My online stories
At the beginning of every month I create a fresh start for my writing and creative projects. I have a little brainstorm, reset my task board, and take note of all the relevant stats for the previous month.
Click the link to see the video that shares how I go about doing it so I’m inspired and motivated for the month ahead.
This is a video of my monthly planning system. It shows the exact steps I take to work towards my projects every month by dividing the projects up into individual ‘bite sized’ tasks.
This system has helped me enormously over the past few months. It has made me more productive, it enables me to fit work in around my children (particularly at the moment) and has given me confidence as I can physically see I’m chipping away towards my big projects. It also helps me get started on big projects that feel a bit overwhelming - which can lead to procrastination.
It's very easy when working on the BIG WRITING PROJECTS to feel you aren't achieving anything on a daily, weekly or, even, monthly basis. I often get to the end of a writing day and think - what have I done today? It’s a depressing feeling, especially as I feel I haven’t stopped all day.
Now I know for a fact this is sometimes because I spend time on tasks that aren’t important. I’m busy doing non-relevant things that don’t further me towards my goals. With time and practice this is happening less often but it can still happen. Then I get disheartened and I might then lose hours scrolling through social media. More time lost.
So for 2020 I've decided to create a bullet journal with a tracker and a writing log to record all the writing I do.
Last quarter I started a new way of organising my to-do list for my writing and creative projects. I’d been inspired by the writer Sarra Cannon of the YouTube channel, Heart Breathings, with how much she achieves, how she was so focused and the way she organises herself. On her YouTube channel Sarra described the way she would focus on just a few goals each quarter. Then, in order to achieve these goals she would break them down into projects then divide them up even further into tasks. Her tasks she would write on post-its and place them on her kanban board in her office. Once a task had been completed she would transfer to the other side of the board.
This looked genius. So I investigated further and so began my own system where I organise myself in terms of goals, projects and tasks.
Now this was something I’d been doing naturally with my notebooks but not in such an organised, methodological or structured way. And I certainly hadn’t been looking at my deep goals OR breaking that massive goal into smaller, less overwhelming ones that were achievable in just a few months. I was also trying to do everything all at once. And getting in a muddle, overwhelmed and stressed. In addition if I had a break from my writing I would be put off getting back to it as I would lose where I was in the process and soon it would feel like a huge mountain I had to climb - so I’d put it off some more.
Going back to last quarter I set up my two goals. To gain 1000 subscribers on YouTube and to get my novel ready to send off to agents and my essays written monthly so by the end of the year I’d have enough to self-publish. I talk about how I got on in detail on my latest video below but this method of breaking it all down into tasks meant that I achieved my YouTube goal with just a few days to spare! I didn’t achieve my writing goals but I have made massive progress so I am delighted with that.
This quarter I am setting myself three goals. But my writing ones are not as big as last quarter as I’ve learnt from that! I’m looking forward to the work I’ve set for myself over the next three months - have a look in the video below.
Back at the beginning of January I wrote a post and recorded a video looking at what my goals for 2019 were and the projects I would be doing in order to get there.
And because I’m easily distracted by the online noise and get lost going down the wrong track and because I wanted to create a record of how I’m getting on so I can look back (and hopefully see how far I’ve come) I decided to create another video one month into 2019 to see how I’ve been getting on.
My big overarching goal was to create an income from my online writing and creativity. I wanted to do this in a few ways:
1) by creating really good, to the best of my ability, writing and online content
2) by exploring new avenues (sharing my knowledge, email support, self-publishing to name but a few)
3) by treating my writing and creativity as a business (and not putting things off until I ‘feel like it’).
4) by NOT being a sleazy salesy ‘buy my stuff’ kind of person.
Click to see the post and watch the video.
Last year I did a lot. Or rather, last January and February I did a lot then I drifted for a while until September to the beginning of December where I exceeded anything I’d ever done in the past.
It was rather thrilling to sell a course, to create a book club, to see my blog stats grow, to hear what people said to me (nice things!) about my IGTV then YouTube videos. And to get so much support on Patreon was the biggest shock to me. I was so ‘lifted’ by all the messages, DMs, blog comments (though I know it’s tricky to comment on this blog). And everyone who subscribed to me on YouTube. SO grateful. Thank you.
There are times during every year where I find I just stop. I’ve always ignored it and thought ‘this year it’ll be different.’ It isn’t. There are two clear times are during the summer - July and August then again in December.
So I am going to learn from this. To plan my year - not strictly - but to take into account when I need to rest and do my thinking time.
Because during August 2018 and December 2017 and December 2018 I had, after a ‘creative rest’ breakthroughs in what I want to do. In December 2017 I had an idea for my course, in the summer I decided to up my game, become more productive and take on more projects and this December I’ve worked out that my projects, or rather some of my projects are not aligned with my biggest goal.
My biggest goal being not to become published - which is what I always thought it was - but to create a financially and creatively rewarding business from my writing and online creativity.
So simple. Yet it took me a while getting here. This means that my blog is no longer going to be written three (and sometimes four) times a week. Instead it is going to be one post a week. And my focus instead is going to be on other things.
I explain more in my video:
