One of the first things I learned in my early days of being a news reporter was to be efficient with time. My story’s deadline was my enemy and, for the first few stories, I was able to carry out my mission of booking interviews, looking for facts and statistics, writing and editing my stories. It wasn’t necessarily a hard thing to do, as it was more about going through a mental checklist of necessary items to fulfill before publishing a story. But when I started to take on more stories, had to laser-focus on my time.

The process of writing several stories in one week looked more like a Gantt Chart, where each story had its moving parts. Suddenly, I found myself thinking about the nitty-gritty. How much time would it take to walk from Point A to Point B if I parked at Lot C? What’s the best way to schedule interviews A, B and C if I needed to be at the office for side-by-side edits at 5pm? As I became better at managing my time, I was able to hone my skills at being a writer, and it’s still a skill I carry to this day when designing and developing websites. If you want to get things done, be accountable for every minute.