I’m finding it a little hard to believe how anal retentive I’ve become in the last month. When things in my personal life went askew, I surrounded myself with a rigid schedule to further my freelance copywriting business, and I’m afraid to admit it gives me comfort.

I scheduled an hour or so in the morning to rise, shower, dress, talk to family, shuffle around (yep, that’s how it reads on the schedule) and the like. The next thing on my daily list is to post a blog entry. After that I’m scheduled to spend several minutes rewriting my to do list from the day before. I keep two types of notepads — one for to dos, and a spiral one for notes from projects (see the picture). In the project notepad, I’ve even taken to color coding and paper clipping the various notes together to keep things organized.

I’m scheduled to spend 4-5 hours on billable projects each day, but many days I switch those hours with marketing/follow-time, for which I had scheduled 1-2 hours daily.

I spend another two hours each night at they gym, with an hour for a workout and an hour luxuriating in the saunas and hot tub.

I scheduled time to work on a book I want to write, but I haven’t delved in 100 percent yet. I keep flipping back and forth between fiction ideas and a couple of nonfiction projects. And I haven’t started anything.

Right now I keep to the schedule at least 6 if not 7 days a week, since every day is Tuesday. The strict schedule gives me comfort and helps me continue to make a living while filling the hours that might be spent having a personal life.