Each month I like to assess my time on creative projects and progress on specific goals in my work as a creative entrepreneur and author. Here is my report for February 2019.
My 2019 Goals
My One Word: Together
Professional Goals:
77% / Double the number of members of The Religion Teacher (December 2017 to present) (+0)
3,162/5,000 copies sold of Christ in the Classroom (+0)
115,140/465,00 words for kids (A part of my #1millionwordsforkids goal) (+19,352)
0/4 new published works of fiction on Amazon.com (+0)
3/7 paid speaking gigs (+0)
Personal Goals:
10/100 books read (+5)
7% / Read the entire Bible from beginning to end. (+0)
11/100 30-minute workouts (+8)
Incomplete / Play Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” on the harmonica.
How I Spent My Time in February 2019
I track every minute of time I spend working on projects using an app called Toggl (here is why). Here is a list of the top ten projects I spent the most time on last month:
- 20:17 – The Religion Teacher’s Lenten Activity Pack (Revised)
- 16:05 – The Religion Teacher Email & Customer Service
- 13:00 – Beatitales Fables
- 7:08 – Daily Review
- 4:35 – Weekly Review
- 4:04 – Morning Preview
- 4:01 – The Religion Teacher January 2019 Membership Launch
- 3:05 – Brainstorming Story Ideas
- 2:47 – The Prayer Journal Story
- 2:40 – Fixing Website Outage
Total Time: 98:38
February 2019 Highlights & Lesson Learned
Updated Lenten Activity Pack
One of my goals this year is to update and revise some of the resources I created in the early years of The Religion Teacher. I have improved and simplified my approach to religious education and lesson planning and I want the resources I created 5+ years ago to reflect those improvements.
I was pleased to find that most of the resources in The Religion Teacher’s Lenten Activity Pack were still very valuable. I reorganized, simplified, and added a few things to create something I am exited to get into the hands of religious educators.
New Story Ideas
I have to say that the hardest part about writing 1,000,000 words for kids is coming up with new stories on a regular basis. I get really excited about the project that I am working on, but when I finish it, I have a hard time jumping right into the next idea.
Furthermore, it is difficult to pick which idea to work on next. Knowing that I have so many words to write, though, helps fight against perfectionism. Perfection can be paralyzing. It can stop you before you even start. I know this is all about practicing as much as possible so I can become a better writer. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be practiced.
The Prayer Journal
My daughters inspired this serialized story. They started using a prayer journal before bed at night. It made me wonder how they would react if the prayers they wrote down immediately came true. That was the experience of the character in The Prayer Journal.
I was so pleased to read the emails from teachers and parents who encourage their kids to journal, too, and shared this story with them to help them understand what and why to write out prayers every day.
I published the story as a serial to my Friday Formative Fiction Newsletter. The question is now: what to do with this and the other serialized stories next?
