I spent the afternoon working on testing the new app I found to *hopefully* help me stay organized.

Well, it’s got some interesting features. And it seemed easier to use than ClickUp, which didn’t like some of the things I tried to do with it. This app makes it a lot easier, especially if I want to transfer between categories. Oh, and I can have tasks and subtasks set up inside of a project, and I can copy those tasks with the subtasks and put them in another project very quickly. This is great if I update a list. I can also have duplicates of projects and tasks, so if I need to replace things, but I also need to move a few things around, I can do that as well. The only thing that I have found I cannot do is tell a subtask that it has a priority to it — it puts the priority on the task. Okay, so that’s easy enough to do because I know that I can do the next subtask and then remove the priority if the next subtask will take a bit longer because other pieces aren’t in place yet. That’s probably a confusing explanation, but there’s just a lot of different steps in publishing and some pieces have to be completed before others. I probably should have made one big list, but for now, this will do.

At least while I try it all out and see if I want to make changes to it.

Unfortunately, it also made me see how much work I have to do as I started adding projects to it. I am so far behind. But that’s the whole point of me using this app — see what I need to do, what needs to come next, and schedule it so that it gets done. Otherwise, I get around to things when the moment feels right or my critical voice is nagging me so badly. Then I just want to get the project done and I wear myself down. Again, I have got to work at consistency, not sprints (or marathons that start off disguised as sprints!).

I know that I have time in my days, and time I’m losing because I delay on doing simple things — like putting up my yearly wall calendar. Yeah, I finally got around to putting the 2023 calendar up on the wall today — May 12th — even though I’ve had it since December 2022. I should have been looking at a blank calendar all year so far rather than one of past events. A blank one would have been staring me in the face harder and hopefully motivating me. But see, rather than doing it, I procrastinated doing it because it was easier to look at past events rather than seeing that I really needed to hustle for getting titles up and getting to shows. I just put up my 2023 publishing sheet (which is a blank piece of paper save for the year that I add titles to when I’m ready to start moving them towards publication. I used to put all the titles up there I wanted to finish as sort of a motivator, but after rolling titles from year to year, I decided that only finished titles belonged up there. Now, that’s including only titles I want to indie publish and won’t include ones I actually plan on marketing to magazines (although I’m afraid of losing track of them. Hey, why don’t I set up an unpublished titles category in my app and then I can at least keep track of projects that need to head into publishing? That way, I don’t have too many titles like I do right now staring at me in the face. Hmmm…).

Done. Yep, I went, set that up, and put the two projects in there that I knew would be up next after the next couple steps of the other two novel projects. It literally was that fast. I’m excited because now I can go and look up the other stories that I have that need to go in there.

Then I start to wonder what to do with the strange outliers like my Fenrir’s Tales which I have some posted on Vella and Patreon. I track these in a spreadsheet right now. But my recent set of stories, I actually want to group into a book. So, I guess that it might be that I add a column to my spreadsheet to track when it goes into a book (ohh, I just had another idea too – note made in app), and then I set the project up in the app.

Well, let’s just say that when I added that note above, I wondered if there was another feature that would be helpful. I went to look and realized that there are whole bunch of additional tools I haven’t even looked at yet that might make my life easier. This app is a deep well. I really hope that I decide that it works for me and that it might help others. Wow. Well, I guess I better plan on dedicating some more time to exploring it. I’ve barely scratched the surface. Fortunately, I do remember one of their videos saying that strategies could be changed without it being destructive to the data. I better put that to the test before I have too much. I do think there’s a backup feature too, or at least a sync, so hopefully I won’t blow up too much stuff.

Did I mention that there’s a timer in the app too in order to keep you on task and schedule? I also just found a gamification inside the app where you try to beat your estimated time at doing a task. I love it.

Well, I’m supposed to be writing now — fiction, not just my blog — so I’m going to go get a few words done.

Cheers.

BTW – if you love the image above, it’s a portion of the cover from my short story, Broken Smiles, about technology taking over the world. Considering my post today, it seems very appropriate. (grin)