Happy Friday, everyone! Ah, it's the end of the week, and you have a whole weekend of R&R to look forward to. Doesn't it feel good? To start your weekend off right, I'm going to introduce you to a tool that's A) 100% FREE and B) Amazingly helpful to get you organized (and keep you that way). Ready? Get your clicking fingers ready, and let's get going!
Allow me to introduce you to
Asana. Clicking the name will take you to the website. You can sign in with your Google account. They have an iPhone app, too, so you can manage on the go!!
Here's a screenshot of my personal tasks:
This is a place where I can put all my book writing and launching information. As you can see, there's nothing on it at the moment. I'll be spending the weekend plotting timelines for my next
two book launches. It will include dates to hit word counts and dates to schedule release day promotions. I'll add a project and tasks here in a few to show you how that works.
But! I also have a page for collaborative works:
We'll get to why that matters in a moment and why there are little pictures of other folks in the top, left corner. Stay with me!
Not only can you plot out your timelines, Asana will nag you via email of your incomplete tasks per your designated release date. If you want, it'll also email you when you have something coming up. It all depends on how you set up your tasks.
Let's go through one now.
As you can see, when I hover over the Add Task button, an Add Section button appears. Since I'll be scheduling two different books, I want two different sections. Click Add Section.
Fill in the relevant information.
Now, click the ellipsis in the top, right corner and select Convert to Project.
Click Convert. Pay attention to what happened on the left.
Now you can add tasks within that project with different sections like writing and marketing.
Let's do that now. First, click on the project name on the left side. Then click add section. Type in Writing, assign the task to yourself, pick a due date (completion of actually writing the book) and then click the second button that looks like a branched t with dots.
This will allow you to put in your word count goals. Be sure you set due dates and assign the tasks to yourself to get email reminders.
Fill out as many or as few as you like. I did just four so you could see what it's like.
Now, close the window and go back to the main project board. Add another section. Call it Editing and assign the task to yourself. Add all the dates you want to have edits done by (these aren't real because I haven't gotten into due dates with anyone yet... Just for show).
Keep going until you have marketing dates setup, too. You CAN overlap them with editing or writing. Don't worry. It looks like it's all truncated now, but here's where the magic happens!
Now, all your tasks are in there, and you're ready to look at the whole. Go to the top and click on My Tasks.
Boom. There's a list of everything you have coming up. If you'd like a different view, click on Calendar.
As you scroll, you'll find items you've added to your tasks in the order they're supposed to be completed.
How cool is that?
Now, if you're working with other writers or people on a project of any kind, this app reallllly comes in handy. We've used it a ton with the F5 projects we've done. It helped us set due dates for everything from book trailers to marketing to writing and beyond. Each week, it also sends out a project status email that tells everyone in the group what's been done and what's left to do.
But the best part about the whole thing? IT'S FREE for up to like 10 collaborators. You can add them via email, and their photos pop up on the top left. Plus, you can sync it to your phone's calendar or export the whole thing as a CSV or print to PDF for sharing with someone else, add files to the tasks, and soooo much more. You just click the dropdown next to the project name. See?
I love it for my own stuff, and it saves trees. I hope you find it useful!
What do you think? Plan on trying it out? Let me know how it goes!
Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!
Jo
