Balanced Or Balancing?

by Nancy Sackheim

When I queried "how much should you write daily to be productive, Google came back with over four million answers to choose from.  My next question "how do writers balance their lives?" returned a whopping 48 million results.  I wonder how many of them actually work.

I recently came across a blogpost from several years ago by a writer, who was a wife, mom of twins aged 9 and a 7-year-old, and she also worked full time.  She had developed a strategy to ensure writing productivity for the month she was off work and her children were not in any structured summer activities.

Her proposed daily schedule:

8 am to 10am write at a  nearby coffee shop

10am to 11am breakfast with the family

11am to 1pm take the children to the library, set them up with some sort of project or activity while she writes for two hours

1 pm to 2:30pm back home for lunch and relaxation with the kids

2:30pm to 4:30pm retreat to home office for internet research, email, and more writing

4:30pm to 6:00pm take children to the swimming pool or the park

6:00 to 8:30 dinner and time with the kids

8:30pm to 9:00pm bath and bedtime

9:00pm to 9:30pm some form of exercise

The rest of her evening to be spent relaxing with her husband

The writer felt it was a solid, if not foolproof plan because her husband was also off for the month and could take over the cooking, grocery shopping, the laundry, and all other household chores.  She promised to share the results of her strategy at month's end.  As far as I can tell, she never posted another thing.

Is there a successful strategy for having a balanced life and being a productive writer?  I haven't found it.  Have you?