Managing our time needs to become a ritual too. Not simply a list or a vague sense of our priorities. That’s not consistent or deliberate. It needs to be an ongoing process we follow no matter what to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day.

I think we can do it in three steps that take less than 18 minutes over an eight-hour workday.

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you’ve been productive and successful? Write those things down.

Now, most importantly, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do something.

In their book The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz describe a study in which a group of women agreed to do a breast self-exam during a period of 30 days. 100% of those who said where and when they were going to do it completed the exam. Only 53% of the others did.

In another study, drug addicts in withdrawal (can you find a more stressed-out population?) agreed to write an essay before 5 p.m. on a certain day. 80% of those who said when and where they would write the essay completed it. None of the others did.

If you want to get something done, decide when and where you’re going to do it. Otherwise, take it off your list.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don’t let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

The power of rituals is their predictability. You do the same thing in the same way over and over again. And so the outcome of a ritual is predictable too. If you choose your focus deliberately and wisely and consistently remind yourself of that focus, you will stay focused. It’s simple.

The One Hour Screenwriter eBook shows you exactly how to implement a sustainable writing schedule and gives you the step-by-step organization and direction to finish your screenplay.  You’ll never be stuck or stymied again because hour-by-hour you will know exactly what to do.  Great exercises, check lists and specific assignments to move you through your script in an easy continuous flow.

“But the more important thing is to write everything down. I would say, Write down what’s going on around you, what’s going on in your family, on the street, and with your friends. Just keep writing and writing. You don’t even have to think it’s a script. Write down as much as you can, and then out of that you might eventually be able to pull a picture which, over the years, I have been able to do.” Martin Scorcese

Here’s how to put that philosophy into practice every day. Below is a FREE LESSON from the One Hour Screenwriter eBook.

Sit back and remember your most risky behavior. It could be an act of rebellion, a gamble (successful or unsuccessful), a brief adventure, a moment of daring, a crazy scheme, a wild leap of faith, a transgression, a crime or any other reckless activity.

What exactly did you do? Did you get away with it? What consequences did you pay? Was it worth the risk? Or did you have regrets?

Describe as completely as you can a situation when you left caution to the wind. Who or what prompted you to undertake this dicey activity?

Was anyone else involved? What was their contribution to the situation? How did you feel before, during and after taking the chance you took?

Can you remember what the day was like and what you wore? What are your other sense memories (sight, sound and feeling) of that risky moment in your life? How did the situation or activity engage all your emotions?

Did you make a personal leap of faith to do this? Did the activity make you feel stronger or more confident?

Did it make you feel foolish? Was there a let down afterwards? Was there relief? Was there exhilaration? Write about everything you felt.

Was this activity something you agonized about and summoned the courage to undertake over time, or was it an impulsive action taken in the heat of the moment? What made the experience memorable?

Take 10 to 15 minutes to complete this exercise. Do not censor yourself; write whatever comes to mind. Don’t be worried about being articulate, artistic or interesting, just write. Let your memories flow freely.

Now write this exercise from your character’s point of view. What are the riskiest things your character does in the story? How does that make your character feel?

Ask your character the same questions above. Your character should have several risky moments in the story. What are they?

List and describe these moments as completely as you can. Add this material to your Film Project Notebook.

The One Hour Screenwriter eBook explains how you can use your own life experience to write a script. The eBook breaks the writing process down into easy, clear bite-sized increments. You are guided step-by-step through writing your story. Order your copy today!

An interviewer asked Updike, about his writing routine: You’ve said that it was fairly easy to write the Rabbit books. Do you write methodically? Do you have a schedule that you stick to?

John Updike answered: “Since I’ve gone to some trouble not to teach, and not to have any other employment, I have no reason not to go to my desk after breakfast and work there until lunch. So I work three or four hours in the morning, and it’s not all covering blank paper with beautiful phrases. You begin by answering a letter or two. There’s a lot of junk in your life. There’s a letter. And most people have junk in their lives.

“But I try to give about three hours to the project at hand and to move it along. There’s a danger if you don’t move it along steadily that you’re going to forget what it’s about, so you must keep in touch with it I figure. So once embarked, yes, I do try to stick to a schedule. I’ve been maintaining this schedule off and on — well, really since I moved up to Ipswich in ’57.”

“It’s a long time to be doing one thing. I don’t know how to retire. I don’t know how to get off the horse, though. I still like to do it. I still love books coming out. I love the smell of glue and the shiny look of the jacket and the type, and to see your own scribbles turned into more or less impeccable type. It’s still a great thrill for me, so I will probably persevere a little longer, but I do think maybe the time has come for me to be a little less compulsive, and maybe (slow down) the book-a-year technique, which has been basically the way I’ve operated.”

The interviewer commented:  “We’ve spoken to a number of writers who said they wrote a certain number of pages every day. There’s a lot to be said for having a routine you can’t run away from.”

Updike answered: “Right. It saves you from giving up.”

This interview is from the excellent website Daily Routines. I think this interview is incredibly instructive. Updike was a full time writer and only wrote three to four hours a day (including doing what he terms administrative junk). Consistently working, even only one hour day, will make you incredibly productive. It doesn’t seem like much, but over time it adds up.

That’s why my book The One Hour Screenwriter is so useful. It shows you exactly how to structure those writing hours to get the most out of them and move your script along. Like Updike, don’t give up! Just keep writing!

According to The New Yorker, June 14, 2004:  “Every day for years, Trollope reported in his “Autobiography,” he woke in darkness and wrote from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., with his watch in front of him.

He required of himself two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour. If he finished one novel before eight-thirty, he took out a fresh piece of paper and started the next.

The writing session was followed, for a long stretch of time, by a day job with the postal service. Plus, he said, he always hunted at least twice a week.

Under this regimen, he produced forty-nine novels in thirty-five years.

Having prospered so well, he urged his method on all writers: “Let their work be to them as is his common work to the common laborer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving,—as men have sat, or said that they have sat.”

The article goes on to discuss how the notion of and approach to writing has been romanticized since Trollope.

The One Hour Screenwriter helps take blocked or stymied writers back to a simpler, more sustainable method of working. It helps temper those idealistic approaches that are impossible to realize in every day life and only block genuine creative impulses.