Hey Alex, I’ve recently been creating a fiction podcast of my own and was wondering if you had any advice on how to manage your time and the stress of creating something this large-scale? Totally fine if not!
Have a wonderful day :D
Hey,
I thought long and hard about whether to answer this one or not. It's a perfectly reasonable ask but I think it's based on a misapprehension and I think I need to address that.
I often fear I don't have much advice on how to manage time and stress because, being blunt, I believe I am bad at those things.
I know that I have probably hit the point I could be called "prolific" in some circles and I have definitely learned some efficiencies over the years. I'd even dare say that on a good day I am better than most at what I do but the thing you have to realise is that is not coming from a place of well-regulated selfcare and a balanced Work-life.
I absolutely wrecked myself to make Rusty Quill a reality. My mental health was in the toilet for a lot of it, complicated by undiagnosed neurodivergence, and there is long-term damage to my physical health directly caused by that level of chronic overwork and stress for all those years.
The only thing that let me get everything done is that there is a sort of bedrock in my personality. I don't know how or why but there are some things that I physically can't quit. It's seems like a good thing from the outside, I keep going when stuff gets hard, I seem "determined," but that sword is double edged. I keep going even when I should stop. Even when keeping going is pointless and all it does is get me hurt. For me, a lot of the time it's not grit, or pulling-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, its compulsion. I just got lucky that my obsessions are compatible with what people think is "productive" so they mostly continued to enable me instead of shame me or stop me.
I'm not saying all this for sympathy though. I am incredibly privileged to have been granted all these opportunities. Teenage Alex would be ecstatic that I have managed to dodge Office work so far. I'm just saying this so that you understand I don't think anyone has this stuff locked down (except maybe strict Buddists). The people who look like they do are just better at making it seem that way and have invisible advantages (heteronormative, neurotypical, affluent etc.) and if they make a show of telling you how efficient they are etc. often their worth is literally dependent on convincing you that they have it sorted.
Comparison isn't just the thief of joy, its the assassin of self-worth; don't invite the vampire in.
All that said, I know you probably just wanted some life-hacks (which is totally fair) so I have a few reliable tricks I have resorted to:
1) If you cannot face doing what you are supposed to do, do something else that is still productive work but will feel like a naughty treat because you are still "avoiding the real work". E.g. if you are meant to be working on a script but you literally can't then treat yourself to some audio editing. If you can't edit today, treat yourself to some writing. This is a good tactic to keep you going but I think of it like medication. It can help with neurodivergence or a short-term problem but overuse it and you will be ignoring your body's warning signals that something is wrong. That ends badly.
2) If it takes longer to add a task to your to-do list than it does to actually do the task, just do the task. The extra 1 second efficiency you'll get from a perfect to-do list is not worth the time it takes to make it. Sometimes the best way is the quick and dirty way. Better no to-do list and three things done than a perfect to-do list with nothing done. (I HATE doing it this way but it works)
3) Success is built on small, incremental, compounding improvements, NOT huge efforts. A huge effort will get you ahead for a day. A repeated small effort will get you ahead forever. (I know this is true but I still fail at this personally). The main benefit of the small improvements is they don't carry a hangover/ energy debt the way the monumental effort does. The more you work on a project, the bigger that debt will get and when the bill is due you have to pay it from somewhere.
4) Take how long you think something is going to take. Your best, most detailed estimate. Now triple it. That's how long the task will take. If you're wrong you just gained time for that thing that isn't quite right, if you're right, you're a smarty pants, either way you win.
5) Something will give. The timeline, the runtime, your health, something will break during the process. Recognise when it has happened, and ACCEPT IT before you do your best to mitigate it otherwise you will just bounce from one crisis to the next. i.e. There's no point breaking your arm making a splint for your leg.
Sorry if this wall of text was a bit much/ overshare. I just want people to understand that from my perspective, I got where I am by just failing harder, faster and more often than anyone I know, whilst still trying to learn the lessons. (that last bit is important).
You got this. Probably better than I do!
