Get the F*ck Unstuck- Tracking Your Time
Welcome to the Get the F*ck Unstuck Free Video series.
I’m Carole Kirschner. I’m the director of the WGA Showrunner Training Program, creator and director of the CBS/Paramount Diversity Writers Mentoring Program and an entertainment career coach. I started my career as a development executive at CBS and then as Vice President of Steven Spielberg’s first Amblin Television.
In those various roles, I’ve had the pleasure to help over a thousand writers break in or move up in their entertainment careers.
I want to share with you the strategies and insights that I used to help writers do this. I know what you need to do to make yourself in-demand, get hired, and sell projects.
I’m teaching this free video series because I love screenwriters. They’re some of the most interesting people I know. And I hate to see writers make the same mistakes over and over again. Or see them accidentally sabotage themselves because they don’t have the information they need to get to the next level of their careers.
So many writers can’t figure out how to get past their obstacles and move up in the business.
Maybe when they sit down to write they procrastinate… it causes them stress and anxiety, and sometimes even fear creeps in. Maybe they worry they’ll never finish their current sample Maybe they feel they don't have any sellable ideas… Their inner critic tells them that their work isn’t good enough or they just aren’t “cut out’ to be a showrunner.
Other people around them are moving up, and they sometimes doubt their ability to succeed…
Battling imposter syndrome is exhausting them.
Maybe they hate generals and getting drinks with executives
Basically, they’re stuck in their career—creatively… professionally… financially.
And aren’t sure how to move forward…
Well, there’s good news.
There are proven methods I’m going to share in this video series to help you get unstuck. Which can result in a meaningful career breakthrough. And there’s a unique opportunity to do it NOW …
As you know, the WGA is on strike right now. And while we’re all hoping for a quick resolution with a fair and equitable contract, we have no idea how long everything will be on pause. It sucks. But this is also a great opportunity to take stock of what’s keeping you stuck right now and shift your direction so you’re positioned to hit the ground running when the strike is over.
You may be a feature writer who keeps getting rewrites, but hasn’t put together a blazing hot project to pitch yourself because you’re worried your idea won’t be good enough.
Maybe you’re a TV writer who’s stuck at Story Editor and just can’t finish that new sample that could land you an Executive Story Editor job.
Perhaps you’re a Co-Ep who’s tired of watching less than stellar showrunners call all of the shots. You’re dying to run your own show. You know you need to finish your pitch, but you keep procrastinating because on some level you’re unsure about stepping up.
No matter where you are on your journey, or what’s standing in your way, identifying, strategizing and making day-to-day shifts are the only way to get to that next level in your writing career.
In this “Get the F*ck Unstuck” free video series, there are 3 videos teaching you the building blocks of getting unstuck.
We’re going to identify what your obstacles are and create a specific action plan to blast through them. When you get unstuck, you'll have that great new pitch idea and start working on it right away. And when you finish it, you’ll be ready to sell it and get the breakthrough you've been wanting. And when that happens, it means you’ll have to ask your reps to prioritize what they bring you because they’re constantly calling you with new meetings and projects.
It means you’ll feel like a talented writer with a great career ahead of you and take actions accordingly.
You know when you finally finish a scene that you just couldn’t crack before? That feeling of being able to do anything?
Being unstuck means you’ll feel that a lot more often.
But most of all, getting unstuck means you give yourself the chance to write projects you love, maybe even with writers you admire… and get paid for it! It might seem like some writers were born to be productive all the time and are always working. But as someone who’s worked with over 1000 writers, I can tell you that’s simply not the case. Everyone has ebbs and flows in their creative focus and drive.
What separates the successful writers from the stalled ones, is that the successful ones have a plan in place for when they get into a rut.
They know how to course correct before it costs them time, energy, and momentum.
In this video we’re going to take inventory of exactly where your time and energy are going daily, identify the time that’s being wasted, and determine the practical and emotional time sucks that are causing this.
By the end of the video series, you’ll have found a way to free up 3-5 hours a week to write, be more creative, and move your career forward.
You’ll have identified and slayed the practical and emotional vampires that are sucking your time and keeping you from taking action. And you’ll have created a personalized Breakthrough Action Plan for your unique situation and goals.
Breakthrough Action Plans work.
Because having a specific plan of action works. But that plan has to take into account the obstacles that can sabotage your plans, and include strategies for getting around those obstacles.
A personalized Breakthrough Action Plan is how I helped my client Nicole step back from her own negative thoughts about what felt “impossible” and channel that energy into writing a pilot she loved and sold to Sony.
Nicole was already a successful showrunner when we started working together. But she’d had a terrible, unforeseen tragedy in her life.
Some time had passed since the tragedy, and she knew that getting back to writing was an important part of her healing.
But every time Nicole sat down to write, she was paralyzed with emotions and the fear that her career would never be the same.
Nicole and I figured out what was blocking her from writing. When she sat down to write, she was flooded with feeling “not up to the task.” It was too much work, and she didn’t have the mental or emotional energy to do it… which was understandable.
As Nicole continued to work on emotional healing with a therapist, she and I created a blueprint for her to move forward in her career. It was a plan that broke down the process of writing into the smallest, least daunting steps. We worked to isolate the part of writing that brought her joy, so she could finally start writing again.
Nicole’s first action was to write for just ten minutes a day and to write nothing specific. She could only write thoughts on general ideas for shows that she felt she might enjoy writing someday.
Then, after a week, we upped it to 20 minutes a day. Then 30.
After a little while, Nicole landed on an idea that really excited her. Her creative energy kicked in. She brainstormed characters, then a beat sheet, an outline…and then a whole pilot. She did another draft and a polish and a few months later, she sold it to Sony.
But the best part was watching Nicole regain her confidence and pride in her creative work.
There’s so much information out there about manifesting what you want and “hacking your productivity.”
But information isn’t enough.
You also need real insight, strategies and a plan for getting past the obstacles that can keep you from achieving your goals.
I know that I do best with an actionable process that I can follow step by step. And I learned it the hard way.
I’d always wanted to write a book. And I had an idea that I thought could be terrific.
Over the years, so many people asked me about how to break into the entertainment industry that I knew if I could write a book compiling everything I’d learned on the subject, it would be helpful for lots of folks.
Writing this book was a recurring goal for literally 15 years! I told people I was going to write this book - or I told them I wanted to do it, but I never actually started.
Then, incredibly, I got a publisher who wanted the book. They even gave me an advance. What more could I ask for?
But for some reason I still couldn’t make myself write it! And I beat myself up every day that I didn’t move forward. I'd turn down weekend trips with my friends and fun outings with the family to work on my book. But then I’d just sit at my desk, staring at a blank computer screen, feeling terrible.
I was afraid I was going to fail, and I was proving myself right by not starting at all.
When I had procrastinated for almost a year, I knew I had to find some way to make myself do it. I read books, I took courses, I talked to people who didn’t procrastinate, and I worked with a coach. It was all great information, but it wasn’t put together in a cohesive way that I could actually implement it in my daily life. I was still stuck. The book was still unwritten.
Okay, so I’m a little compulsive and I love lists. And steps and systems . I realized that’s what I was missing. Some way to organize all this information and systematically implement it in my life. Since nothing else had worked, I decided to try distilling everything I’d learned into the most effective methods, strategies and tools I could use to get clear on what I wanted to accomplish, isolate what was really blocking me, and work through each issue.
It worked! I finished the book in seven months, and I’m proud to say it’s now taught in colleges around the country. And those same systems, tools and strategies have become the go-to method I use with my clients to help them push through their obstacles and self-sabotaging patterns, finish their scripts and projects, get staffed, move up, and sell projects.
Not only that, they gain the newfound confidence and deep satisfaction that comes with reaching their goals and getting to the next level of their career. They are finally seeing the career they’ve always wanted, become a reality.
But before you can buckle down and work towards the big shift in your writing career, you need to pinpoint what’s not going right.
How you’re spending your time is almost always the key to answering that question.
In our first call, most of my stuck clients say something like “every day I look at the clock and realize it’s 5 pm. I know I’ve been doing things all day, but none of them were what I needed to do to move my biggest priorities forward.”
They truly don’t know where all that time went.
When I hear a client say that, I have them fill out my Time Tracker, which I’ve attached below for you to download.
This helps them really see where all of their time is going. Now if you’re thinking “Eh, I’ll download that later,” I understand that impulse. But personally, I've almost never gone back to something I told myself I’d download later, so download it now. Just to be safe.
This is how the Time Tracker works.
First, identify your top priority project. The one that would make you feel the most energized and full of pride to finally accomplish. Write down your priority project on the top line of the Time Tracker.
For two days, write down everything you spend more than ten minutes doing – walking the dog, talking with your partner, trying to find your ex on LinkedIn.
A quick clarification, this doesn’t mean you have to be tracking an activity every ten minutes. Just track the time every time you finish an activity that took longer than ten minutes.
An interesting trick here. The more you don’t want to write down an activity, the more embarrassed you are that you spent too much time on it.that means you should definitely write it down.
You’re going to fill out all the places where you spend more than 10 minutes on an activity in the Time Tracker.
After you’ve done this, the next step is to look through both of the days you filled out and circle each chunk of time you spent on any activity other than your top priority project because of a real world obligation or responsibility.
Some of the most common obligations I see on clients’ time trackers are – taking your kids to school, your day job, grocery shopping, making lunch. Circle these “taking care of immediate business” activities in red. These are the practical time sucks.
Let me give you an example:
My client Bryan was putting together a pitch based on some IP he knew a production company was interested in, but he kept running out of time to finish it. Here’s what his time tracker looked like when we started working together.
Here you can see Bryan’s top priority goal at the top of the page—to put together his pitch—and then you can see his time sucks.
The first thing that probably jumps out at you is that there are a lot of work-related activities on Bryan’s Time Tracker. But none of these were going to help him get his pitch done. So, you can see where we circled those practical time-sucks in red.
When you look at Bryan’s time tracker, you can see that some of his practical time sucks were: Answering work emails about other projects, cleaning up the house to have people over, and trying to decide what to make for dinner. He was spending a lot of time on these activities.
Now, back to you.
Once you have circled your practical time sucks, your next step is to look through your Time Tracker again and circle all of the chunks of time you spent on any activity OTHER than your top priority project because of an emotion rather than a responsibility.
Some of these activities might be: procrastinating, talking to friends or family in the middle of the day, or feeling totally overwhelmed and escaping into social media.
A tip – Procrastinating can sometimes disguise itself as practical time sucks, like re-organizing your closet or shopping around for cheaper car insurance quotes - when you’re not even buying a car. The best way to tell the difference between procrastination and a true practical time suck is by asking yourself “did this task need to be done right then?” If not, it’s procrastination.
Circle these emotionally driven non-priority project activities in blue. These are your emotional time-sucks.
When I was writing my book, some of my emotional time-sucks were: talking to my best friend for an hour about her marriage, researching vintage tea kettles, and scrolling through Facebook.
Now all of this writing down and circling might seem like a lot. But it’s important for you to see, on paper, where your time is going. It makes it real. And just the physical action of writing things down will help disrupt your habitual patterns.
I often hear writers say things like…
“I don’t need to do anything differently to break through to the next level, I just need to work harder.”
Beating yourself up about not working harder is self-sabotage.
It’s not about not working harder, it’s about working productively and using your time effectively instead of spinning your wheels. It’s about creating a structure that gets you out of your own way and gives you manageable daily goals that will help you accomplish a bigger goal.
I notice with younger writers, there’s also a tendency to think that you should naturally know how to use your time effectively to get your goals accomplished.
Sure, some people might know this if their parents taught them how to do this growing up or if they learned these habits in school or from a mentor. But in my career, I’ve rarely met people who already know this. Most of us just don’t come into adulthood with these skills.
You may also be thinking “I don’t even have the time to do the thing I care about most, how would I have time to do this exercise?”
Think of doing this Time Tracker as an investment in your career.
Even if it feels like there’s no way you’ll have time to do this, if you can master the strategies I’m going to teach you, you’ll get back another 3-5 hours a week. Now isn’t that worth 15 minutes of your time to fill it out?
Next time we’ll look at each of the time sucks you've identified and look at strategies to remove those time sucks or minimize their impact. By doing this, you'll free up valuable time to focus on your top priorities. We'll track your time saved in the column on the second page.
Before you know it, you’ll have created that extra 3-5 hours each week that may have seemed impossible before. My clients are always amazed after we do this exercise.
Now I promise, you’re still going to have enough time to devote to the non-writing things that matter and time to maintain your day-to-day lives. We’re just going to make sure that how you’re spending your time matches your real priorities.
If something like “keep the house organized,” is 6th on your priority list, it shouldn’t be first on the list of things you spend time on. Otherwise, your house will be cleaner than your pilot will be sold.
In my next video, I’ll show you some highly effective strategies for removing both the practical and emotional time sucks which will free up your time to write, create, and move your business forward.
It’s how you get that writing sample done, or get prepared to get an manager, or get ready to sell that screenplay.
It’s how you land opportunities that once felt out of reach. You’ll get to look back and be amazed at all of the progress you’ve made.
I’ll see you soon in the next video. But until then, I’d love to know what you discovered doing this exercise? What time-suck surprised you the most? For me it was buying and returning sandals because I felt like I could never get the perfect pair. I’d love to hear what yours were! Please share them in the comments below. See you soon!