I’m going to let you into a Secret

Time management is everything.

People wonder how the husband achieves so much. He is known for being one of the most hardworking and prolific writers in his field, and it’s true. The husband produces about as much work as it is humanly possible to produce, but there are reasons for this, and I’m going to tell you how it works.

We have hit crunch time.

We both have a great deal on our plates, and we have both been asked to insert more work into our schedules.

Generally, when the husband is asked to do additional work, I am able to pick up the slack by doing research for him or by working up plots, or just by picking up the slack at home, doing more of the day to day running of the house and office. We have gone beyond that point. There is now more work than we can fit into what is our normal week. Our normal week does not consist of whatever the normal working week is for the average nine-to-fiver (if such a thing exists in the real world).

The husband usually gets up and is at his desk by about six in the morning and generally finishes work some time around six in the evening, and he does this more-or-less seven days a week. We take a long lunch about once a week, and he takes a couple of hours out to read the papers on Saturday and Sunday mornings. He generally spends a day a week out of the office, too, but that’s usually to do research, or to work elsewhere. His routine doesn’t alter much.

My routine is less concrete. I’m at my desk by nine, but most of my serious work is done between one and six in the afternoons. Mornings are usually reserved for reading, blogging, and doing bits and pieces for Dan.

Currently, our working days are roughy divided in half: before lunch and after lunch. While we are busy, our working days will roughly be divided in three: before lunch, after lunch and after dinner. 

Here’s how it will work. We will generally only work two sessions a day, but lunch and dinner will be more flexible. So a long, late lunch works like a siesta, or a late supper leads to a guilt-free lie-in followed by an early lunch. 

We will have less free time, of course we will, but we should manage to add an average of two to three hours of work to every day for as long as we need to without burning ourselves out. I realise that could mean an extra twenty hours a week of work, each, on top of a workload that some would already find exhausting, but, whatever happens, nobody works when they should be sleeping, and nobody eats when they should be sleeping, and nobody does a desperate on-line grocery shop when they should be sleeping.

Whatever happens, the office door closes in time for us to relax and unwind, and go to bed to go to sleep.