I’m in the painfully slow process of optimizing my work flow and method of knowledge management and acquisition.
That means I started to use Evernote as extention of my brain instead of relying on pen and paper which I manage to never have next to me when a thought occurs. One side effect is that I jot down a lot more ideas and leads than I could follow through in terms of time, money and mental capacity. One big advantage though is that I usually access these notes at a later time when I actually work on something vaguely related to that thought.
In the process of writing down all those things, I noted how much time I spend doing various things and how I go about doing them. Since we are living in a time where software eats everything I am working on automating all kinds of tasks and optimising the software stack I use. This is yet in a too early stage to properly comment about it.
Lastly I need some kind of system to decide on what to save and what to discard, meaning both information and tasks. The more effort I put in the more I come to the conclusion that software in the classical sense can only solve a fraction of our problems.
I just made the transition from marketing/content management consulting to creative writing full time. I also just completed a week of transcribing my long hand writing notes across my 7 active novels. I use Evernote and love it very much. I have it on all my devices and put things down as I think of them which includes outline ideas, bits of dialogue or setting or simply interesting things that may be useful. As far as categorizing your ideas I would think in this manner:
Score each idea on feasibility from 1 to 10 (including cost, time, expertise, and gamification)
Then evaluate these ideas from 1 to 10 on how much you actually want to see them happen
Lastly, evaluate these ideas from 1 to 10 on how they move the conversation of your life forward.
I would then add all those up and then rank your projects by score. Those that score highest go first. You can also organize them by how they ranked by category if you so choose. Let’s think about this:
To use myself as an example I have 7 novels, a short story project, and articles going.
I score the novels on the following:
How long I’ve had the idea
The amount of work already done
Project viability (based on what’s the shelf right now and my ability to sell said novel)
Therefore my novels are categorized:
Memoir (foremost project I’m working on that scored highest)
Cast Iron (A novel project with 6 years working duration)
Project C
Project D
Project E
Project F
Project G
I then take everything else and score it based on urgency which looks like this:
Blogging for Cameroncowan.net (getting ready for fall)
Inkspired articles (due for November issue)
I.G. Farben web series (long awaited and delayed 3 times)
Ancient archetypes for Modern Masculine Living
Gay men in the Media (moving up because there is a potential publisher)
When September arrives I am doing the fall season of my talk show and I will be reworking that workflow to create my video topics and news stories and then record all the videos in one day and then spread out the distribution of those videos over time compared to my record and upload strategy that was clunky and time consuming.
I’m in the painfully slow process of optimizing my work flow and method of knowledge management and acquisition.
That means I started to use Evernote as extention of my brain instead of relying on pen and paper which I manage to never have next to me when a thought occurs. One side effect is that I jot down a lot more ideas and leads than I could follow through in terms of time, money and mental capacity. One big advantage though is that I usually access these notes at a later time when I actually work on something vaguely related to that thought.
In the process of writing down all those things, I noted how much time I spend doing various things and how I go about doing them. Since we are living in a time where software eats everything I am working on automating all kinds of tasks and optimising the software stack I use. This is yet in a too early stage to properly comment about it.
Lastly I need some kind of system to decide on what to save and what to discard, meaning both information and tasks. The more effort I put in the more I come to the conclusion that software in the classical sense can only solve a fraction of our problems.
I just made the transition from marketing/content management consulting to creative writing full time. I also just completed a week of transcribing my long hand writing notes across my 7 active novels. I use Evernote and love it very much. I have it on all my devices and put things down as I think of them which includes outline ideas, bits of dialogue or setting or simply interesting things that may be useful. As far as categorizing your ideas I would think in this manner:
Score each idea on feasibility from 1 to 10 (including cost, time, expertise, and gamification)
Then evaluate these ideas from 1 to 10 on how much you actually want to see them happen
Lastly, evaluate these ideas from 1 to 10 on how they move the conversation of your life forward.
I would then add all those up and then rank your projects by score. Those that score highest go first. You can also organize them by how they ranked by category if you so choose. Let’s think about this:
To use myself as an example I have 7 novels, a short story project, and articles going.
I score the novels on the following:
How long I’ve had the idea The amount of work already done Project viability (based on what’s the shelf right now and my ability to sell said novel)
Therefore my novels are categorized:
Memoir (foremost project I’m working on that scored highest) Cast Iron (A novel project with 6 years working duration) Project C Project D Project E Project F Project G
I then take everything else and score it based on urgency which looks like this:
Blogging for Cameroncowan.net (getting ready for fall) Inkspired articles (due for November issue) I.G. Farben web series (long awaited and delayed 3 times) Ancient archetypes for Modern Masculine Living Gay men in the Media (moving up because there is a potential publisher)
When September arrives I am doing the fall season of my talk show and I will be reworking that workflow to create my video topics and news stories and then record all the videos in one day and then spread out the distribution of those videos over time compared to my record and upload strategy that was clunky and time consuming.
I hope this helps!