Tasks for Every Time Slot to Finish that Book

You’ve decided you're writing a book, finishing a book, revising a book, or taking on any big project. Congrats! You are already doing more than most. But now your brain is flooded with all the tasks and parts and timelines. How the hell will you get this thing done?

Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. I’ve watched seasoned project managers at tech companies go ghostly pale and stare into the abyss of what’s next. The possibilities and the sheer number of things to get done can paralyze us. But it doesn’t have to. You just have to take one step at a time. The first step: you need a plan. (I know it’s a duh moment but stick with me.)

Only some plans are successful. Why? They need to be done in a way that makes you feel like you are accomplishing things, even in the small stuff. It needs to show progress—god do our brains love progress. And we need to see the finish line (even if it’s miles in the distance).

Let’s walk through the steps to make a sure-fire, finish-the-damn-thing plan.

Set Goals, Real Goals

This is important. You can’t just say write a book. Not specific enough. I used to loathe sitting in my gray corporate cubicle, boss over my shoulder, writing my SMART goals. Hell on earth. But it was only because it was about stuff I didn’t care about, stuff I didn’t want to do. The SMART goal framework, defined by George T. Doran, actually makes sense, especially when it’s for things you truly care about getting done. It ensures our goals are specific and narrow enough to achieve.

The infographic below explains what SMART stands for and the details that should make up any goal.

Sometimes it’s difficult to hit each of these details in a single goal but try. The more concrete our goals are, the better we can plan for them. Meaning if there are things we need to learn or procure in order to reach our goals, we’ve already considered that and planned for them. And the best part, we know when we crushed them. In fact, let’s walk through an example so you can see it in action.

My example goal is to write a book manuscript to help writers learn to self-edit and further support my freelance business. How do I make that SMART?

S: Write a developmental editing nonfiction book that helps indie authors learn the skills they need to analyze their manuscripts like an editor.

M: I’ve set 3 milestones (March 1, June 1, Aug 1) for completing 25,000 words at each milestone, resulting in a 75,000-word manuscript draft by October 1.

A: I will write each morning before work for 1.5 hours and set aside 2 hours on the weekends to research and prep for the writing sessions in the upcoming week.

R: It aligns with my goal to help indie writers continue to grow self-editing skills as well as continue to grow revenue and exposure for my editing business.

T: The manuscript draft will be completed by October 1 and will be kept on schedule by the above milestones.

Now we sum this up into a powerful goal statement: By October 1, 2023, write a 75,000-word draft of a developmental editing book that will help indie writers revise their novels, which will eventually post-publication increase the visibility of my business.

Great, the goal feels concrete, now what? Listen close this is where the magic happens.

WTF is a WBS?

Create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Don't be scared. A WBS is just a fancy name for a list of all the tasks or steps to reach a goal. It’s the process of mapping each goal to what it takes to get it done.

Simply: tasks and subtasks build step-by-step to reach our goal.

The WBS can be a list of all the things you can think of that have to happen to reach the goal or outcome. A brain dump. It can be cathartic.

It helps us get everything out in front of us and understand how much time and effort something will take. But more so, it allows us to further plan these tasks so when the time to work presents itself, there is no need to think about what needs to be done. Only what needs to be done first or what most suits your mood.

Often I hear writers say they’re procrastinating a certain task or they’re blocked by this thing they cannot get done, so they’re getting nothing done. That’s crazy, and it makes you feel terrible. There are always things to do when we are feeling overwhelmed by one task, you just have to be able to quickly pivot to the next. This method makes that easy. You have a list at your disposal of things to do based on your time slot, your mood, or whatever is driving you that day.

You can go so far as to categorize the tasks by the time it would take or other categories that suit you. I like to use a label called quick evening tasks, so when thirty minutes magically appear unclaimed, I go right to that part of my list. Bam! I got something done and I feel great about it.

Think of this as your master to-do list. This step is often overlooked, but vital to get all the things down and organized. You can see at this stage if things need to be broken down further or not based on how you like to work.

Don't feel pressured to outline every step from the beginning, but get the big bucket tasks that need to come first and outline their subtasks. Say you’re doing a first revision on a draft, your first bigger task might be to cold read your manuscript with a notebook and take notes. Maybe you only have time for a chapter a night—there are your subtasks for this month. The next step might be to type up the notes and organize them by character, theme, etc. From there, you should have a whole slew of new tasks based on all the comments you made in each category.

This WBS is a living document—it should grow and change and get crossed off until the project is done and the goal is met.

I’ll add a downloadable WBS template at the end of the post to help you get started.

Scheduling for your Style

Now the fun part. Dates. Don’t overschedule yourself. Put dates to a few things in your WBS and once you start accomplishing add more. Or if you’re like me and need to visualize the end—plan it all out. If not, plan a couple of near terms tasks, and as you make progress, add more deadlines.

At this stage, you hit a fork in the road. How do you continue to manage these tasks? Choose your tech. Take the path that is comfortable for you. Writers often love Trello, Todoist, Notion, or Excel. I like to geek out in a gannet chart, but that’s just leftover from my past life. You do you.

This part is really about what suits you. Ask yourself: how you will stay on track? Where do you keep your other to-dos? Do you like reminders? There are a ton of powerful, free project management tools out there—something for every work style (or procrastination style).

I’ll throw in some examples of how I have managed these in a few sites at the end of the post. Play with the different programs and see what works for you.

The key is that you think about what it takes to get the task done and break it down into small chunks that fit your schedule. If you only have an hour two days a week, make sure the tasks reflect that so you can cross things off. Our brains love that. Seriously, if you don’t feel like you’re making progress, you won’t keep going.

Project management, trello, excel, todoist — Top left: Todoist.com; top right: excel Gantt chart; bottom: Trello board

Go Get ’em, Tiger

So how can you make this work for you?

Use the SMART framework and push each of your goals to be as concrete as possible.
Make use of the free WBS template below or create your own. Hell, make a list on paper.
Organize your list by priority, dependencies, or an order that makes sense to you and put transfer it to a tool or app that will help you stay on track. Or leave it in excel and create google calendar tasks or blocks that keep the to-dos and deadlines front and center. If you’re using a tool that already makes list making easy and allows tasks and subtasks to be easily moved around, then skip step two and work right in your tool or app of choice from the start.

That’s it, it’s time to be productive. Just start showing up. If you scheduled writing a scene you cannot stomach today, find another task that needs to be done. You showed up, now accomplish something. You’ll be surprised how small blocks of work each week add up to real progress. And if you have a system, then there is no pondering what to do and procrastinating by making a list. You grab a task, whatever suits your mood, and get it done. Small bits of time become powerful once you’re organized and can just dive in.

That’s all there is to it. We all know deep down, showing up is the most important thing. But if you have a solid plan, then showing up means getting real work done. It’s progress toward those SMART goals. It’s you accomplishing the things you know you can.

I’d love to hear from you:

What planning methods or tools work for you? What keeps you on track? Share it below.

Good luck and happy editing!

For more tips and in-depth guides on revising your stories, check back for more posts.

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