The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

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:

• Finish-able Tasks (easy to do, high expectation of impact/value to long-term goals)
• Complex Tasks (mentally taxing, but high expectation of impact/value)
• Distracting Tasks (Easy to do, low expectation in terms of impact/value)
• Delay-able Tasks (Mentally Taxing, but low expectation in terms of impact/value on long-term goals)

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.