What’s Working Now: Our Real-Life Writing Rhythms

This post was adapted from Writing Off Social: The Podcast, Episode 84. You can listen in here!

Welcome to the final blog post of Season 6! We’re wrapping up this season with a topic we love revisiting: how we structure our days and find rhythms that actually work for our writing lives.

Both of us have recently gone through major transitions. Mary K. launched her editing business (Tiller Editing), which requires dedicated hours while also working for Writing Off Social and being a wife and mom to two active kids. Meanwhile, Sandy sent her youngest to college, removing the structure of the traditional school day for the first time in 21 years.

Two Kinds of Writers (and Maybe You’re a Third)

We’re in very different life stages, and we represent two different kinds of listeners: those who are trying to fit their writing into an already full life (Mary K.) and those with more flexibility who are trying to structure their days in a way that keeps them focused and intentional so time doesn’t just slip through their fingers (Sandy).

But we also recognize there’s a third kind of listener we can’t fully represent—the person working full-time while trying to write in the cracks of a 40-hour work week and care for a busy family. If that’s you, please know: we see you! We hope that, despite not matching your situation exactly, something we share today will unlock an “aha” moment.

Sandy’s Journey: From Structure to Wide Open Prairie

For the last couple of years—up until late spring—Sandy operated on a Theme Day schedule: 

  • Monday was Balanced MomCast Day
  • Tuesday was Home Day
  • Wednesday was Deep Work, and 
  • Thursday and Friday were for interviews and camera days. 

She worked only during the school day, basically 9 am to 3 pm.

That worked really well for a long time. But then this summer brought major shifts: Her youngest graduated high school, ending the school routine they had lived by for the last 20 years, her husband was downsized (and subsequently took over household chores like his laundry and dinner prep), and she hired someone to clean the house for the first time in years.

Another game-changer: Instead of conducting interviews on The Balanced MomCast, Sandy decided to read through her latest book, Mom, You’re Amazing! And Other Things I Want to Tell You. This reduced her podcast production time from 6 hours per episode to just 1 hour, giving her back a whole workday each week.

Mary K. puts it perfectly: “Gaining back a whole workday while promoting your book every week and building an audio version of said book, AND maintaining your second podcast, feels like magical math.”

Then came November. Suddenly, her daughter was off at college, her husband had taken a new job 2,400 miles away, all of the speaking engagements she had been preparing for all fall were done, and Sandy was faced with more time than she’d ever had in her entire life—and almost no structure. 

As Mary K. observed, the word Sandy kept using during this time was “untethered.” No normal guardrails of timing to keep the day moving from one activity to the next. Just a wide open prairie of time, which can feel more than a little overwhelming.

Sandy’s Process for Finding New Rhythms

So how did Sandy approach rebuilding from scratch? She worked through a simple but intentional process:

Clarifying goals and priorities: Writing Off Social remains a huge work priority, along with Substack writing, exploring her next book, and daily fitness.

Keeping what still works: Thursdays and Fridays as coaching/interview/camera days were working well, so those stayed.

Naming what’s missing: After 20 years of waking to a 5 am alarm, Sandy decided to let her body wake naturally. She and Mary K. started a weekly staff meeting. And crucially: on writing days, her phone stays in the bedroom until she’s written for 1-2 hours.

Defining boundaries: Sandy’s biggest challenge is STOPPING work. A firm shutdown routine became essential: crossing everything off her to-do list, writing out tomorrow’s tasks, closing her planner, cleaning off her desk, shutting down her computer, saying “Bye Office!” (thanks to Jennifer Dukes Lee), then walking to the mailbox—or as she calls it, “walking home from work.”

Matching work to energy: Most of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday became available, with mornings being peak creative time.

Sandy’s Current Rhythm

Summer Schedule (Monday-Wednesday):

  • Wake up between 6-7 am (no alarm!)
  • First hour with coffee and Jesus
  • Walk for an hour or strength workout
  • Eat and shower
  • Morning household chores
  • Seated at her desk by 11 am or noon with fresh coffee
  • Work until 5-6 pm

Not Summer (Monday-Wednesday):

  • Wake up at 6 or 7
  • Coffee and Jesus hour
  • Write for 2 hours (phone stays in the bedroom!)
  • Walk/workout
  • Eat and morning chores
  • Another work round from 1-3 pm
  • Break for a shower
  • Final round of easy admin work from 4-5 pm (depending on the day)

Thursdays and Fridays (year-round):

  • Wake up at 6 or 7
  • Coffee and Jesus
  • Workout
  • Shower with makeup and hair (cameras!)
  • Seated at desk by 10:30
  • Usually done by 3 or 4 (the peopling is exhausting!)

Mary K.’s Journey: When a Side Hustle Becomes a Business

Mary K.’s process felt unwieldy at first, but it ultiately resulted in a solid, sustainable workflow. After launching Tiller Editing, she needed to find permanent homes on her calendar for actual editing work, administrative tasks, and marketing—and she had no idea where to fit it all in.

Mary K.’s Process for Finding New Rhythms

Realized something was wrong: After several weeks of feeling behind, struggling to keep up, and having to work weekends, Mary K. woke up to the fact that something fundamental had changed. This wasn’t a temporary glitch—she needed to reassess everything.

Identified what had changed: It wasn’t just an influx of interest after launching, but all the preparation work and processes needed before and after launch—intake forms, proposal templates, software upgrades, and ongoing maintenance. She also started a twice-a-month Substack newsletter for marketing. The whole business blossomed overnight.

Identified what needs to get done: She made a list of everything that needed calendar space each week: administrative tasks, writing her newsletter, deep editing time, client calls, and Writing Off Social work.

Asked ChatGPT for help: Mary K. explained her available time (M-F, 8 am-3 pm, with an hour lunch break), stipulated that Thursdays and Fridays were Writing Off Social days, and Monday mornings included a staff meeting, then outlined all the other tasks needing time slots. ChatGPT helped her figure it out through several iterations.

One of the coolest ways Mary K. uses ChatGPT now: She’s given it all her editing rules, how long editing takes, and how much time she has each week. When a new client approaches her, she inputs the word count and editing type, and ChatGPT tells her how much time it will take and when she could reasonably start and finish based on current projects. It’s incredible.

A Word About AI

We’re experimenting with AI in our business and personal work, but we have a hard line: we will never use AI to “create” something and pass it off as our writing. This podcast script, our individual Substack newsletters, our weekly Writing Off Social emails—that’s all us.

What we ARE using it for: reformatting podcast scripts into blog posts (still our original content, just reformatted), creating strong subject lines and podcast titles, writing podcast descriptions based on content we’ve created, analyzing survey results for action steps, and final proofreading with suggestions for clarity and flow.

In short: we’re using AI as a personal assistant, not as a content creator.

Mary K. asks herself two questions before using AI:

  1. Would I be embarrassed if someone discovered I used AI for this? She wouldn’t be embarrassed about turning a podcast into a blog post, but she’d be mortified if people learned she used AI to write her Substack newsletter (so, she doesn’t).
  2. If I allow AI to do this, am I cheating myself of formative work? Writing and crafting and wrestling with words is formative. Using your brain to get the phrase just right matters! It builds creative muscle. But asking AI to organize tasks and time constraints into a viable calendar? Not cheating herself of formative work.

Mary K.’s Current Rhythm

Mary K. still has kids in school full-time, five days a week, and has someone clean her house every two weeks. So she can commit to a full work week, Monday-Friday, 8 am-3 pm.

Daily Personal Schedule: 

  • Wake at 5:15, coffee with Jesus from 5:30-6:30
  • Get the kids up and off to school 6:30-7:45
  • Breakfast 7:45-8:00
  • Work 8 am-3 pm
  • Pick up kids and do homework 3-4:30, 
  • Chill/hang with kids/read 4:30-5:30 
  • Dinner/dishes/bath/bed 5:30-8:30, 
  • Asleep by 9:30.

Work Schedule:

  • Mondays: Admin 8-9 am (emails, Voxer, Substack), Writing Off Social tasks and staff meeting 9-11 am, lunch 11-12, deep editing 12-3 pm
  • Tuesdays: Personal errands and volunteer meetings 8-11 am, lunch 11-12, deep editing 12-3 pm
  • Wednesdays: Admin 8-9 am, deep editing until lunch, editing tasks or coaching calls with editing clients in the afternoon
  • Thursdays and Fridays: Admin 8-9 am, then open for Writing Off Social calls, tasks, and recording sessions

The one thing that couldn’t fit into her work week: writing and editing her Substack newsletter. She blocked out two hours over the weekend—usually 6-8 am Saturday, but flexible as needed. She also reserves time on Sunday evening to plan out the next week.

Finding What Works for You

Whether you’re in a season of abundant time trying to create structure, or a season of limited time trying to fit everything in, the key is being intentional about your goals, honest about what’s working (and what’s not), and willing to adjust as you go.

We’ll be taking a break from the podcast until April so we can focus on the students in our January cohort and our Course graduates participating in The Coaching Club. We already have several amazing interviews lined up for Season 7! Be sure to hit follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening so new episodes drop quietly into your podcast app when we start up again.

This post was reformatted from our original transcript byClaude and edited for accuracy by Mary K.