A Lesson in Ambiguity

Across from my desk are two whiteboards: the one on the left lists my current quarterly goals, the one of the right lists the current month's tasks to hit those quarterly goals.

On my desk are two legal pads: one lists the current week's tasks, the other lists the daily tasks to hit the week's tasks to hit the monthly tasks to hit the quarterly goals.

I also have a four-by-six lined Post-it note pad that lists that specific day's tasks to hit the weekly tasks to... I think you get the idea.

I'm constantly tweaking how I go throughout my day. I have to decide how and when to handle administrative work required to run a profitable business. I have to keep in mind what my energy levels are and their effects on when and how long I do direct labor on editing projects.

The point is, I love my lists. I love that dopamine hit that comes from checking off or crossing out something because it's done to my satisfaction. Routines, patterns, efficient and effective processes?

Those. Are. My. Jam.

For the first six months of 2023, though, I used not a single list. I barely used Post-it notes. That stack of notebooks and legal pads every writer or editor collects at some point, promising to use them once they've found the "perfect" pen? Yeah, no. I was too busy trying to keep my head above the quagmire of life. I spent hours, days, months waiting on that one email that would lead to a day job interview, that one phone or video interview that would lead to a day job offer.

It wasn't until mid-June, when I turned my attention to full-time freelance editing and nonfiction and fiction writing, that I began to categorize and organize my daily priorities, virtual meetups and coffee chats, online social events, editing projects, and the occasional day or three off. Time management is a required quality for solopreneurs, especially a neurodivergent one. I like things the way I like them. It's a nice and quirky feature of living with both bipolar 2 and autism.

Despite my lists, my reminder notifications, my digital calendars, there's occasionally something that goes wrong. For the scientifically minded, experiments can be controlled for but so much. There's always a 98.4% chance an unknown variable will show up and skew your much-anticipated results. (That statistic is most assuredly not made up, and I resent the implication that it might be.)

When you're so used to planning for every moment of your day, an unknown variable can very much lead to a physical or mental shutdown. How did I avoid these shutdowns as much as possible? I'm glad you asked.

I Gave Up Control

There are days when I check off every single item on that day's task list. I'm not necessarily a workaholic, but I'm not opposed to consecutive 12- to 14-hour workdays, either, especially when I'm on a tight deadline. I work best under the pressure of that deadline, because there's no longer any room in my brain to focus on anything but that project.

Then there are days where all I do is take my cocktail of meds in the morning and evening, nap, and spend the day on my couch with my dogs and my Kindle. That physical and mental break is what allows me to work those consecutive 12- to 14-hour workdays, after all.

For me, both days are equally productive because both days give me emotional satisfaction.

• If my brain says we need to get this 30,000-word proofread done by midnight, and it's already 2 p.m.? We're getting that proofread done by midnight.
• If my body says we're taking a nap, we're shutting all this **** down and taking that nap.

The best part of being a full-time entrepreneur, a full-time freelance editor, a full-time author? I decide when I work and what I work on. Giving up the control it takes to plan for every contingency actually has given me more power to plan for the contingencies most likely to happen.

And when something happens that wasn't planned for? I know how to bend with the blow without breaking.

Admission: I had to rewrite this article. I like to create my content up to a week in advance. More if the universe aligns. However, thanks to a slip in concentration, I accidentally posted the article early. Thinking that deleting it as one of my articles would put it back into draft mode, I did just that.

Note: It did not put the article back into the draft version.

Know what I did next? I shut down my laptop and ended my workday. I wasn't in the right mindset to pen out the article again, let alone did I have the physical energy. It was a wrench in the task list, but it wasn't world-ending.

You have to be willing to acknowledge your mistakes, give yourself grace when you make those mistakes, and try again the next day. That only comes from giving up control. There's a saying that man plans, and the universe laughs.

I plan for what I can and try to stay flexible enough to handle the unknown variables without breaking. More often than not, the universe doesn't laugh at me for it.

Shannon Scott is the founder and owner of Shannon S. Scott Editing Services, where they work on "improving your story one word at a time" through writing coaching, fiction manuscript evaluations, fiction developmental editing, and nonfiction line/copyediting. Shannon opened their business with the intention of working with self-publishing and independent authors in the LGBTQIA+ romance/romantic suspence and mystery/thriller/suspense genres (specifically military/espionage, police procedurals, and psychological thrillers. They are also experienced in business, proposal, and technical documentation line and copyediting. Shannon offers free consultations for each of their editing services via their website.