A BRIEF TIME OUT TO TALK ABOUT TIME
We really need to discuss the ticking clocks in our lives
I can’t survive more than a few days without sitting down and writing. I think of writing as the “pilot light” in my soul. If it goes out, I’m just a pipe that’s leaking gas.
Let’s take a moment to talk about a writer’s sense of time. A writer’s time is their most precious asset.
And… does AI save us time? Make the time we spend writing more valuable?
FAIL. FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.
This post was inspired by my failure to write another post I had planned to write this week. I got one out the door (Using AI to Understand Your Audience). It was rushed. Frankly I’m not so happy with it. I then wrote another that felt timely and urgent, and now… I’m late. I’m not going to ship the scheduled second one.
I have this thing… I begin projects VERY quickly, full of energy and enthusiasm. If I’m in a “supervised” setting (on staff somewhere, for example), my bosses are quickly encouraged by my performance. Oh, are they in for disappointment.
Inevitably, I drift. Part of it is a flaw in my own personality — if I think I’m doing well at something, I feel like “Okay, I get this… let’s find something else.” I like working when the working is hard.
Another part is that I’m a terrible steward of my most precious asset: my time. I set schedules for myself that are wildly ambitious. I fail to take into account the basic time-space continuum of my own life. I’ll think that I can handle all of these:
My job
This Substack
The story I’m writing
Walking the dog
Exercise
Spending time with friends and family
Keeping up on trends and the news
Watching TV
The “stuff” you have to do (paying bills, making phone calls, cooking dinner…)
And yes, friends and family... walking my dog appears in this list above you. Get over yourselves.
BTW — I love to watch TV. My wife and I met working on a TV show. We’re like a couple of old baseball players watching a game: “They’re shifting to the left! That’s not gonna end well…” or “Gary Oldman! Now there’s an actor who managed his career. He was CAA, right?”
Every week I make a big list of things. Years ago, a friend of mine gave me great advice: When you have your to-do list, put as many items on the calendar for specific times as you can. Do them when they’re scheduled to be done.
Great advice that I can’t follow any more than I can dance. I take that back... I follow schedules and to-do lists the same way I dance -- in both cases, you really don’t want to see it.
I set very ambitious goals. I make weekly to-do lists. At the end of the week, a good 40% of the list gets moved to next week.
As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
BIG GOALS VS. BIG DISAPPOINTMENTS
There’s an argument to be made for setting “Big Goals,” which goes something like: “Well, then what you DO accomplish is good… and you might not have gotten there if you weren’t aiming higher.”
Which might be true. But the downside is… feeling bad.
I have limited time on this planet… if I can’t write, I don’t want to be here. If I can write well, then I feel that my time here might bear some evidence of being well spent.
I am a sucker for hitting deadlines. When I get something done on time, I feel great, for at least 20 or 30 minutes. (Until I realize what I had to push aside to get that other thing done…)
So… how do I accomplish more?
CAN AI HELP?
The question I’m really asking here is… will AI save me time? Will it help me hit more of my daily writing goals so that I feel good about those and feel less bad about not hitting other goals?
It absolutely saves me research time. It makes me more certain about reaching my audience, so I’m less likely to head down some wrong paths. It can remember where I have various things stored, and even how they relate.
But the best part of AI is not that it saves time. It’s that it makes the time I spend writing … better.
In my experience, the best part of AI is that it makes me want to work. I want to put another document / chapter / character breakdown / etc. into NotebookLM. I want to feed outlines into Claude, even if only to get “Great Work!” I want to test my ideas out on my artificial friends focus group.
I’m not sure this is the answer I was looking for but…
YOUR TURN
How about you? Does AI feel like it’s taking up more time than it’s saving? How are you managing writing and life?
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