Scheduling Our Upcoming Year

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’m not so much of a fan of New Year resolutions. They seem too ephemeral for me…like a bucket list or something. There’s no meat to them. It’s a wish list. Instead I take what I want to accomplish, create a production plan, and put dates and ‘to dos’ on my calendar.

Although this makes me sound like a wonderful planner, I’m only a halfway decent planner. The truth is that I need to get on the calendars for my production team—in particular my cover designer.

Next year’s releases: At this point, I’ve also announced upcoming titles to my readers in both the backs of 2015 releases and on my website. This holds me accountable to my schedule and keeps me on track as well as ensures that readers are looking out for more launches in the series they’re reading.

I also like the idea of end of the year reflections, or at least would like to take a thoughtful look at the past year to see where I can continue successful practices and either discontinue what isn’t working for me or tweak it to make it work better.  I think these reflections accomplish a couple of things. For one, they help us acknowledge our successes, which are too frequently overlooked in the haste to get on to the next thing on our to-do list (for me: books published, technology learned, an email inbox that’s under control. Even the personal examples—I was able to sustain a modest exercise routine for the entire year which prevented a recurrence of my Unfortunate Writer’s Back issue from 2014). These reflections also help us make a more conscious effort to improve strategies (I need to create some canned responses on Gmail for things like guest post requests from content creation companies, etc.)

In the same vein is my search for time savers. For instance, I had a reminder every month this year on my calendar to print out the KDP reports. I was keeping them in a binder where I could look at them altogether and see the peaks and troughs of sales.  I don’t think I’m going to do this in 2016, although it’s not a bad thing to do.  I think I can just pull up the reports I’m interested in, online, instead.  This is a small example for me…for you it might be cutting back on blogging one day a week, cutting the cord on a social media platform that you’re not able to check in on enough, dropping out of a group blog, etc.

On top of that is a long-term to-do list. This is publishing-related, but not limited to writing. There are things that I would like to experiment with (ads, in particular) or things I’d like to learn how to do for the upcoming year (website related items, experiments with new forms of social media).

Then there are maintenance items that I schedule reminders on my calendar for. Some are tax-related—periodic reminders to me to include business-related expenses on a list for my CPA. Some are related to website maintenance…have I updated my site lately? Is all the information current? Am I still calling a title an “upcoming release” when it actually launched weeks ago?

I’m also, for 2016, trying to schedule in more downtime. Because, apparently, I don’t take downtime unless I see it on a to-do list (classic trait of type-A , maybe).  Since I did so great with exercising this year (which must be my all-time unfavorite activity), I’m now trying the same with other things that keep me from getting too stressed.  My husband and I enjoy watching plays and we have a favorite local theater in Charlotte that provides low-key entertainment. I’m looking ahead on their calendar and adding possible events onto mine.

And then I’ve got the reality check portion of my scheduling.  The school calendar is released for the following school year and I’m putting that in. On Gmail, I subscribe to a US Holidays calendar that automatically adds in dates I need to remember (especially Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, which have a habit of somehow sneaking up on me). You can do the same (or put in other calendars that automatically populate) on Gmail: go to the drop down arrow in the left margin next to ‘other calendars’ and click ‘browse interesting calendars.’  I also sync my calendar with the JV cheer calendar for the high school, etc…anything that I can do to keep from 1. dropping the ball and 2. having to input everything myself.  The reality check portion is to keep me from setting myself up for failure by expecting too much of myself during a busy time.

What kinds of tasks are you putting on your schedule for 2016?

Tips for writers for scheduling the upcoming year:
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Image: MorgueFile: bkornprobst

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