A Notebook of Productivity - An Attempt to Get It Together

 

I’m always struggling to get my shit together and be more productive in life. Most especially my writing.

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, then you already know this. I’ve talked about this in several posts on this blog.

Back in May, I wrote a post about all the things I was working on. As always, I got lazy and didn’t really work on any of it. It was also back in May when I came up with the idea for my latest story, The Worst Man. That story sort of took my attention over everything else I was planning on doing, like learning how to build eBooks without an online converter, and other things I talked about in that post.

As a result, when it came time to publish that story, I yet again used the Reedsy editor to convert my story to ePub. Which is fine. I love the Reedsy converter, and I was even thinking that maybe I’d just stick with it.

Except when I went to do the final conversion, there was a hiccup on Reedsy’s side of things, and I didn’t get my ePub to convert and download when I wanted it. Which is fine, those things happen when you rely on online services. I don’t have a single bad word to say about Reedsy’s service. But it reminded me how unreliable online services can be.

The overall takeaway is - I needed to stop being lazy.

Enter the Notebook

After I published The Worst Man, I got myself a plain single-subject spiral notebook. You know, the kind they have on sale at back school time dirt cheap. Also, a simple Bic pen to write with (again, on sale for dirt cheap during back to school time). In other words, nothing fancy.

In the notebook, I laid out everything I needed to do to stop being lazy with writing and publishing my stories. Things like ebook conversion, cover design, this website, etc.

When I’ve attempted this in the past, I’ve used loose-leaf paper to put in a binder or a fancy dedicated planner of sorts. What usually happens is I don’t put the loose paper in the binder like I should (because I’m lazy) and if I do, I don’t really look at it like I should because the binder is bigger and more cumbersome than a simple notebook. Sometimes the planners I use don’t have room for everything I need to get out of my head or a dedicated space for that.

With the notebook, it’s easier to keep it by my side and randomly write in it, and flip back through it to see what I have. Maybe this is just me, but it seems to work so far. 

Already, I have some things crossed off my list that I put in that notebook.

What Goes in the Notebook So Far

I’m not using any kind of dedicated method, like the Bullet Journal method or anything like that. Just my own method. I’m sure it will be trial and error for a while.

What I’ve done so far is list a category of something I need to work on. For example: Cover Design.

I make a bulleted list of what is working for me and what isn’t. Like the fact that I do most of my cover design in Gimp, then switch over to the free version of Canva to do the fonts on my cover. However, since Canva is online, what happened with my recent Reedsy download could happen in Canva. So I made a list of things I need to do or figure out how to do 100% in Gimp.

Then I list another category, like ebook conversion, and do the same thing. Listing what I want to do and how to get it done. Once I had all the categories I could think of, I made dedicated to-do lists for each category.

A simple method. Nothing complicated. Sort of journal and to-do list in one place.

I’m happy to report that as of now, this is working for me.

What Pushed Me to do This

With each story I write and publish, I learn something. Sometimes the lessons stick, and other times not so much. Well, okay, mostly on the not-so-much side of things.

Every aspect of writing The Worst Man challenged me, and I learned a ton of what to do and not to do. I wanted these lessons to stick, which is why I started this notebook.

With all of this said, I’m not only getting things like ebook conversion underway, but I’m knee deep in writing the next story in the Wedding Troubles series. If I can keep my productivity up, this story should be out sometime in October.

So if you’re having trouble staying productive with something, maybe this will work for you too? Or not. Who knows? I’m learning that simple is often better than detailed and complicated.

Will this method work for me? I dunno. But I will report back at a later date and let you know.