Ep 198: Next-Level Writer – Organize, Schedule, and Enact Your Plan to Level Up

[Ep 198] Some people love to sit down and just start writing with no worries whether or not the work is moving them toward their goals. Others love to spend time making lists, making plans, setting everything up, scheduling down to the minute—devoting so much time to those tasks that they struggle to get around to the actual work of writing. Let’s figure out how to do both. Let’s find a balance. Let’s set ourselves up with a plan that helps us truly move toward goals and level up, and then commit to the work, so we can meet deadlines, accomplish tasks, and make progress. There are three things we need to do: we need to organize ourselves, schedule the work, and enact the plan. Organize, schedule, enact. Each takes a slightly different mindset and represents a slightly different role. It’s as if you’re three people at the same time. Organize As you organize yourself, you’re like a project manager and you’ll need a project management setup. Project Management Tasks You’ll want to make checklists to create repeatable processes and routines that fit into your days. Say no to things holding you back, so you can simplify and prune to focus and level up. Make sure the plan you’re organizing supports your primary goals—that one-year and the three-month goal, but you’ll also want to break down big projects into smaller tasks and schedule those, as well. This is part of the reverse engineering I’ve talked about in the past. Take all of that—the one-year goal, the three-month goal, and all the ways you’ve broken it down into—and back up. What tasks need to be done in each of the three months of the three-month goal? Then move to the month ahead of you and break that into two-week chunks. Move down to the week ahead, then, finally, break down your tasks and goals into days so you know what you’re doing today on any given day—always knowing you are steadily, intentionally moving toward goals. Project Management Systems To organize all of this, you need some kind of system. It can be as complex or simple, or digital or analog as you like. Some people use Trello, Evernote, Google Docs, spreadsheets, bullet journals, or a three-ring binder. It’s up to you. Use what works for you. And stick with it, because you'll invest time into organizing all these projects and all this content, goals, and tasks. You’ll input a lot of information into your system. To repeat that in a different system because you abandoned the first one after a week will simply delay the work of writing. Set up a system and stick with it for at least a month. Don’t give up too soon. Schedule After you organize all of your tasks and goals, it’s time to actually schedule. This represents another role: the scheduler who does the admin work. Choose Your Calendar Pick a calendar that suits you just as you picked a project management system that suited you. Ideally, this calendar will weave together your personal appointments to accurately reflect your availability. Plus, you’re already using that calendar and you’ll have it with you at all times. Many people like the visual effect of huge wall calendars, hanging a poster-size calendar for every month and filling a whole wall. They use Post-Its for projects, tasks, and goals, because the Post-Its can be color-coded to represent each item and can move around as needed if something in your life needs to be moved around and adjusted. You might consider a digital calendar option, however, because most will sync with multiple devices and you’ll always have this pocket assis...