Friday 2 June 2023: My new power board

I didn’t get around to doing very much at all yesterday. The entire morning was spent responding to the legal team regarding my mom’s probate, which was followed by a long phone call with my sister. I had to locate, scan in and print off a number of various documents, and I had to write the cover letter as well. At least they remembered to enclose the pre-paid envelope this time…

The poet tried to get through several times but my mobile phone was telling him I was ‘unavailable’ instead of ‘engaged’ and I didn’t hear the house phone until he’d rang it about eight times.

I was in a different room and had the mobile pinned to one ear and a finger in the other to cut out dog noises – he insists on attention whenever either of us is on the phone and when it’s a business call I just have to put him in a different room.

After so many goes, the poet was starting to wonder if I’d had a fall or passed out or something.

Once I’d finished all of the probate stuff I turned again to ClickUp to try and replicate my production schedule. The poet came back from his morning meeting and had a couple of video calls. One of them he went straight into while I made us both a sandwich.

The postman brought a surprise: the poet had ordered board tape and new magnets for my new power board. So while I still battled with ClickUp, he replaced all of the lines he’d initially drawn with a whiteboard marker with this tape and tidied up my sticky notes.

I’d already typed and printed the headings and he’d already affixed those to the board with sticky dots, but there was a mish-mash of magnets in various colours and sizes, and we both prefer things to look nicer. So he then went through tidying up the sticky notes as well.

I need to get some more sticky notes as these ones aren’t sticking to the board very well. I don’t know if that’s because the notes are old or because I conditioned the board the day before and it was still settling. The corners are turning on some of them and we had to put two magnets on to straighten them out. I think I’d like some in turquoise, to replace the pale yellow ones.

He went into another meeting and I sat there admiring the board and wondering how I could replicate it on ClickUp for the best efficiency.

There are nine columns:

1. percolating
2. brainstorming
3. planning
4. writing
5. typing
6. revising
7. cooling
8. proofreading
9. publishing

If I used smaller sticky notes, I could also include things like ‘researching’, but that comes under ‘brainstorming’ and ‘planning’ anyway. ‘Publishing’ includes submissions to markets as well as indie-publishing.

There are four rows:

1. shocking pink = short fiction
2. lime green = medium fiction (novellas)
3. pale yellow = long fiction
4. orange = non-fiction

Each sticky note has the working title of one or the other of these. There’s room to add things like deadline dates, wordcounts, notes which workbook each project is currently in, etc. And the idea is to move everything along until it’s all fallen off, but to keep things moving all the time, from ‘percolating’ through to ‘publishing’.

There’s a lot more to go on there yet. I didn’t want to spend too much time writing notes when it might not work and, also, it can sometimes be counter-productive when you can see so many projects right there in front of you. I’ll see how it goes before adding a few more. Besides, all of that white space is currently kidding me that I’m not as busy as I thought I was.

I think it’s a great tool. It’s given me a lot of motivation and inspiration as well as a good kick up the bum. That’s why I’m calling it my power board.

Anyway, I tried and tried to get something like it working on ClickUp and I ended up with everything exactly where it was before I started.

Today I need to do some work. Some proper work. I’ll be concentrating on the diary this morning, with a view to scheduling in the creative parts of my work in the mornings and the more mechanical or logical parts of my work in the afternoons.

Editing and proofreading will come under afternoon tasks, which is just as well when that’s also the only client work I’m doing now. Errands will also be in the afternoons, and so will publishing. I’ll probably keep  cover design to the mornings.

Next week, then, I intend to really go at it full on, but I do have one day off when we’ll be in the midlands for Mom’s funeral.

Do you have any processes that help you to keep on track?

Have a great weekend!

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