You might be a writer if your to do-list goes:
-talk to X about aprt
-Pay credit card balance (!!!)
–Aurmid has never had a family or given her daughters one–there is only the Empire.
Revisions of One Hundred Days are going very well after this most recent Staycation, and as I’m thinking more about the story I keep encountering new insights.
But writer or not, most people have to-do lists, and if you have a to-do list, the odds are it’s near unmanageable. Back in March, I first posted my review of the interactive, RPG style to-do list Challenge Accepted.
Since then, I’ve continued using it with only a bit of a lapse while I was traveling at the end of the semester. While a few complications have come up, the site also shows a lot of promise for growth.
The lapse proved to be less of a problem than I thought–I just return to the site after a week or so and check off all the tasks I’ve accomplished in my absence. Score! Not only do I sweep up the points (at higher levels you earn more points per task, but also need more points to move on to the next level, in standard video game XP inflation style), but this also means GetYeDone serves as a record for things I plan to do, but forget to write on my paper lists and planner.
GetYeDone also serves as a way to record what I have done, because completed tasks are saved in your account as well. When I added my internship experience to my resume I consulted my GetYeDone to-do list for Therese Arkenberg: Intern to see what my primary jobs and accomplishments were.
The main complication is that, while Challenge Accepted (url: getyedone.com) allows hierarchical lists in the form of tasks within quests within odysseys, a 3-level list is proving inadequate to my needs. I want to further refine my tasks. Partially because it’s my nature to enjoy crossing off many small items rather than one big one (although Challenge Accepted gives you great fanfare for completing gigantic ‘boss monster’ tasks), and partially it’s because I try to sort my to-do lists by all my various identities: Therese Arkenberg the intern at FINCA, Therese Arkenberg the assistant of Zahara Heckscher, Therese Arkenberg the science fiction writer, Therese Arkenberg who needs to clean out the fridge. This adds up quickly!
However, speaking of interns, I see Challenge Accepted now has several. It looks like a lot is going on with social media outreach on the blog and FaceBook page, some updates to the party system (I haven’t yet joined any parties, but the new ‘open party’ options look encouraging), and in what was especially interesting to me, and invitation to submit your own ideas for the flavor text ‘adventurous happenings’. Which I promptly did.
So what else is left on my to do list after Staycation? A surprising amount! There’s the apartment search, the remaining revisions to One Hundred Days (of course it’d take more than a week–but I got more done in that week than I did in years), lots of intern tasks, and completion of the Starter Guide for Professional Writers which also went very well. I gave a presentation over lunch Friday on steps to getting work published, which has generated yet more insights and FAQ-type tidbits to add to the guide.