A Handy Tool for Tracking Your Progress

It’s already summer and I’ve barely had time to enjoy my newly bloomed irises. But one thing I did find time for was tracking my progress. I’ve been really keen on it in fact. I keep trying different tools and improving on them so I can get the most information from each. This way, I’ll be able to make better decisions on how best to spend my time in order to reach my goals.

One of my most helpful inventions is a spreadsheet that breaks down my writing earnings and shows me where my sales are coming from each month.

Here’s my Earning Results spreadsheet (I’ll explain below how I use each column):

A Handy Tool for Tracking Your Progress

I obviously had to squish everything to make the snapshot of the spreadsheet fit inside this post. So you’ll need to adjust the width of the columns, especially for the publications (it will be much wider unless you use abbreviations).

Value of Work Sold: This is the total amount for all the types of writing I sold that month, including translating.

Total Money Received: This is the actual amount I received from prior sales. The difference between these two columns has been quite significant so far. Either I sell a lot and receive not a single penny one month, or I sell nothing at all and get a bundle of cash the next. Needless to say, I’m hoping these amounts will even out as the year progresses.

Value of Work Sold from Translations: I added this column because I like to see what my translation work brings in as compared to my writing. You can do the same for any work you wish to track separately or if you happen to have multiple streams of income. If not, simply delete this column.

Value of Work Sold from Writing: This is the total I earned from my writing, be it magazine pieces, newsletter articles, or blog posts. If you have money coming in from books or content marketing, you could add that as well. And if you wanted even more detailed information, you could follow this with separate columns for each category. I may do this myself at some point.

Number of Pieces of Writing Sold: How many pieces did I sell this month? Having this column right next to the previous one allows me to average how much I made per piece.

Average $ Per Piece Sold: See above.

Publications: List of the publishers who bought my work. Useful to see at a glance which publishers regularly buy my work.

Number of Pieces Sold to Children’s Publications: Since I write for both children and adults, it makes sense to know how successful I am in each category.

Number of Pieces Sold to Adult Publications: Same as above.

Value of Work Sold to Children’s Publications: Here I only count the money made from my children’s writing.

Value of Work Sold to Adult Publications: … and the money made only from my adult writing.

These last four columns are interesting because the number of pieces sold in one age group may not reflect the money earned. In fact, I discovered that I usually need to sell more children’s stories to equal the money I make writing for adults. This is not to say that I will ever stop writing for children, but if I suddenly find myself in need of more cash then it would make more sense to target adult publications until my money problems are taken care of.

So there you have it. Upgrading my systems can be a real pain at times. But in general, I find it exciting because it means I’m growing as a writer. If you find you’ve outgrown your own systems, don’t be afraid to tinker or come up with completely new ones. No matter where you are at the moment, if you want your business to grow, you’ll need to keep tracking your numbers. It’s a good idea to get into the habit now. Once you set up your spreadsheet, it only takes a few minutes to fill it out every time you sell something or receive money from your writing. Then once a month, look over your numbers to see how you did. Don’t like what you see? Then you’ll know exactly what you need to work on.

Happy tracking!

Are You Sticking to Your Plan?

Wow, it’s already February! How did your first month go? Are you sticking to your plan or is the shine of the new year already wearing off? This month is super important—even more so than the last. Take some time now to review the fabulously inspiring goals you made in January.

Start by taking a look at what’s been working so far and what totally bombed. The first is easy, but the second requires a bit more thought. You’ll want to ask yourself a few questions to figure out what went wrong:

  • Why did this goal fail to move forward?
  • Did I give it enough time and attention?
  • Is this goal something I really want to work on and achieve?
  • Should I keep it or replace it with something else?

When writing part-time, it’s easy to overreach and fail. But worse is to keep chugging along, struggling with things that don’t work and keep failing until you’re tempted to give it all up.

In my case, on the third week of January, I noticed a couple of flaws in my monthly tracker (a system I use to make sure I’m working on the right tasks-see previous post). Some of these tasks included various forms of writing such as magazine pieces and book manuscripts. But because I spent a great deal of time studying markets, I didn’t do that much actual writing. I discovered that it’s really easy to get carried away when studying markets. The deeper I dug, the more markets that popped up. I got distracted even more by creating lists to keep track of them all.

This means my tracker looked pretty empty even though I hadn’t been slacking off. To fix this, I added an extra row in my February tracker for market study. This should help me better balance my time between the two so that I get more writing done.

Another thing that came to light as I reviewed the previous month was that I needed to plan my days better in order to make the most of my tracker. So the very first row of my February tracker is reserved for daily planning. It acts as a reminder for me to take a few minutes the night before and decide what tasks I need to work on to move me towards my goals. This way, I don’t waste valuable time the next day wondering what to work on or get sidetracked working on things that may be fun or interesting but that won’t take me in the right direction.

As the weeks go by, I expect to be doing a lot of adjustments to my monthly trackers. That’s the beauty of this system, and I can’t wait to see where it takes me!

Ready for 2017? Reach Your Goals!

Like most of you, I have spent a lot of my free time this month pondering my goals for next year and how best to accomplish them. I’m a fantastic list maker, but seeing them through to completion is always a challenge. My biggest problem is that I can’t predict what will happen in one day, let alone an entire year!

So I dug around in my writing toolbox and here’s what I came up with.

First, the lists. I started off by jotting down all the things I would like to work on or see happening in 2017. I then separated these into two lists: professional and personal goals.

For my professional goals, I shuffled the items on my list and grouped them into three main categories: landing more writing gigs, maximizing my two websites, and expanding my social media presence. All of which, I hope, will lead to my main objective: a substantial increase in my income for 2017. I then analyzed each category and trimmed it down to those items which I felt would help me reach this objective.

The next step involved figuring out how to make each one of my goals a reality. The thing about goals is that unless they are paired with concrete actions, they’ll very likely never see the light of day. As I dug around in my writing toolbox, I pulled out my monthly trackers and decided to see if I could adapt them to propel me forward.

Monthly trackers are extremely popular with fans of bullet journals. They’re basically charts used for tracking activities or habits. The first column contains a list of actions you wish to keep track of. The following columns are numbered to reflect each day of the month. So, let’s say you wanted to track the days you spend promoting yourself on Facebook every month, you would add a check mark or colour in a square for each day that you did. Here’s a picture of what I mean.

goals monthly tracker

This particular tracker contains both professional and personal goals and starts in the middle of the month. The ones I’m working on right now for January will contain one page for professional goals and another for personal goals and will cover the entire month. My professional goals tracker will list specific actions that I feel will help me reach my overall objective. And by colouring in each day that I complete an action, I will have a clear visual guide to ensure I move in the right direction. By the time we near the end of January, I’ll use my tracker to help me plan for February and so on. Maybe I’ll notice that some actions work beautifully while others need to be modified or changed completely. But whatever happens, I’ll be able to adjust as needed so that by the end of the year there’s an excellent chance I’ll have reached my main objective.

Now excuse me while I go finalize my trackers before January 1st comes along!