Organize Your Life: The Rolling Task Method

Hey all! It’s been a while! First and foremost, I hope everyone is having a great year. Some cool things have happened since I last blogged, so here’s a quick breakdown before we get to the main topic:

I entered a short story contest and won. The story is titled Haven and was published in an anthology by 13Thirty Books in May as a commission by Romantic Times Book Reviews. I plan to flesh out the story since the word limit was 5K, then put it on Amazon for FREE. This is a good way to let readers taste my writing.
I attended the Romance Times Booklover’s Convention in Reno, Nevada and SIGNED BOOKS, y’all. It was a blast.
I am in the process of creating my own publishing company, Ink House Books. Why? (See # 4)
I created an anthology imprint. *dances* It’s called Once Upon Anthologies, a collection of romantic paranormal/urban fantasy short stories and mythological/fairytale retellings. Our first release is planned for December 21, 2018. We’re holding a Kickstarter in October. Exciting!
The novel I’ve been working on (for 100 years), The Traveler, is finally nearing its last days before I send it to Query Land. I need a few more months, but the time is nigh. I’m also planning books two and three in The Traveler trilogy and hoping publishers will want a series because I’m in love with this world and characters. 2019 will be interesting.
The Traveler made the finals in two contests recently: The Golden Rose, held by the Rose City Romance Writers and The Orange Rose, held by the Orange County Chapter of Romance Writers of America. 
To keep up with all the writing happenings, join my newsletter. It goes out once a month. 

 

Now to the reason you stopped by! 

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For the better part of this year, I didn’t know this method existed. And while I was fairly productive, I now realize how much more I could have achieved had this technique been in my wheelhouse. So what exactly is it?

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I’ve tried multiple planning methods, from a vast collection of planners to wall calendars to the sticker method–and each offers its own benefits and values. For instance, when drafting, the star method works great for me. I can see my progress at a glance.

But my writing life took a turn this year. I finally feel like I’m crossing into the scary world of ‘working author.’ I have a business, and that business is me.

That realization was a little daunting at first, but the fact that many of my friends were in the same boat and handling ‘writer life’ quite well helped me see that I could do it, too. I just needed a foothold, especially before things got any crazier.

*Disclaimer: This won’t work for everyone, as nothing is really one size fits all. But like anything else, trial and error can help you figure out what does work.

It took a hot minute for me to find the rolling task method. First, I tried the ToDoist App, which may work wonderfully for some people, especially those who prefer digital over print. I loved it at first–so much. I am a list maker by nature. Yet I’ve never applied daily list-making to my writing life. It felt like I didn’t need to. Most days were the same–butt in chair, hands on keyboard.

That’s not the case anymore.

While writing and revising will always be a top priority, I’m now seeing all the other responsibilities that come with being a published author. If you’re self-publishing, your job entails some extra craziness, but all in all–writers are business owners. And businesses do not function well without organization.

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Currently, I’m revising a novel, plotting and writing the synopses for two more, drafting a paranormal romance, working on a short story for the OU anthology, learning about running my own imprint and all things self-publishing, planning a launch campaign–including social media ad campaigns and a blog ‘tour’ for the OU anthology, critiquing and editing short stories, planning a Kickstarter, and I manage social media profiles for myself, Once Upon Anthologies, and my local RWA chapter for which I am President-Elect and PRO Liaison. Oh, and I’m a mom, wife, daughter–I still have all my normal life duties–and I have to travel pretty often. It’s a lot to juggle. 

But I recently ordered a new planner. RWA set up a demo room where you could look through several planners to see which you might prefer. The last thing I needed was another planner. The ToDoist app had been working decently for me, but it was nothing life-changing. Still, I saw the Plot Your Work planner created by author CJ Ellisson and had to have one. Funny thing: My critique partner texted me about this planner literally hours before I walked into the demo room and saw it laying on the table. Kismet, right? 

So, the planner arrived and holy crap–it was intimidating. Still, I sat down and began, determined to get a grip on things before the next six months ate me alive.

And guys, one particular element made something click in my brain. It was a quarterly goal sheet with a project and task breakdown. I dumped every writerly thing in my brain onto these pages. Behold:

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Here’s a fact: 

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Upon writing down my goals, projects, deadlines, and tasks, everything changed.

I instantly felt lighter. That might sound ridiculous, but it’s true. Author and planner extraordinaire Sarra Cannon (visit her helpful site, Heart Breathings) taught a workshop at the RWA Conference and mentioned this very thing. It was so relieving to get the crowded cloud of “to-do’s” out of my head and on paper. 
I instantly felt less intimidated. I could see my timeline, and while still ambitious, it seemed far more doable. Sarra Cannon also mentioned how she uses a Kanban board to organize her tasks weekly by level of importance. And now I get it. The stirring panic inside me about the next six months subsided simply because I realized I was worried about things that didn’t even fall into the first quarter for me, which spans from August to October. I was worried about doing things I didn’t need to put on my task list until November or December. 
I instantly felt motivated.  I COULD DO THIS. For a change, my mentality was not poisoned by feelings of destined defeat. My goals now looked like a landscape of small hills versus one gargantuan mountain. Does that make sense? My goals went from intimidating to doable. Simple as that.
I soon felt confidence and pride.  When you begin accumulating completed task lists, you also accumulate positive feelings about your goals and yourself. Instead of negative self-talk–I can’t do this, I’ll never make it, I’m not cut out for this, this is just too much–you begin feeding your mind a healthy dose of positive feedback in the form of tangible successes. It’s amazing for the soul. I can’t recommend enough that you try a quarterly plan like the one above FIRST, then move on to your dailies.

 

But there’s a catch!

You can’t over plan. (Don’t under plan either, though, haha.) It’s best to make goals, deadlines, and tasks reasonable. That seems obvious, but for overachievers, it’s often tough to bring lofty goals down to earth. If someone has never written 5K a day every day for spans of time, they probably won’t do it simply because its suddenly written on a list. We know ourselves. We know what REAL time we have to devote to our goals. The trick is learning how to make that time sacred, how to maximize productivity by prioritizing tasks, and how to be okay with not being superhuman. 

 

What does my rolling task list look like? 

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It’s nothing spectacular.  Only it is. But it’s not complex. I used an old To-Do List notepad I had. My handwriting isn’t even neat. It doesn’t have to be Washi taped and brush lettered with watercolor pens to be efficient.
I don’t list my daily tasks by priority.  I am a full-time writer. This gives me flexibility others may not have. I mentally shuffle things around by importance but I don’t need everything to be in order on the paper every morning. Mainly because my tasks are already prioritized by project deadlines on my quarterly planner. I just need to start knocking them down one at a time. I pull from that quarterly sheet for my daily lists. However, you do you. If you need daily tasks listed by order of importance, do it.
Here’s the biggie! Roll your incompleted tasks to the next day.  The first thing I do when I jot down the next day’s list at night is roll anything I didn’t finish to the new list. As you can see, vacuuming (even though I have three dogs) was not at the top of my priorities on the 26th. Neither was researching press release items for the anthology. I know my deadline on that, and while it’s a pressing task on the horizon, it’s still on the horizon. I knew it was something that could wait a few days thanks to that quarterly planner, and I needed some downtime. However, don’t procrastinate just to procrastinate. If you’re rolling several items often, it’s time to re-evaluate. Are you trying to do too much? Are you spending your available time–that sacred time you carved out somewhere in your week–on knocking tasks off your list? Or maybe life just got in the way. It happens. But if you find you’re rolling a lot and often, take a step back and figure out why.
I mix personal with business and writing.  I looked on Amazon for To-Do list notepad ideas for this blog post and immediately knew why this particular setup works for me. Several lists have way too much going on. Like this one below. For me, this is too mentally distracting. I just need a simple checklist. I don’t list every single thing I need to do, but make sure to include the main items I don’t need to forget or push aside. Branded social media posts and dedicated posts to writer groups, for example, have become routine, so I don’t include those. They’re on automatic. At the end of the day, I’m left with a sense of accomplishment I otherwise might not have had, because seeing what I’ve done is encouraging. I tear off my completed lists and keep them in a folder.

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Another reason to love the rolling task method:

Rolling task lists are easy to manage. You can add to them, shift things around, and scratch things out that take care of themselves. They also keep you focused on the present rather than stressing about bigger beasts you can’t conquer all at once. 

 

If you have any questions about this organizational technique, feel free to leave a comment and I will give you a shout back. If you try it, let me know! 

 

  Thanks for visiting!

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