Being Held Accountable

One of the difficulties of working as a writer is staying motivated enough to write. Having a client assignment helps, because you have an order to fulfill by a specific deadline. But, sometimes it seems that there are so  many life events happening, and it's easy enough to let yourself be overwhelmed and say:"I don't have time to write."  So over time, I've put in place a number of mechanisms that helps keep me on track. Here are some of them:

1. Develop a monthly plan - each month I update my records of projects I'm contracted for that month, projects that are coming through and self-initiated projects I want to do. That way I know what I need to do each month and what it takes to do it. 

2. Review each week and plan for the next - Every Friday I review the previous weeks' projects and update my schedule for the next week. Sometimes I do this alone, and sometimes I do this with a friend who is a small business owner. Her participation helps bring some objectivity to the process.

3. Share my schedule with a friend - I found that doing a "To Do" list was easy enough. The difficulty was sticking to it. So every day I email my to do list to a friend and she reviews it ( I do the same for her). That way, she can give me a talking to if a line item keeps cropping up and doesn't get finished/if I'm feeling down that day/not motivated to work on a specific task.

So what do you do to stay on track with your projects (whether writing related or not)?