6/18/2019 EBJ - Activity TrackerAll this month, I'm talking about how to use Microsoft OneNote to create an electronic bullet journal. Visit the Office Warrior Connection's index page to a list of topics. Create a New Habit There's an old wive's tale that says it takes 21 days (or is it 28?) to form a new habit, but for anyone who's tried giving up a bad habit or starting a new one, it seems pretty obvious that it's too easy to drop a new habit even after a couple of months time of doing something the same way at the same time every day. For me, I've struggled with giving up soda and staying on an exercise regime, both of which would bring my weight back down to where I'd feel better and be healthier. I can affirm that one month, or even two, and in the case of soda - even a whole year, did not help me form that healthy habit. Writing every day is another one that I have struggled with. It's not that I don't enjoy writing, or that I get writer's block. I simply find a million and one other things to do after I get out of my office job at the end of the day and have hungry children who need to go to their sporting and school activities. The competition for my five hours at the end of the day is fierce and I don't always have the strength of will to give up reading or social media. The one thing I've found that helps me stay on track, or quickly get back on track when I derail, is using an activity tracker. Last January, I created a simple Excel file to track my word counts for writing and hours for reading and spending time on social media. (You can download my tracker here.) Having an activity tracker helped me look at my normal behavior over blocks of time because I was able to set a goal and track my progress. Skipping a day gave me instant feedback by watching my numbers dip. Self-monitoring became my motivation. And I would say to anyone who's trying to create a new habit or fulfill a tough goal, use whatever tool you find that works for you. How To Use the Activity Tracker The idea behind the activity tracker should be to set achievable "mini" goals that you believe you can accomplish daily in order to develop a new habit or reach an "ultimate" goal. (Or in my case, goals that I can bounce back from when I get derailed. ) My mini goal is to write something every day. I don't care if I write a blog post, a journal entry, an idea for a new story, or a short scene. I don't have to spend an hour on task. It can be a few minutes in the evening after the kids go to bed, or a half hour during lunch. Knowing I don't have to have a set time commitment helps it feel less like a chore or a high school assignment. Accomplishing my mini goal each day is what I hope will help me achieve my ultimate goal of developing a writing habit. Examples of Goals You Could Set • Write 200 words a day. (That's a novel in 250 days!) • Write 1000 words a day. (That's a novella in one month!) • Write 1 chapter a day. • Write one blog post a day. • Read for one hour every day. • Spend one hour a day creating marketing materials for social media. • Research a new marketing tool each day. • Spend one hour reaching out to other authors or readers on social media each day. • Reduce the amount of time you spend on social media to one hour a day. Instructions: Weekly Activity Tracker
Adaptations Create a tracker for each day of the month. Compare months and see if you have less productive months than others and think about why that might be. Is there something specific you are allowing to get in the way of your goal? Is it something that is out of your control? If it is something out of your control, is there a way you can revise your daily or weekly goal to achieve your overall goal? Have you customized my instructions to make your journal uniquely your own? I'd love to see or hear how! Please post your creation on your favorite social media platform and tag me or leave a comment with a link in the notes below! DOWNLOAD Activity Tracker Journal Page Template Instructions See all the Bullet Journal Posts Return to the Office Warrior Index page 6/12/2019 EBJ - Book Launch Task CalendarAll this month, I'm talking about how to use Microsoft OneNote to create an electronic bullet journal. Visit the Office Warrior Connection's index page to a list of topics. Book Launch Task Calendar For anyone who has already completed a book launch, they have a good idea of how stressful it can be due to the number of tasks that need to be completed prior to the release date. Planning often starts months in advance. If you've never done a book launch before, hold onto your boots! Oh - and make a list! I find it stressful to know I have a lot to do when I start making lists and they start getting a mile long. When I break them down in to smaller, more manageable chunks, I can control my anxiety better. That's why I looked for a way to set up a calendar view in my electronic bullet journal. It helped me keep track of all the moving parts that lead up to a successful book launch. By creating a list and then calendaring it, I was able to see the tasks that I should create each day leading up to the final launch. It also helps to be able to see where I can add other tasks unrelated to the launch, but which are still writing-related, because I don't get to just stop everything else as I prepare for the launch. I still have to keep on blogging and writing on the next novel. Book Launch Tasks Tasks leading up to a book launch can include finalizing and proofing the final copy of a book, creating promotional materials, and building some hype around the release date. For instance, I include all of these items (and a whole lot more!) on my calendar at least three weeks out from the book launch:
If you would like a more comprehensive checklist, see Jane Friedman's post (https://www.janefriedman.com/self-publishing-checklist/), where she includes more information for first time authors. Methodology I find it is easiest to create a list of everything I need to do to prepare for a book launch, then drop those items into task lists for each date on a calendar. Rather than leaving everything for the last minute or "when I get around to it," as I often do with a static check list, I like to space things out. If, for any reason, I am not able to get them completed on the date I picked, I highlight the text rather than move it to the new date. This way if I see a lot of highlighting, I know I'm falling behind. Once I catch up, I remove the highlighting and check the item off the list. I can also jump ahead and complete items if I have more time than expected. That doesn't happen very often, but it's nice to feel like everything is coming together and I can relax a bit. Instructions: Book Launch Task Calendar
Before you start creating your calendar, make a list of everything you can think of that you will need to do for your book launch.
NOTE: If you have Outlook installed, there are some other options for adding tasks and events to your Outlook calendar that are worth checking out. The nice thing about the integration between OneNote and Outlook is that you can keep a task list in both places and sync tasks as you complete them, plus get notifications when items are due. Check out Microsoft's article for more information on using OneNote and Outlook this way. https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/create-outlook-tasks-in-onenote-19725ff3-0234-495d-9838-fb1f511e924f Adaptations In the template I included below for download, you will find that I haven't put in any of the dates, just the days of the weeks. I also have only supplied 4 weeks worth of rows, but if you need two months, you can copy and paste the extra weeks you need below the first then put the month name above each table. Just copy and paste as many tables as you need months. I like to highlight the Release Date in red so that it stands out from the rest of the calendar. If you have important dates that can't be missed, I recommend doing the same thing for those dates or use a third color or highlighting. On days that I am unavailable to work due to some other family or work commitment, I make notes in bold and in a different color so that I am sure not to schedule tasks on those days. Have you customized my instructions to make your journal uniquely your own? I'd love to see or hear how! Please post your creation on your favorite social media platform and tag me or leave a comment with a link in the notes below! DOWNLOAD Book Launch Task Calendar Template Instructions See all the Bullet Journal Posts Return to the Office Warrior Index page 6/8/2019 EBJ - Daily Writing LogAll this month, I'm talking about how to use Microsoft OneNote to create an electronic bullet journal. Visit the Office Warrior Connection's index page to a list of topics. Does "Electronic" Mean Creativity is Thrown Out the Window? When I started looking at the ways I could use Microsoft OneNote to set up a bullet journal, one of the only downfalls I could find was the potential loss of the artistic quality that I see applied to the beautiful hand-drawn pages like you can see on Life of Whitney on her post, "179 Bullet Journal Ideas: The Master List {+ Printographic}" (https://lifebywhitney.com/bullet-journal-ideas/). If you have blogged and posted pictures of your hand-drawn bullet journal, drop a link to your page in the comments below. I'd love to see your work! Of course, lots of people are wildly creative and a billion times more artistic than I am, but I got to thinking about ways I could bring some of the fun ideas to OneNote electronic bullet journal. There are tools that will allow for the creative, including drawing tools, the ability to set a background image, tables, and copying and pasting images. So, my creativity won't come from my own artistic attempts, but from using what I can find on the Internet. I did a search for "free use icon set" and found an large set of icons that was free for personal and commercial use on Icons8 (https://icons8.com/c/flat-color-icons/). The set has over 300 different icons that I can "snip" and paste into my journal. Screen Snips I use the Windows Snipping tool a lot. Like, a-lot-a-lot. I use it to capture images from the Internet for character or setting inspiration and then paste them into my OneNote plotting notebooks. I also grab text while researching when pages are protected from copying the text. The Snipping Tool worked great for what I wanted when creating a Daily Writing Log. But first, a quick break for today's PSA. Don’t use the snipping tool to grab pictures to post on your blog or use as your cover art. That is considered infringement and is illegal. You can grab the images and keep them in your secret journals so you can come back and look at them for inspiration all you want, but the minute you use them in a public space without the owner's permission, you've broken the law. Icons for Writers I picked out several different icons for my writing log and put them into a table where I can copy and paste from. I picked the following icons and assigned them to the categories like this:
You can pick out your own icons and assign them as you see fit. (See, you *can* be creative!) My mom eats poop and not just a little she eats A LOT and she enjoys it the poop. I bet you can't guess what she drinks. That's my horrible twelve year old typing a message because he thinks he's funny. Isn't he funny, y'all? He didn't believe me when I said I would post it, so there you go. As I was saying... Once you pick out some icons that you like, you can use the snipping tool to copy and paste. The snipping tool can be found under the Start button in Windows. Just click on Start and type "Snipping Tool" and it should pop up. If you love this tool like I do, right click on it in the task bar at the bottom of the screen and choose "Pin to Task Bar" to make it stick. wilder
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