We all have times in our life when we feel overwhelmed. There seems to be so much to do and not enough time to do it in.
That’s where I’m at currently because I’m well into the process of self-publishing my first novel in October. The big jobs are done – editing, cover design – and proofreading is being done as we speak. In a couple of days I’ll be getting those revisions back and then my head will be down to get them finished off. It may require a second or third read-through from the proof-reader as well.
Add on top of that the fact that I’ll have to do marketing around the book – meaning increased social media, blog tours, flyers, bookmarks, writing content for my own blog – and things start to get a little bit crazy.
Once I’d chilled out a bit and got my breathing back to normal, I followed my instincts and made a plan.
I know some people struggle with planning but it’s a way to control all the things you have to do.
So, first things first, you need to write a big, long list down the page of everything you have to do. And I mean everything. This is your brain dump where you put down all the little niggly jobs that are crowding out your thinking space. That can even include non-writing jobs like paying bills or cleaning.
When written in a long list like that, it looks terrifying, but the next stage is to make a timeline for your project. Start with your end date, for example your book launch, and work backwards. This will show you how much time you have to work with. The timescale will help you to decide what needs to go into your plan.
You need to identify your ‘must do’s’, the actions which will cause the project to fail if you don’t do them. If you don’t have time to do them, then you’ll have to consider potentially moving the launch date if that’s feasible. The important thing is to give yourself time to do the things you must do.
Assign each action its own individual time frame. I like to have a chart or something similar, so this is when I set up my Microsoft Word table. I have three columns – Action, deadline, done. My deadlines are usually set in the form of ‘By xx date’ or ‘in week commencing’ to give me a bit of flexibility to move things around if I need to. I also break the table into monthly sections as this makes it clear that not everything is to be done at once.
Once your ‘musts’ are filled into the table, we come to the ‘nice to haves’. These are the non-essentials, which may add to your marketing campaign, but won’t cause it to fail. For me, at this stage, this means promotional materials like postcards and bookmarks, building my email list and investigating other social media channels. Yes, email lists are important, but right now, they’re not urgent. These actions will factor into my long-term marketing plan at some later stage.
Once you have your table nicely filled in – and colour-coded if that floats your boat – you can see exactly what you have to do and when it needs doing.
Just get started and get a few actions ticked off, preferably getting the ball rolling on some of the chunkier tasks. As soon as you start to do that, you’ll feel much better.
Do you have any tips for coping when it all seems to be getting on top of you? Answers below, please.