The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them).
After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all.
Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here).
MY CHECK-IN
What am I working on this week?
My to-do list for the coming week is growing rapidly, but on the writing front my core project will be getting to the midpoint of my gonzo post-apocalyptic buddy-cop novelette.
With everything competing for attention this week, my goal is less word-count based and more time-based–I’m aiming for a solid ten hours of work on the story over the coming week.
What’s inspiring me this week?
There were a handful of books and movies I contemplated putting here, but truthfully the thing that has got me most excited this week is the OmniFocus 3 update for the MacBook (brining it in line with the earlier update to the iPhone version). The ability to tag tasks and projects, rather than assign them to a single focus, has transformed the program as a tool.
Prior to the update, I had all my projects divided into the four main categories I use, shamelessly stolen from Work Clean:
It never quite worked properly because it didn’t take into account the relative importance of the projects attached to tasks–prep for my weekly RPG sessions are frequently in the first-two categories, but it’s rarely more important than preparing an academic paper or getting a story finished.
Being able to tag things with multiple contexts, though, means I can keep my preferred sorting categories and also associate tasks with a particular top-level category such as Thesis Hours, Game Prep, Author Platform, Trad Pub Projects, and Brain Jar Projects. This usually gets me a list that looks like like this than a couple of dozen tasks:
Which is a really little thing, but its been invaluable in getting me moving on a bunch of stuff that would otherwise get lost in the mix of my day. I cleared so many small tasks over the last week that it’s insane, and it helped carve away a lot of the stress I’ve had over certain projects.
What action do I need to take?
I’ve got two documents sitting on my desk, one involving doing a final proof before I start prepping the document for print edition and one that’s already been proofed and just needs to be uploaded. If you see me online or in person this week, feel free to give me a nudge and see how the process is going.
I’ve ended up taking a short, unscheduled break from writing newsletters over the last fourteen days. Regular GenrePunk Ninja transmissions will resume
Like many of you, I have good weeks and bad weeks on the writing front. This week has been rocky, and if
Welcome to GenrePunk Ninja supplemental, where I occasionally post foundational essays written before I launched the GenrePunk Ninja newsletter, especially if they’re
5 Responses
Peter: That’s interesting to hear re: Omnifocus. I didn’t even realise I was a version behind – need to contemplate upgrading.
Omnifocus is becoming a bit of a mixed bag for me – I’ve recently discovered the joy of perspectives (and the importance of First Available view to limit information overload) but I know that the information that’s in there right now is stale. One thing I want to start doing is creating Quarter / Month / Week perspectives a’la Accidental Creative, and tagging might actually work with that and make things a little bit easier – rather than having to drag-select tasks from the more coarse-grained area to more fine-grained.
It’s such a tough call though. It’s super easy to sink a lot of time that feels productive into that tool without it necessarily being a help. Are you finding Omnifocus your daily go-to at the moment?
It’s my daily go-to in that I check and update it once a day, but mostly as a means of tracking rather than a guide to attention. The day-to-day is run out of the bullet journal, using the approach that Tobias Buckell hacked out: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/this-is-how-i-bullet-journal/
I still find GTD a terrible system for actually managing minutes and hours–the everything-is-equal-in-importance layout is problematic–but the tagging system Omnifocus developed moves it away from a pure GTD tool and makes it more efficient as a tool for guiding intentions and focusing attention during the mise-en-place part of the day. It minimises the time spent tinkering with the tool, but gives me the functionality that matters–figuring out where I’m stuck because I haven’t simplified a next action; planning out all the moving parts of a complex project so I can keep the plates spinning.
What am I working on this week?
This week and the next see most of my time going to the day job by necessity, in lead up to Melbourne International Games Week taking all my time. This week specifically I’m working on a number of casting gig leads, preparation for Games Week and narrative skills development.
What’s inspiring me this week?
I’m in the back half of Robert McKee’s Story and it’s helping me contextualise Anatomy of Story a lot more – in fact, I’m finding to my surprise that McKee makes a lot of the same points made in AoS. Getting to the checklist around scene creation at the moment, and it’s EXACTLY what I wanted to get out of the book.
The other thing that’s inspiring me, and has had me wandering the wasteland and checking in here only intermittently, has been a couple of very timely programs. The first being David H. Lawrence XVII’s Believe 2018 program. The other which I’m working through at the moment being Peak Performance Formula. The first having dealt with a lot of negative self-talk rattling around my head, the second looking with a fine-tooth comb at how to structure the day (and certain practices around sleep and energy) to get more out of fewer hours work. The PPP is blowing my mind, because it’s proving a great structured way to revisit a lot of the broader advice I’ve gotten in other areas over the years.
What action do I need to take this week?
The key actions this week is getting key deliverables done for the day job, and updating the social media footprint for Tavern of Voices prior to Games Week.
I’m intrigued by the PPP thing–what’s been the most useful insights to emerge?
One week in, the biggest change has been no coffee after 2PM. Considering getting a night light or lamp for the bathroom in the bedroom, too.
Other than that, counting backward from my ideal waking time to determine when I should be in bed, and doing my best to protect the hour before that.
Current module is looking at how to start the day best. Biggest insight there has been avoiding coffee for the first hour due to the body not needing it naturally due to high cortisol levels. This one I’m yet to try…
All of that being said, I had a 9PM coffee tonight so I could get some work done to close out the week. But at least it’s a conscious choice…