Using OneNote to Improve my Writing Workflow
Getting into the habit of frequent writing is harder than it sounded at first. I thought, "Hey I can just sit down and crank something out, schedule it to post, and I'll be well on my way." After all, if I can write as easily as I can talk about things, this should be a breeze. Reality came up, slapped me in the back of the head and looked at me with a proper facepalm. It's not that easy...it never was.
Being an idea guy I wasn't going to let well enough alone. There has to be a way to make something to help me get through this process. I'll be honest there's times I feel less like Tesla and more like Frankenstein, but that's for another post. For now, I needed a way to start articles, keep multiple ones in flight, and get them finished in a timely manner without missing any steps.
Following the ideas of kanban and stage gate processing, I created a Writing Workflow in my tool de jour...OneNote. It's not a hard setup (it took longer to think through than to create) but it does need some steps.
First I created a notebook called Writing Workflow. In that notebook I added sections for Draft, Editing, Published, and Metrics Listing. The premise is fairly simple. As soon as I have an idea for an article I create a page in the Drafts section. Here I don't need even more than a title, I just need the initial idea. As I flesh out the idea I continue to go back to the Draft and keep updating it until I think it's finished. This can live here as long as it needs to until it's "fully baked". Once ready, the elegance of the workflow kicks in.
To proceed an article through the workflow I just move it from the Drafts section to the Editing section. The assumption here is the article is complete and being edited (fixed.) Again this can take as long as necessary to get the level of quality I want. The important aspect of each stage of this workflow is, if I get interrupted (which is frequently the case) I can immediately pick up where I left off, from whatever device I have on hand at the time, and keep moving forward.
Once editing is complete, it's on to the Published folder. This move only happens when the article is actually available to be read on my blog as well as the social media links are scheduled. This is a reward step. The more items I can put in Published, the more content I've created to help people.
The final section is the Metrics Listing. This is less a section and more of an index page pointing to the metrics (Google Analytics, Buffer, Medium, etc.) for each Published post. In this way I only have to go to one spot to see how well received my article is.
This is a new workflow, relatively unproven for me but based on proven and tested techniques from others so I have confidence it should work IF I stick with it. Then again, that's the downfall of all workflows isn't it?
