1130 words today. This is my best day in a while, for a few reasons.
First, it’s nice to hit (low) four figures. I started and ended a chapter today. I crossed the 21,000 word mark today.
Second, while today’s words did come slowly, they came a lot faster and smoother than the last few days. That’s always a good sign. I also have a pretty good idea where the next few scenes will take me, so that’s also promising.
Third, I accomplished a major milestone today. That’s less important than I know what you are waiting for…
Fourth, I’ve had an opportunity to think about the book I just read, so I’ll stop holding you in suspense. This may get a little long, but hey, my last week’s posts were short.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HAPPY AS AN AUTHOR?
Somehow I ended up stumbling upon an article on Medium about happiness. It discussed a book that I had never heard before: The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell. Russell was a British aristocrat, logician, and prolific author who wrote about many things—mathematics, philosophy, religion, and this little book about happiness. Published in 1930, over 90 years ago, yet it reads like it was written yesterday.
In the book, Lord Russell talks about why people are so unhappy and what they can do about it. He also talks about how one can choose to be happy, should they wish to do so.
This isn’t a scientific book. It was unusual for the time it was published in that no one was thinking about happiness. Yet Russell had a keen eye and understanding of himself and wanted to share secrets he’d learned to become more happy in life.
There are so many takeaways from this book that I’m not quite ready to list them here. But suffice to say there was a lot in this book that resonated with my soul. Many of the things he recommended I have been doing in my own life, unconsciously. Some things I never considered, but were very good advice.
If you read the book closely, he maps out what the “soul” of a happy person look like. It’s shockingly easy to mold your soul into this image.
I took so many notes while reading the book that I still have to sort them all out. It generated an almost endless array of ideas for future books in my writing series, namely a sequel to The Indie Author Bestiary. In fact, I could do an entire Beast Mode of new writing books from the self-knowledge this book unlocked within me. I might do that in Q2.
Anyway, that’s all I can share right now as I’m still processing the messages the book taught me. But the lessons are as profound as when I discovered the works of Swami Vivekananda, and anyone who has read my book, Be a Writing Machine knows how foundational that was for me in terms of how I think as a writer.
ANOTHER MILESTONE ACCOMPLISHMENT
It’s tax time, and I don’t know about you, but I get so sick of keeping records and tracking my expenses.
One of my goals for 2021 was to find a way to automate my bookkeeping so that 80-90% of the expense tracking is managed through automation. This will free up more time to write, save time, and improve the accuracy of my expense tracking.
Before today, I spent around 13 hours per year on expense tracking, which is around 1 hour or so per month. I had an elaborate system to 1)save the receipts from my email to my computer and 2)log the expense details, such as the amount, date, and so on. I had a complicated folder system and corresponding spreadsheet that helped me keep very accurate records. The problem is that the process was very manual and it took a lot of time.
Today, in 4 hours, I designed and implemented an automated process that cut my time from 13 hours per year to 1 hour per year (yes, you read that right). That’s roughly 5 minutes per month, mostly to make sure everything runs properly. That’s around a 90% reduction in time.
I did it in 4 hours using tools already on my computer with no additional costs.
First, I set up filters in my email client (Airmail) to catch expenses when they hit my inbox and move them to a dedicated expense folder.
Second, my email client (Airmail) supports automation, so I created a workflow that saves all the emails in the expense folder into a designated folder on my computer. This takes one click, and approximately 2 minutes to export an entire year’s worth of emails to my hard drive.
Third, I created an Apple Automator workflow that takes those emails and moves them into a simplified folder system based on the name of the email, which is the subject line. With one click, I can slice and dice and move around 90-95% of ALL my expense receipts into the proper folder, then sort and clean everything up.
Fourth, I scrapped my spreadsheet tracking altogether and will rely on Quickbooks instead, which I already use and pay for. I just wasn’t using it very much before now (because frankly, I don’t like it). But Quickbooks does give me the budget data that I need, even though it’s a little different than I’m used to.
If I need to find an expense, I can find it quickly, which is the point of archiving your expenses.
So, I now have an automated bookkeeping system that saves me 12 hours per year. It just required me to shift my thinking and be willing to give up a little bit of control and detail on my reporting.
Major win. It takes me around 40 hours to write a novel, so I just earned myself 0.3 extra novels a year, if I wanted.
This project supports my strategy of being a technology-driven writer, and steering a profitable writing business that practically runs itself.
Most authors with means hire assistants to handle these tasks. But why hire an assistant to do something like this when you can automate it? Let the assistant manage the automation, not the data entry.
Anyway, that’s all I got for tonight. Happy Saturday.
