Dealing with disruption
How to make a book when life keeps getting in the way
Last time, I wrote about going slow to go fast—and why that’s hard for me. Today, I want to unpack the second part a little more. It’s not just that I’m “pressed for time,” as I wrote before, but that what little time I do have is often broken up into bite-sized chunks that make contemplative work feel all but impossible.
Between managing the business end of freelance writing, parenting two young children, and having the audacity to want to exercise from time to time, I rarely log more than a few hours of work before some outside obligation intrudes. (Case in point: as I was typing this sentence, my kid’s preschool teacher texted to say that he left his favorite stuffy at school and would I like to come and get it?)
And Poof! Just like that, my train of thought and my best go-slow-to-go-fast intentions go right out the window.
Perhaps I’m just another overstretched parent griping about the tyranny of the 24-hour day, but I’m guessing others struggle to find time for focused work, even if their circumstances differ. Maybe it’s caring for an aging parent or a sick pet. Maybe it’s juggling multiple jobs or a demanding volunteer position. Maybe its just being a person with an internet connection. The reality is that life these days is frustratingly fragmented. So, how are we to accomplish tasks that require sustained mental effort, like researching and writing a freaking book?
I don’t have Answers but I do have Thoughts, both philosophical and practical.
Great expectations
Writing a book, I’ve never needed my cognitive and organizational skills to function more smoothly, and yet, they have never been so compromised by interruption. The last few months have been particularly chaotic. On top of the usual disruptions (tax deadlines, school events, and doctor’s appointments), changes in our childcare situation have severely eroded my ability to work from home. I have basically been itinerant since April.
BUT! We are in the process of building a detached office in our backyard and it has come to feel like the light at the end of the tunnel. I daydream about spending long afternoons inside it, reading books on the sofa with my notebook in my lap and a steaming cup of tea on the windowsill. There is cocooning silence, an expansive sense of time, and above all, insulation from the demands of the outside world. In other words, peace, quiet, and stability.
Imagine, then, what a gut punch it was to hear someone call BS on this fantasy—albeit in the kindest possible way. I was listening to an episode of Emerging Form, one of my favorite podcasts on creativity, which featured author Brad Stulberg. He has a new book on weathering change, and in the first few minutes of the show, he said this:
“We often fall trap to this misnomer…which is that, “once everything is stable and everything is calm, then I’ll do the work,” instead of realizing that there’s never going to be that moment.”
There’s never going to be that moment. F***.
Stulberg explained that change is the rule, not the exception. And I knew he was right. Sooner or later, some unpredictable disruption will predictably disrupt whatever sense of stability the new office has to offer. Perhaps I ought to make peace with my disjointed reality instead of treating it like a temporary alternative to real book work.
It doesn’t help that my notion of “real book work”—holing up in a book-strewn study and wrestling with ideas—is woefully outdated. Historically speaking, the person doing the holing up is usually a man, and their ability to lose themselves in work relies on the labor of a spouse (or servants) to keep the household running. (One scientist I’m researching for my book regularly hallucinated from lack of food and sleep. Fortunately, one historian noted, his wife was there to save him from himself.)
This approach doesn’t work for me, nor probably for anyone else with substantial non-work responsibilities. And there are other models. Toni Morrison wrote in whatever scraps of time she could grab between her job and parenting obligations. Ursula K. Le Guin also worked around the demands of raising children, writing after her kids left for school in the morning and allotting 3 hours in the evening to “make dinner and eat it” (quite a departure from the hallucinating scientist). On the non-fiction side, journalist Melissa Sevigny wrote her recent book, Brave the Wild River (W.W. Norton, 2023), on Saturdays while holding down a full-time public radio gig, as she explained on another recent episode of Emerging Form.
I’m still experimenting with different strategies and schedules. But just shifting my expectations of book work makes me feel better about my situation—and opens the door to more concrete solutions.
Brass tacks
When I set out to write this post, I thought it would contain some simple strategies for maximizing the value of small chunks of time. Then I got to writing and all the existential stuff above came pouring out. Oops.
Anyway, plenty has been written about how to create and protect time for focused work. (For some examples, see Deep Work—which has itself been criticized for a lack of female subjects—and this post from Anna Sproul-Latimer on blocking out time for chores, not creativity). I’m not going to dive into this here because I assume that anyone who has read this far has probably tried everything in their power to optimize their schedule. There is no more time to be had, only time to be used better.
So, without further ado, here are some tips for using and connecting short periods of work.
First, some common advice that bears repeating
Break large goals down into the smallest possible tasks and tackle them one at a time. For example, divide chapter research into subject areas, then individual papers, which must be read, annotated, and incorporated into bibliographies, master lists of quotes, and other documents. Each of these is a discrete task.
During precious chunks of focused time, turn off unnecessary notifications. Texts and email can wait. (See: the stranded stuffy.)
Take good notes so that you can easily pick up where you left off.
Use short work periods strategically
If you only have an hour here and there, try to space them close together so that you can maintain forward momentum. One of the biggest challenges of working in short spurts is losing track of the ideas and information uploaded to working memory. But as this post explains with a lovely metaphor, frequent work sessions can counteract such losses:
“Think of these hours as stepping stones: too far apart and you’re stuck in the middle of the river, looking for a place to put your feet and finding the leap a bit scary. Ideally, they need to be fairly evenly spaced, so that you find each step in front of you manageable.”
Question the tendency to dismiss short periods of time as unfit for focused work and reframe them as opportunities to make forward progress.
But also, compile a list of useful things you can do in a few minutes, like downloading a paper, for when there really isn’t enough time to warrant starting up your research brain.
Make abundant and wise use of lists
Keep a running list of “wonders.” “Research makes me wonder new things that I don’t have time to research in the moment. Documenting those wonders helps me save them for another day,” says Lisa S. Gardiner, who is writing a book about corals reefs.
Identify the next starting point on your to-do list before signing off. That way, “you won't be scratching your head about where you left off next time you get your few precious hours,” says Jennifer Frazer, author of a forthcoming book about slime molds.
What works for you?
More than ever, I’m eager to hear from you readers what strategies you have tried. If you’re so inclined, please share your wisdom in the comments or the chat.