Get the F*ck Unstuck - Practical Time Sucks
Welcome to Video #2 of the Free “Get the F*ck Unstuck” Video Series!
I’m Carole Kirschner, director of the WGA Showrunner Training Program and creator and director of the Paramount Writers Program. In this video, I’m going to share strategies and insights to help you get unstuck and take your screenwriting career to the next level.
In my 25+ years of experience as a development executive at CBS, Vice President of Steven Spielberg’s first Amblin Television, program director and as an entertainment career coach, I’ve helped more than a thousand TV and feature writers achieve big breakthroughs in their careers, and I can help you, too.
First, I want to thank you for your comments and feedback on the last video/blog! It was fun to hear about some unique and surprising “time sucks.” I hope you got some insights as to how you can free up 3-5 more hours a week to focus on moving your career forward.
Now I have a question for you… What do writers who keep getting staffed on great shows, consistently sell projects and are sought after to develop have in common?
Four crucial things:
1) They’re talented.
2) They have current samples that demonstrate their skills and voice.
3) They constantly cultivate mutually beneficial relationships.
4) They know how to talk about themselves in a way that gets decision makers leaning in, wanting to know more
It might feel like those are qualities that you’re either born with or not. But that isn’t true. They can definitely be learned, practiced, and improved upon.
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.
But none of that can happen if you’re at the mercy of unproductive time management.
In my last video, I walked you through a Time Tracker exercise to help you take stock of where your time is going and recognize the practical and emotional “time sucks” that sap your precious hours.
I asked you to write down everything you spent more than ten minutes on over two days. I hope it helped you see the minutes and hours that could have been used more effectively, and how you’ll be able to free up anywhere between 3-5 hours a week moving forward. (If you haven’t done the Time Tracker exercise yet, download it below after you finish this video/blog
And In this video, I’ll teach you key strategies for avoiding different types of time sucks, so you can free up your time and get the F*ck unstuck.
Being stuck looks different for everyone.
Some of my clients feel stuck because they need to pivot in their careers. They might need to move out of half-hour comedies into light procedurals. But they let daily responsibilities prevent them from finishing an appropriate new sample and miss staffing opportunities.
Some clients who are already on staff might have a great idea they want to pitch to their showrunner, like a multi-episode arc. But rather than sitting down to flesh it out when they get home from work, they watch six episodes of “Love Is Blind.” Then, someone else pitches something similar, and they’ve lost the shot.
I’ve seen it again and again. That’s why I’ve created the easy-to-follow Get the F*ck Unstuck Method, the most effective collection of systems, tools and strategies that will lift your out of career-zapping holes like this. And one of the most essential parts of this system is “creating” more of your most precious commodity as a writer... time.
The Time Tracker I shared in video/blog #1 helped you uncover the two types of time sucks: practical and emotional time sucks.
I also call these your practical and emotional vampires, and I’m going to show you how to slay them.
Let’s start with practical time sucks.
The first strategy to slay practical time sucks is to DELEGATE.
This is simple in theory, but hard in practice because you probably think that you can’t delegate any of the activities circled in blue. Trust me, you can, and it’s well worth it. You just need to be okay with the task getting done differently than YOU might do it yourself.
This is a time tracker from my client, Megan. She was spending an hour and a half everyday grocery shopping and cooking. When we first spoke, she insisted there was no way to delegate these tasks.
But we came up with a couple of different ways to change her cooking routine. First, she could delegate this by subscribing to a meal delivery service, like Hungry Root or Green Chef. Yes, she’d have to shift her expectations and spend more money, but those extra dollars would buy her more time. Second, she could ask her partner to make dinner. Here, she’d need to shift her expectations and ask for a different division of labor in her relationship.
What started out feeling impossible became possible when Megan accepted that there would be trade-offs. But she knew getting the work done to build momentum in her writing career was her priority. So she opted for the meal delivery service. She still spent a half hour a day putting together the meals, but she got back seven hours a week that she could now spend writing.
Here’s a challenge: Can you delegate one or two practical time sucks on your Time Tracker? It may require uncomfortable conversations or doing things a bit differently. But I encourage you to find at least one trade-off you're willing to make to get unstuck.
The second strategy: creating 15 minute blocks to move your career forward.
Examine your Time Tracker, look for 15-minute slots with no mandatory responsibilities like being at work or putting your kids to bed.
Mark these 15-minute blocks as time to work on the top priority goal you listed at the top of the page. Can you wake up 15 minutes earlier or go to bed 15 minutes later? (Be careful to only spend 15 minutes on this task, because you won’t get anything done if you’re exhausted).
You might be thinking…
“What can I possibly get done in 15 minutes?”
I hear you, but, believe it or not, several 15-minute blocks add up fast.
My friend’s daughter Sarah had to get one last draft of her pilot to a colleague who’d offered to send it to a manager. Sarah was working as a writer’s assistant on a show with ridiculously long hours. She felt like she’d never have enough time to invest in her own writing to kick off her career.
She waited two months until she could find a half hour to write before she even started. The result? She barely spent any time writing.
I worked with Sarah and had her block out 15 minutes a day. She printed out a calendar and hung it up. Each that day that she wrote for 15 minutes, she got to draw an X over the day, and before she knew it she’d crossed off 30 days in a row.
That’s 15 hours of writing she wouldn’t have done otherwise. And, as it turned out, 15 hours was just about how much time she needed to finish the rewrite of her pilot and do two typo passes.
The good news is, Sarah’s colleague gave the sample to her manager with a glowing recommendation. This new manager could be a huge asset to Sarah’s career.
You’ll be surprised by how much you can get done with consistent 15-minute work periods.
If your practical time sucks (i.e. responsibilities) are less predictable, this third strategy might be a good fit for you.
I call this one “squeezing in the time.”
If you have kids or a day job where you’re on call for long stretches, you never know when you’ll have free time.
Clients who work long hours also procrastinate, but their schedules are so unpredictable, I advise training themselves to work on top priority projects even if they only have two minutes. You can absolutely train yourself to focus in short spurts. It just takes practice.
I know it sounds crazy, but try this: Start a stopwatch on your phone whenever you're working on your priority project. Keep a log. At the end of the day, see how many minutes you were able to squeeze in. Instead of checking social media and feeling anxious that you weren’t getting anything done, you will actually have accomplished something. Those 2-5 minute periods can definitely add up.
Now for the other breed of Time Sucks: Emotional time sucks.
Emotional time sucks are feelings that derail you.
This can take the form of napping because you're so overwhelmed by your to-do list, or spending an hour crafting the perfect email so you don't piss off your manager, or it can be spending twice as much time working out at the gym as writing.
There are two types of Emotional time sucks I see most often:
The First one is Hidden Fears.
These almost always cause procrastination, which is the Achilles heel of nearly every writer.
My client Bryan used the time circled here in red to scroll through TikTok, even though he knew he should be working on his pitch. He only did this for 10 minutes at a time, but if you keep that up all day, you destroy your ability to get anything done in a reasonable timeframe.
I asked Bryan what was going through his mind right before he picked up his phone to scroll?
Bryan thought about it, and then gave a surprisingly insightful answer. He said he was working on a pitch and had to solidify the fatal flaw that would drive his protagonist’s emotional arc.
He had two different ideas but couldn’t tell which one would be better. He convinced himself that choosing the wrong one would cause the execs to pass on the project. He imagined the absolute worst possible scenario, and Tik Tok offered the perfect escape. Once we identified the fear that was keeping him from making a decision about his protagonist, we had something to work with.
I gave Bryan my go-to strategy, based on cognitive behavioral therapy principles.
I call it “Identify, challenge and repeat.”
First, when Bryan had the impulse to reach for his phone to scroll, I asked him to pause and identify his fear, name it, and write it down.
Bryan wrote that “I’m worried the executives will know that I made the wrong character choice and will never take me seriously again.” Notice that I had him use bold, declarative language. That’s because what you write down should resonate emotionally, even if it feels like hyperbole. Because fears are almost always over the top.
The next step is “Challenge.”
I asked Bryan to write down any evidence that his fear isn’t true or to identify any logical flaws in his reasoning.
He wrote: “I’m telling myself that I should know what the executives will be looking for, but that isn’t possible. I know (and most of the time I accept) that I cannot predict the future.”
I then asked Bryan to take a deep breath and get back to working on this pitch.
The most important part of this strategy is to use it on an ongoing basis. That’s the “Repeat” part of the process. Every time fear seduces you into procrastinating, ask yourself, “Do I really need to find the perfect lip gloss, check the stock market, or watch a few minutes of that new Netflix reality show? Or am I just avoiding my fear?”
When Bryan learned to do this, he was able to cut out 4-5 social media breaks a day on average. This gave him an extra hour a day. and an hour a day can make the difference between hitting a deadline and having to call your reps to push the pitch back a third time, which doesn't make you look or feel good. If Bryan had kept delaying his decisions about his protagonist, he would have created the very outcome he was trying to avoid – not selling the pitch and damaging his relationship with the execs.
Let’s look at the second type of emotional time suck: Unrealistic Goals.
Do you find yourself spending 20 minutes staring at your daily to-do list, not knowing where to start? Or do you spend small amounts of time on lots of different projects? Maybe you sit down to work on a project, feel absolutely hopeless about accomplishing it, and give up. You likely have unrealistic goals.
And unrealistic goals can lead to procrastination.
My client Vicky’s time sucks were working on too many projects at once. She was working on a podcast, a short film, a live show, and a new hour-long sample at the same time. This is all very exciting, but when you look at her Time Tracker, she could only spend about 25 minutes on each project.
She was working all day, every day but was exhausted. She was spread so thin, she wasn’t making meaningful progress on anything.
The solution for Vicky was to change her goals. We picked just one project as her 30- day goal. She resisted, but finally decided that revising her short film script was her priority. Then, we broke that goal down into its smallest possible micro steps, and scheduled exactly when she would do each one.
30-days later, Vicky’s short film was revised, polished, and submitted to producers. She had to sacrifice working on her other goals for those 30 days, but the next month, Vicky and I picked a new project for her to work on, and she finished that one, too. She got each project done one by one, rather than spending six months spinning her wheels, not finishing anything.
I understand that each of you has a unique set of circumstances, and you might be thinking…
“This all sounds great, but how do I remove the time sucks in my specific situation?”
Parents often tell me “My time is getting eaten up by my kid’s needs.” I know first-hand the challenges of juggling parenthood with a demanding career. (Been there and done that). It’s a given that you want to be present for your kids’ emotional needs, or an issue at school, or a real crisis, but you can still find ways to set boundaries or get help.
For example, If you have kids at home during the day, hang a sign on your door that says “Mom is at work.” Tell your kids that unless the house is on fire, this is mom’s work time and not to interrupt you.
Help them understand how important your goals are to you and how it would benefit them if you achieved them. “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could get this show sold, and you get to visit the set and come to the premiere? Will you help make this happen?”
Kids love feeling like they are part of the solution -- it gives them buy in. Plus, modeling the behavior of someone who’s committed to achieving their creative dreams is powerful.
As for unexpected school pick-ups, doctor’s visits, and driving kids to their friend’s house? There is low cost help out there. There are responsible, reliable 20-somethings who would love to make extra money. And if you have the budget for it, there are agencies that staff quality nannies.
If you have a partner, don’t be afraid to ask for their help.
Remember, you don’t have to be Super Mom or Super Dad all the time.
I hope you can see that there are options available to you if you’re willing to get creative.
Okay, take a deep breath. This has been a lot of information.
But note which strategies feel right and focus on those.
If you have only one big takeaway from this video, that’s a step in the right direction.
And remember, time is one of the most important commodities for getting to the next level of your writing career.
You need time to write, develop new projects, get to meetings and network. And then you need time to deliver on the projects you commit to. Remember, these strategies can open up 3-5 hours a week that you didn’t even know you had.
In my next video, I’ll share the most effective way to use the extra hours you’ve unlocked.
This includes simple steps for creating a long-term plan to finish your most important projects and take your career to the next level. If you follow these steps, you may see the projects that have been sitting on your to-do list for months ending up on your IMDb page.
You can finally go to bed thinking, “I’ feel great about how I spent my day.” This is an unpredictable business, but the way to feel fulfilled no matter what life throws at you is to know you’re nailing the things that are in your control.
Please leave me a comment below and let me know what your biggest takeaway was from today’s video. I ’d love to hear from you.
See you in the next video!