Scrivener has been a key component to improving my productivity this year. I’ve recently written about various uses for Scrivener such as blog posts, newsletters and even template email messages. Additionally, I’ve shared about using Scrivener templates including some resources for these. In my last post I shared about managing templates. In Part 4 I released my Author Platform Management template. In my most recent edition of this series I indicated how I’ll use Scrivener more in the coming year. This post reveals how I’ll approach my increased usage. Next week, I’ll reveal a new template and I’m planning another how-to post the week after.

As I indicated earlier this week, I want to increase my Scrivener usage in two ways:

1. With my daily journal

2. Tracking my daily goals

Daily Journal

Journaling has become important to my daily writing process. It’s were I come up with blog ideas and solve all kinds of writing issues. But I’ve started collecting numerous Word files for each month.

Scrivener makes managing my journals much easier. I can use the binder to organize my journal in a central location. I’m handling my blogs and newsletter editions this way so why not my journal?

Goals

I also set daily/weekly/monthly goals – usually in my journal. But why not use Scrivener for this as well? If I already have it open why not use it for this task?

My main question was how I wanted to approach organizing my journal and goals in Scrivener. I could make a new template or incorporate it into my current Author Platform Manager. Either way it’s extremely useful to consolidate this way.

However, as I thought about what I wanted to do, it didn’t make sense to create a new template. Much of what I do with my journal and goals are an extension of what I’m doing with my author platform. So I decided to incorporate these into my current template. If you have this template already, here’s what I did if you’re interested in doing the same thing. If you don’t have the template yet, here’s the updated one.

As you can see, I’ve just added primary folder for daily activities and sub-folders for the journals and goals. Now I just need to remember to kick the year off right and begin using these instead of Word.

Are you using Scrivener more in the coming year? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section. I’d also love to connect with you over social media so check my Contact page for that information. See the News page for announcements and remember to sign-up to receive news and posts by email. I’ve added a new sign-up tab on my FaceBook page to simplify the process. New followers can download The Black Bag via free coupon today! Also, the cover of my book, The Bow of Destiny, was revealed recently so take a look.

Clip art licensed from Microsoft Office.

Also, in no way do I represent Scrivener or sell the product. All questions about the product, its sales, support and licensing for your own computing needs should be referred to the company.