Episode 67: How do you keep track of progress?

In this week’s episode, JP and Crys talk all about the tools they use to track progress and how their methods change as their workload does. 

Question of the week: How do you track your progress? What can we steal from you? Share your answer here!

Don’t miss our weekly check in on Patreon (it’s public!) where we talk about what we’re currently learning, any thoughts we missed in last week’s episode, and our plans for this week!

Show Notes

Your Book, Your Brand by Dana Kaye

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Transcript

Crys: Hello friends. And welcome to the Write Away Podcast. It is October 27th, 2021, as we are recording. This is episode 67. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost…

JP: JP Rindfleisch.

Crys: Oh, JP. It is been two weeks, a week and a half since I have seen you for the last time.

JP: No, don’t say that. No. I refuse.

Crys: I told Josh that he needs to put on your calendar that you’re coming to Costa Rica in March. Just so you know.

JP: Okay.

Crys: It’ll be miserable up where you are in March. You’ll want to get away. It’s great down in Costa Rica. We’ll take you to hot springs. It’ll be great.

JP: Yeah. I will try and figure it out.

Crys: Yeah. How has your week and a half since the Editor Workshop Certification… I blank on what words used to describe it every time.

JP: The Three-Story Method Editor Certification.

Crys: Thank you.

JP: I got it. It has been good. So I’ve launched my author services. I’ve had another client, so that’s been a couple of paid clients and then a couple of free clients that I’ve had before, just to prove the concept. And I have a couple of prospects in the works, so all of that is going swimmingly. Yeah. And then the day job threw me over to a different state and I’m working some weird night hours, which is great. And this weekend I have a funeral and a wedding. And then I have to come back for work.

Crys: Sounds, I was going to say, like a romcom. I don’t think romcom, sounds like a cozy mystery waiting to happen.

JP: I think so. I don’t know. It’s just, do you want emotions? Here you go.

Crys: No, take them back.

JP: Yeah. It’s been interesting, but even with like the madness of the work, I have been keeping a checklist, which has been the best decision I have made because I can look at this checklist, I can see, okay, what do I need to do next? And I can check those things off. And that has been helping keep my brain in the right mindset when I am ready to do the writer stuff.

Crys: Oh, that would have been the perfect segue.

JP: But I have to give an update from you.

Crys: I know. Okay. So New Orleans was fabulous. Love New Orleans. We recorded last week, right? When did we record?

JP: I honestly don’t remember.

Crys: I think it was early Thursday morning. Like five o’clock Thursday morning. When I was still in the midst of made the worst decision of my life to have two events four days apart. Thursday afternoon. I did not feel the same way, but Thursday morning, I did feel that.

So in the last week, New Orleans was lovely, I really liked there. It wasn’t freezing. That was a bonus. And I really want to go back and rent like a downtown French quarter house at some point and really delve into all of the insanity of the history of New Orleans. But that’s another time for sure. And then we drove up to New York. We did it in two days. It took 23 hours of drive time or of travel time. The second day was about twice as long as it ought to have been because it was raining the entire time. But we got home safe and we’re figuring out what to do with life when we’re going back to Costa Rica.

I’m basically waiting until Friday to hear if they’re going to approve vaccines for kiddos. If they are, and they have a schedule, that’ll change my date. If they don’t have that information, then we are just getting back to Costa Rica. It is time.

JP: Yes it is. But it’s been fantastic being able to see you these past three months and I’m pretty sad that I don’t get to see you next month.

Crys: I know, that was a good schedule we had.

JP: It was very nice. I liked that. It needs to happen more often. I just need to live in Costa Rica.

Crys: Agreed.

We’re going to start a little writers commune.

JP: We do have some comments.

Crys: Excellent.

JP: So I don’t exactly remember, Janet, if this is a double one, then hello again. But this one is from Episode 59: How Do You Manage Different Seasons Of Being An Author? And she needed this discussion. She has the have to get money all the time mindset and it has set her back on her author journey. And this year she struggled because thought part of her writing identity would be locked into contributing financially to her household through writing. She’s definitely someone who shuts down with an earning deadline instead of being that driver to be entrepreneurial. And she thinks that she gets energized by working with others on the same deadline. So yeah, this was really interesting hearing this and I totally agree with Janet, that it’s frustrating when you have that contributing mindset, but sometimes no.

Crys: Yeah. It’s really important to know what makes us freeze up and not create the things we want to create.

JP: Definitely. Janet, you are a wonderful writer. I know this so keep on going. Mr. Snyder messaged us in October, so a few days ago. He’s on Episode 56, he’s a behind on the podcast. And he had a few thoughts on the show for How Do You Track Your World Building? He never thought to use the CBs for managing writing. And he’s going to delve into that a bit more to see how things work. Also he’s been beta testing Atticus from Dave Chesson in very early stages of development right now. And the nice thing is that it’s a browser app, so it works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and even Chromebook.

Yeah. So this is just another thought based off of what you had mentioned in that.

Crys: And that was our world building episode, right? Like how do we manage and track world building? Yeah, it’s interesting. It is really interesting just how different living circumstances lead people to like things that are like browser-based or downloadable differently because the fact that something is browser base is a hard negative for me because of how inconsistently I have had decent internet over the past. For instance, I have been in upstate New York and my internet is worse than it was in Costa Rica.

And I have had to leave my mother’s house and drive down into the town and use my phone as a hotspot. And it’s still not great internet, but it’s better than at the house. So a browser based thing generally is not ideal for me because I have no idea what my internet will be in a lot of my life.

But for those who live in the US and have great internet, like whether it’s on their phone or in their house and can be like, yeah, browser, excellent, I can open it on all my things. Yeah.

JP: Yeah. We’re very different.

Crys: Absolutely. But it’s just what you have available.

JP: Exactly. That’s very true. And we have one last one.

This is from episode 64. So a couple of episodes ago. And it is the, Which Is More Difficult: Starting Or Ending A Story? And this is from Juliet Fisher. She had to comment on this one only to tip her hat to Crys’s arranger. She’s seen it and been in awe and now she can name it. She’s an individualization and ideation. Those are her top two for Clifton strengths and she loves the beginning and the middle, but endings are a new and different. Once she knows what’s going to happen, it’s all an upward slog.

She strongly recommends Becca’s Stuck Podcast on being bored. It was a revelation about why she gets bored and also that she has to suck it up and muscle through. Sometimes whatever we want is on the other side of boredom and it’s okay to need to forge ahead. Totally agree.

Crys: It’s really interesting to me, like process versus results people. Like I’m very much a results person. Like I love getting to the result. I love getting to the point where the thing is now the thing I envisioned or better than the thing I envisioned. But process, this is not a negative thing at all. They just like doing every step of the way. And then once they can see what the end is going to be like, knowing what the end is, then they’re bored because there’s nothing new to discover. They just have to complete it.

Absolutely different strengths and weaknesses associated with each of those. And Juliet is really interesting because she struggled with her individualization a lot. We’ve had lots of talks about Clifton Strengths and I wonder if part of that is because she enjoys the figuring out part, but then once she knows something, it’s boring. I don’t know, maybe. Juliet, you’ll have to message me and tell me what you think.

JP: I think I’ve found that when I write something, there’s always like a fun, little kernel I can hook on to, even if I know where the story’s going, that I can refine and mold again. I find this through the editing process the most, but I really like finding ways of like, how can I turn that voice or how can I do something, and then that’s what keeps me moving ahead. I don’t know if that makes me more process focused or not, but I just wanted to toss it in there.

Crys: Yeah, for sure. And then everything’s a spectrum. Nobody is one thing or another.

Okay. So since you’ve robbed us of our beautiful segue, you mentioned your checklist. And our topic this week is: how do you track progress?

So first of all you said, right now you’re doing a checklist. Is that how you are tracking progress right now?

JP: Yeah, I’m really bad at tracking progress. And I’m probably not going to keep this up because I think I’ve mentioned several times that I’ve started a checklist and never kept them up. But right now it is working and I like it.

Crys: See, that’s what I find fascinating. So I am doing the exact same thing right now. I have, on my notes app, a checklist. It is ordered in priority. I don’t like doing it on paper because priority has changed so I can’t move things around. I love having my little notes app. And this is one of those things, it’s actually downloaded but it syncs between my computer, my phone, my tablet. Like the notes app is the same on all of those. So my checklist is the same on all of those.

And it ranks, I just move things around. As something increases in priority, it goes to the top of the list. If it decreases a priority, it moves down. And once it’s checked off, it disappears, or at least it goes down to the bottom. Because that’s exactly the same process I’m using right now is a checklist.

JP: I’ve been writing mine, so I can’t move it, but I like the idea. I’m just not going to do it. But I liked the idea of moving the priorities.

Crys: Yeah. Some people, if it goes into their phone it disappears forever and they will never remember. And that’s absolutely fair. But the thing I really like about it is so simple that if I remember something I have to do, all I have to do is put it on the checklist and then it is a thing that will be done at some point, or it will be decided at some point that I don’t have to do it and then it’ll get crossed off regardless. But if I think I might have to do it, it goes on the checklist.

JP: Yeah, I really want a better tracking progress, but at the same time, like I will just stop using certain apps if they’re not familiar with me. I think I use like a max of five apps and then that’s it. So instead, I’ve been writing them down and I will be looking at it for two to three days. And then I start a new page. That’s pretty much been my process for like the past two weeks.

Crys: Very bullet journal-y of you to move things forward to a new page and be like, okay, what are still relevant?

I am also the same in that no one process works forever for me. And it really frustrates me because I want to find the process that will work forever. But in the end, checklists in general are always the thing I come back to when I don’t have brain space to keep up with anything extra.

I really liked my notion process. And my notion process is that I basically have two to-do lists, two checklists. One is today’s list and one is just the dump list. And so every morning I would review the things I did the other day, move them into my archive, move new things over on the today list. And just have this visual of like things that I am prioritizing for today, things I want to do at some point. And then I also have my archive, so I can always look back when I’m like, oh, I haven’t done anything, I can look at my done list and see that I’ve done a lot.

And this works for me when I am working consistently and doing a lot. When I am not doing a lot, one, I’m not visiting the app often enough to refresh my brain. Two, the archive list, the done list, is so sparse that it is demoralizing and that’s where the simplicity of the checklist wins out when I am not working a lot.

JP: Yeah. I’ve noticed that like for these past few days, the reason I need a checklist is because like I make promos for all the Podcast and for the releases of the serial and I’ve had several different projects that I’m working on. So I need to make sure that I’m making some progress on there. So it’s like whenever I have an instance where my brain needs to be split into multiple projects for the day, then I need that checklist to make sure that I’m hitting the ones that are due within 24 hours and then making progress on the bigger pieces.

When I have one big project that I’m working on and nothing else is really in the side, then I don’t do the checklist because I know where I need to go. I don’t need a checklist to check off my progress for that day.

Crys: I often have several large projects going on at once. That can spread from like life things, to work things, writing things, admin things. And so often what I will do, when I’m stable in one place, which has not been like half the year, I will have sticky notes somewhere or a whiteboard that puts like the big projects as topic headers. Whether I use the whiteboard as my checklist or not, it keeps those big projects in front of me because sometimes I’m not working on that project every day or every week, but I need to know that’s a thing in progress. And so I need to have it visually in front of me or I forget it exists.

JP: Now, when I was doing edits for one of the books I was working on. I use the Kanban system and that worked out really well for me cause I was able to brain dump in this to do list. And then I was able to take this really long list that I was like, I don’t know where to start here, and pick out the tasks that I knew I could work on. And then I would work and I would look at just that list, which was sometimes five things to do. And then I would be able to check those off and then I could go back to that bigger list, pull over the more important ones. I found that system really helpful at that time.

Crys: So you want to know one of the really demoralizing reasons that doesn’t work for me. For some reason in apps, that particular list sometimes works for me, sometimes it doesn’t. I really like Trello for that. And I really like using that for Trello when there are multiple people working on a project and need to track that things are getting done and everyone’s doing the things they need to do.

I really like using Kanban, like on a white board where I can see things visually and like even have different colored sticky notes for different things. And the reason I have not been able to do this is that Costa Rica is so hot and humid the sticky notes will not stick. It’s so demoralizing.

JP: I need you to know that I also have that issue in my attic because Heath.

He rips everything off my walls. I had a whole whiteboard stuck to my wall. It was gone. So I know exactly your feeling, which is why I need that physical system, but I don’t have it. So I have to always revert back to my notebooks.

Crys: You know what though? I think that as I get more settled and I can invest in a second monitor that will always sit there. Then I might be able to make the digital version work for me. I think that’s actually the problem I have currently is I want it to be sitting there staring at me so that when I get distracted, I can glance at it. But right now, it requires a tab switch which disrupts flow far more.

JP: I like that idea. It needs to be something that’s off to the side. For me, at least. Because I don’t want to be looking at it when I’m working on the project, but I am a creature of pure distraction. So I’ll be like, what’s out the window, and then I’ll be like, oh, there’s my progress thing.

Crys: Yeah. Yes. I see that. Yeah, I could have it just next to my main monitor and be fine, I think. But thanks to Zach Bohannan who taught me how to use my iPad Pro as a second monitor, that has changed my life.

JP: Very nice. I think, yes, I will need to learn how to do that. It’ll be fantastic.

Crys: It’s so helpful. So amazingly helpful. I’m like, I can have a traveling two monitors now.

Other things that have worked for me in the past, so notion when I am working regularly. For word tracking, so some people don’t like word tracking, it sometimes works for me. And one of the things that when I’m really just having a hard time committing and getting words down, one of the things that can work for me is gamifying. And for the words is a writing game. You defeat monsters, you proceed on your quests, you collect items, you finished quests, you move forward, you unlock new places. It works great for me. So if you are a writer who also games in any way, shape or form, it can get me back into a writing habit when I’m struggling with it.

So that’s a way of tracking progress. It tracks your words for you. You can look at a calendar and see how many words you’ve written like over a month or like monthly. And then because you’re writing in the app or you’re pasting your words in to fight your monsters. There’s no extra step of having to be like, okay, copy, select, what is my word count, enter into pacemaker or whatever, another tracking app. There’s none of that, it’s built in. It’s the less steps something has the better.

JP: That’s very nice. I’m not very good at tracking, but that sounds very nice.

Crys: Yeah. Have you ever tried it out?

JP: I have, I’m not opposed to it, but for some reason, like I’m more interested in completing a scene or time, as opposed to words. And I think the words get too caught up in my head. So for me, it’s more about like just sitting down and doing the work.

Crys: There are a lot of monsters that are only time-based as well. And it’s just, when I look at it more of a game and say, okay, I’m going to play the game. Playing the game means I need to write. I find that more helpful there, like it’s a backdoor into getting my brain to be productive.

JP: Yeah. I see what you mean. That’s my I like the Pomodoro for that reason, because that’s like a way of committing to myself that you can handle 20 minutes or whatever. So yeah, I think I can do it in that sense.

Crys: And so one of the things that I have done when I am like regularly playing the game is I will often write outside of the game and so I will write my scene, write my chapter, and then I will go and I’ll queue up a bunch of monsters to fight and I’ll paste my chapter in once I start the fight and it will defeat all the monsters, it will register my words, and then I move on. Cheater hacks.

I think the easy question for us to ask our listeners this week is: how do you track your progress? AKA, what can we steal from you?

JP: That’s exactly the question, what can we steal from you?

Crys: All right. Thank you so much for joining us this week. And we are currently reading Dana Kaye’s, Your Book, Your Brand. We will be reading that next week after you hear this.

JP just showed me his pages of notes. I, per normal, have not even started the book yet. But I’m really excited. Dana’s talk at the Career Author Summit was great. It was informative. It wasn’t complicated, but it was useful. So I’m really excited to dive in this book. We’ve done a lot of branding discussion this year. And I don’t know that’s ever something that I’ll ever feel like I’m a full master at, because it feels like it’s psychology plus culture, and that is constantly changing.

JP: Yeah. Not to spoil too much, but it reminded me a lot of Wide for the Win, where it has a lot of very good, actionable steps at the beginning, and then a lot of really good resources at the end.

Crys: Excellent. If you would like to join us for that conversation you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com/writeawaypodcast where we will have the live link for the discussion. And it is sure to be a hilarious one because it’s always hilarious when we talk branding with Marianne.

JP: Mhm. Agreed.

Crys: Alrighty we’ll be back next week.

JP: See you later.