Hint: How do you spend your best few hours each day?

For at least a year, I’ve been desperately begging the people in my life for permission to write.

“Please sir,” I’ve pleaded, dirt on my face and hunger in my stomach, “May I have two hours a day to write?”

“No,” They’ve said, throwing rubbish at me. “Get out of here, you filthy animal. Get back to work.”

Okay, that last part never happened, but imagining it did delight me. What would I even do if someone did that? Scamper away?

I suppose I’ll never know since everyone in my life is far too kind to throw rubbish at me or call me a filthy animal. However, they are exactly kind enough to think they’re helping me when they suggest I don’t take two hours a day to write and, instead, get back to work.

When Work Interferes With Writing

“It’s just too much, Keely. I believe in you, but what you want isn’t possible. You just started a nonprofit and can’t give it the attention it needs while simultaneously launching a writing career. Focus on one thing at a time. Make the nonprofit a success, then you’ll have a story people want to hear.”

“I’ll show you,” I’ve always thought in response, plotting to write in the early morning hours, “I can do it all!”

Except they were right. I can’t do it all.

Month after month of trying to juggle grueling workweeks while being a newlywed who wants quality time with her husband (did I mention I was planning a wedding at the same time?) AND trying to do what I need to for my recovery from addiction and depression has proven that the wise folks in my life knew what they were talking about: it just isn’t possible to do all that and launch a writing career. Assuming I want my writing to be any good, that is. If you can’t pour from an empty cup, you certainly can’t write anything worthwhile from one.

Unfortunately, my cup has been empty more often than not over this last year. The work I’m doing contributes to society in ways that I’m really proud of, but it comes at a high personal cost. I’m frequently frazzled and almost always tired.

Writing, though? That fills me up.

I get to sit in a quiet room and explore my inner terrain. I can’t imagine a more energizing use of my time except, perhaps, getting paid to read self-help books.

So I’m changing my approach. I’m done begging for permission to write and, instead, just doing it.

I’d be a fool to continue prioritizing something that depletes me over something that completes me, and mama didn’t raise no fool.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Advice

Liz Gilbert has advice for those of us who find ourselves in situations like this. A devoted student of the creative process and author of books that have sold a gazillion copies, like Eat Pray Love, Liz knows a thing or two about writing.

She says that the most important thing you can do if you want to be a writer is to identify the hour or two per day when your brain is at its best and reserve that time for your craft.

“In reality, we all only get an hour or two per day where we’re at our best, where our energy is good and our mind is sharp,” she shares on Jessi Hempel’s Hello Monday podcast. “It’s different for every person because we all have different circadian rhythms, biologies, psychologies, work schedules, and family needs.”

“If you’re an adult,” she says on Dax Shepard’s Experts on Experts podcast, “then you know how your rhythms work. You know what time of day your brain is at its best.”

“The big important question is, ‘Who or what currently gets that time?’”

“You need to take the hour or two when you’re at your best and claim it for yourself. That’s yours. Yours for yourself, yours for your writing, yours for the thing you’re creating that you’re passionate about.”

“You take that time and put a border around it and say, ‘This one belongs to me,’ and then, for the other 22 hours of the day, give your second best to everybody else.”

Oh, Liz. So much wisdom in such a fun package.

Applying Her Advice

Since her life looks the way I want my life to look, her advice carries extra weight with me. So I’m trying it. Writing now gets my best two hours, my job gets my second best.

For the last two weeks, no one has been able to get a hold of me before 10 a.m. My phone stays on airplane mode until my writing time ends.

That’s not the only boundary I’m setting. As I mentioned before, my primary issue isn’t actually carving out time to write. It’s that I perpetually live on the edge of burnout in my current role — the one I created for myself at the organization I founded, the silly human that I am — and I don’t believe that anyone can do high-quality work while frazzled and exhausted.

Fortunately, Liz has advice on that too.

Question for the Comments:

Who or what currently gets your best hours? If you claimed that time for yourself, how would you use it?

Originally published on Medium.com on April 20, 2020.