Hey there! Let me start off by wishing you a very happy new year!! 🎊
With the onset of new year, the urge to do new and better things to improve oneself sets in as well. Plans to write articles more often tops my list for this new year. The aim is to write good articles and create quality content. Also, another important thought is to be consistent, planned, and well-executed. To help me be prepared and achieve the goal I have set, I built an Article Planner using Notion. When I gave it a trial run, it helped tremendously. So here I am sharing my experience using the template.
I have been using Notion for a while now and it has been very easy to manage tasks and be planned. The various components that can be imported and used to create custom workspace is amazing. I have been working on the article planner template for over a week and have tailored it to be minimalistic, accessible, and easy to use. Below is a screenshot of the Article planner.
As you can see, it is very to the point, clean and simple. Let's dive into the details bit a more and check out each page and the reason behind creating them.
Upcoming Article List
This space is designated for the thoughts and ideas you have for an upcoming article. You are at a stage where you are collecting data, doing research, deciding ways to write the article, and gathering your thoughts. There are two sections on this page. The first is where you have decided on an idea and are in the process of jotting down important links, writing small drafts, keeping notes, etc. The other section of the page is for random thoughts wherein you can keep a note of interesting things that can potentially turn into an article.
- Pages: Separate pages for article ideas that must be worked on in the near future. These pages are given tags so as to easily identify and access them. You can keep a note of the tentative publish date of the article which will help you to stick to a proper schedule and be prepared. Inside the page, I have made some bullet points about the article structure and kept a list of references that are useful.
That was a glimpse of the upcoming articles page.
Ongoing Articles
In the present when you are working on an article that has to published in a few days, giving them more focus is vital. Hence, a table that lists all the ongoing articles is best because you can see them as soon as you open the planner. The table has columns that can be used to put in important details that will be needed at first sight like publish date, status, notes, etc. Each ongoing article can be created as a page and placed in the rows of the table.
Inside a page that is designated for an article, I have used two components that have helped me the most to be planned and organized. Timelines and Kanban boards to save the day!! You can easily segregate tasks into sections : Yet to start, Todo, In-Progress, and Done. This way you can make sure you do not miss anything. Coming to timelines, I have assigned specific days for specific tasks. This helped me a great deal to be organized and stick to plan. Have a look at the page of an ongoing article below.
You can also create tasks on Kanban board as pages. I have done this for social media tasks to keep a note of the tweet content, mentions, tags, and other related details. You can also add in images as assets.
Published Articles
This is the section where I store details of the articles after it has been published. Details like publishing platform, the link of the article, stats of the performance, etc. One detail that has helped me here are the notes that I have written for myself. I observed how the article was accepted. Looked at the comments I received, noted details on things I had missed out, few things I had done wrong, etc. This helped a great deal in improving articles that were upcoming. Also, I noted a few positive comments that made me feel happy to boost motivation.
Article Planner Notion Template for you!!
The article planner has helped me improve and also build skills in article writing. I am more planned and disciplined now. I have a routine and all my articles are structured and well organized. So I am ready to take this year by storm!! 😎
I have made the template public. You can duplicate and use it for your articles. Please feel free to try it out. You can also modify a few things after you duplicate it so that it suits your needs well.
Click here to view the Article Planner
That's a wrap !!
Hope you had a good time going through the article. Do let me know your thoughts on the Notion planner. Any suggestion on making it better is most welcome!!
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That's all for this time. I will catch you all in the next article. Have a great new year y'all 🍻