for 15 minutes, and just start writing. Then, take your favourite highlighters (I like the pastel ones) and, setting your timer for 5 more minutes, go through the list. The first colour is for anything that needs to happen this week. The next for this month. The third for this quarter, fourth for this year, and the fifth for some mythical ‘someday’. This helps you to see the landscape of tasks ahead of you.  

At this point, set the timer for another 5 minutes and go through the list again with a black marker. For each item on it ask ‘Do I HAVE to do this?’ (are there consequences to not doing it that I’m not willing to suffer) and ‘Do I WANT to do this?’ (is it important enough to me right now that I’m willing to make it a priority above other items on this list, for this season).

Anything that doesn’t get a yes to one of those two questions get struck off (for now). What you’re left with are your priorities. 

Extra Credit Activity: Learn to Estimate

Have you ever timed how long it takes you to do something? Like, say, write a book? Or get ready to leave the house in the morning? Or post to social media? 

Of course, these things vary depending on all sorts of factors but, on average, how long do you think they would take? If you want to write 2000 words today, would that take you ninety minutes or three hours? 

The best way to find the answers to these questions is to time yourself. Keep a track of your daily activities for a week, jotting down what you’ve done in the last sixty minutes whenever the clock hits the hour, say, and you’ll have a much better idea how long these regular tasks take. From that record, you can estimate how long you’ll spend doing each thing, each day. Make a note of how long regular activities take that you can refer back to. 

NOTE: For longer projects – like writing a book – it’s helpful if you’ve kept track of your progress on previous occasions. Looking back over books I’ve written, the length of time each too varies, but there’s enough commonality for me to make a decent estimate of how long the next one will take. 

Don’t toss out everything

There are going to be parts of your Old Normal you don’t want to lose.

For instance, while we’ve been on lockdown, we’ve taken a family walk every day. Just a short one, but the regular, non-negotiable activity has really helped all our fitness levels – especially when it comes to building up my husband’s stamina, as he copes with his ME.

We also instigated a movie night with my daughter on a Saturday night, plus there’s the daily family phone call I’m unwilling to give up just because life is starting to return to normal.

Maybe for you it’s your early morning pilates, or your before bed Netflix binge with a glass of wine. They’re important. So set the timer for another five minutes and jot them down. Keep these things in mind as you move onto the next step, and make sure you include them. 

A Friendly Reminder: There are 168 hours in a week. 

This is a two part reminder.

First: there are 168 hours in a week. That’s it. That’s all you get. And by the time you factor in everything you have to do, there might not be as much of it left as you think.

Second: there are 168 hours in a week. That means that if you sleep eight hours a night, work a forty hour week, and allow four hours a day for showering, eating, etc, you still have forty four hours left – longer than your work week – to decide what to do with. There is time, you just need to be strategic with it. 

Set Your Weekly Routine

Take your weekly schedule and, setting the timer for the last 30 minutes, start filling in the outline of your weekly routine in pencil, so you can make changes as you go along. 

First, add all the fixed points, allowing time for transitions around them. 

Next, include your personal care, meals, and sleep!

Add in the things from step 4 that you don’t want to lose. 

If you don’t work for yourself, block off your contracted work hours. If you have control over your work schedule, then outline the hours you’d like to work, within the above constraints. If you have a job outside the home AND write too, firstly, I salute you. Secondly, block off both time slots. 

Build in a little time every day for the unavoidable stuff – cleaning, laundry, life admin etc. Otherwise this stuff will swallow up your other time blocks.

Block out family time – time to play, time for adventures with the kids, but also time with your significant other. This might be a walk around the block before dinner a few nights a week, or a planned weekend outing.

None of this is binding, you can change it at any time. For now, just put it in. Also, if you have tiny kids who need basically your full attention when you’re with them, block out all the time you’re solely responsible for them. If you can share the load, block out half. 

Remember:

A routine is not a straight jacket. A routine does not mean you can’t allow spontaneity in your life, too. But a routine does mean that, on those days when you don’t have time or strength to think about what to do next, you don’t have to. It’s also a good way to ensure you’re making time for everything that matters to you. 

Look at how much time you have left. Is it more or less than you thought? This is the time you have left to achieve all the ‘home’ priorities. The time blocked off for work is the time available for your ‘work’ priorities. (I know. It’s rocket science, right?)

Setting up a weekly plan this way forces you to be realistic about how much time is available to you to do all the things you want to do. Used in conjunction with your time estimates, you can now start planning when and how to get things done. Sit down at the start of each week, for instance, and plan in when you’re going to do your priority tasks. 

If you know that on a Monday you only have three work hours, there’s no point writing a to do list for that day with six hours worth of things on it.

Be realistic, and congratulate yourself when you get the three hours worth of work done. If you have extra time, do more for extra credit. If you run out of time, you know you need to tweak your estimates. 

Take it to the next level:

I find it helpful to print out my weekly plan, and keep it somewhere I can see it. (Okay, yes, I also laminate it. Don’t judge me.) Not to beat myself up when life takes me off schedule – as it inevitably will – but so I can make better choices.

If I start to procrastinate or waste time, I know exactly what time I’m wasting – and if I’ll have to make it up later. Do I want to miss my reading time tonight to finish the thing I’m putting off now?

And if my priorities change, I can look at how to move move things around – for instance, I can choose to work less hours today to go for an impromptu picnic with my husband, and make up the work tomorrow night instead of watching Netflix.

It’s a conscious choice. 

Next Steps:

Plan the work then work the plan. You have your priorities, you know the time you have available to do them, so plan them in and get them done. I think this post has gone on quite long enough already, but if you’d like to see how I use this routine to plan my writing days, weeks and months, drop me an email to let me know. If enough of you are interested, I’ll write a blog on it soon. 

Good luck figuring out your New Normal! And please, drop me a line to let me know how you get on.