Tim Ferriss is the author of the runaway best-sell, "The Four Hour Work Week." Ironically, Ferriss spent about 60 hours a week promoting the book, but nonetheless there is some very useful information in it for writers.
The core idea of the book is that you should be doing only what you do best. You need to outsource the rest. This is in line with the 80/20 Principle, which says that when you focus on the 20% of your activities that give you the greatest payoff, you gain exponentially. The problem is that much of the remaining 80% does need to be done--it won't go away if you ignore it. In fact, eventually it will turn into a crisis.
The 80% might include paying your bills, doing your laundry, grocery shopping, etc. I recently attended a seminar led by Laurel Langemeier, a financial management guru who has appeared on the top TV talk shows. Her advice was to hire a housekeeper as soon as possible, to free up your time for the things you do best.
Of course many people say they can't afford this. Langmeier's retort is that if you can't earn more than a housekeeper doing what you do best, it's time to get a different line of work.
For writers, I think the message of both of these authors comes down to two things:
1. Figure out what you can outsource to free up more time to write. Would it make sense to have a cleaning person come in once a week or maybe once every two weeks? Could that person also do your laundry and ironing? What about other chores? Consider hiring a student who wants to pick up a bit of extra money.
2. Figure out what parts of your writing you can outsource. For instance, research. I used a service called Hire My Mom (.com) to get some research done for my current book. I paid $12/hour and got the services of an experienced researcher who has a young child and wants to work from home. She did a great job, too.
If you conduct interviews and have been transcribing them yourself, that's an easy one to outsource. I used fiverr.com to find someone to transcribe the webinar I did recently on screenwriting. I paid a total of $20 to get a transcript of a one-hour phone call. (However, the person I used for that, from fiverr, said she'd underestimated how long it would take and now is raising her prices. But even at double that, it would be a bargain.)
You can also outsource things like proofreading, getting together an index, etc.
You may not be making any money from your writing yet. You may be working on a proposal or a novel to submit to publishers, with no guarantee that you'll be paid. I encourage you to have faith in yourself and your writing. If necessary, cut back somewhere else in order to come up with the funds required to outsource tasks that give you more time to write. It may or may not pay off financially, but at the very least it will give you more time to do what you love. That's a great payoff in itself.
(For more practical tips and friendly support, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," and consider signing up for my Writing Breakthrough Strategy Program--see www.jurgenwolff.com for more information.)
