Some work creates. Some work maintains. Both need a spot on the calendar.
My day job is teaching call centers how to manage their people. That means forecasting how many calls are coming, scheduling the right number of agents, and making sure those agents are actually where the schedule says they are. In my world we call that last part “adherence.”
It is not the kind of thing people write poetry about. But it turns out it’s the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten.
Two kinds of work
Every call center has two kinds of time. There’s time on the phones, where the customer is waiting, and nothing else matters. And there’s everything else: training, coaching, meetings, email, the stuff that keeps the place running.
A good schedule protects the phone time first. If you let the meetings eat it, the queue backs up, customers wait, and everybody has a bad day.
Writing is the same. There’s making work: drafting, imagining, solving the story problem that’s been bugging you for a week. And there’s maintaining work: email, social posts, formatting, chasing down the ISBN, answering the festival coordinator.
Making work needs your full brain. Maintaining work can happen with half of it. The mistake most of us make is letting the half-brain work eat the full-brain hours.
Forecast your energy, not just your time
In workforce management, we don’t just ask “How many hours are there?” We ask “When does the volume hit?”
You have volume too. It’s called energy. For most people, the sharpest hours are the first few of the day. Mine are early morning, before the house wakes up.
That window sets the tone for everything after it. If the morning goes sideways, whether it’s busy, chaotic, or just plain crappy, the rest of the day usually follows it right off the road.
And I hate to admit this, but the biggest thief isn’t the chaos. It’s my phone. If I start doom scrolling early, I’ve ruined the whole day before breakfast. It’s addictive, and just about every social media app is built to keep you scrolling. In call center terms, that’s an unscheduled break that eats your best interval of the day.
So put the making work where the energy peaks, and push the maintaining work to the afternoon slump. Answer email at 3 p.m., not 6 a.m.
Adherence is a kindness
Agents sometimes hear “adherence” and think we’re trying to babysit them. The good managers explain it differently: the schedule is a promise. If you’re on the phones when you said you’d be, your teammates don’t get crushed.
Your writing schedule is a promise too. Mostly to yourself. Sometimes to readers who are waiting on the next book.
It doesn’t have to be a lot. One protected block, the same time, most days. Show up for it the way you’d show up for a shift.
A simple writer’s schedule, call-center style
| Block | Work type | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Peak energy (early morning) | Making | Draft the next chapter |
| Mid-day break | Light making | Outline, notes, rewrite one scene |
| Afternoon slump | Maintaining | Email, social posts, admin |
| Evening | Off | Family. Seriously. |
The story under the story
I used to think creative people needed freedom and business people needed structure. Teaching schedules for a living cured me of that.
Structure is what gives creativity somewhere to land. A river without banks is just a swamp.
So if you’ve got a book in you, don’t wait for inspiration to clock in. Put it on the schedule. Then show up for your shift.