Monday preparation #4: finishing what I planned

I had a fruitful weekend. I prepared a few things left and right, but I kept myself at an extremely low pace. Mostly content planning, and tidying up my storage and folders, because that was a real mess.

Last week was an up-and-down week, and my pace was barely 30% of what it usually is. So last Monday's prep kind of failed, and this week I'm finishing what I planned back then.

Read also: Monday preparation #3: mostly surviving

Two things, and only two

To keep the weekend peaceful, I focused on two major things. The first was figuring out Study Brew (which is not Story Brew) and improving the stories page with more characters. The second was working my way through the entire TWO Docs website.

Lost in my own workflow

Study Brew was the challenging one. For a moment, I was lost in my own workflow. I built the system, and I still couldn't find my way around it.

Read also: I mapped out my podcast workflow. Turns out it's not that complicated

It also turned out I had some Study Brew content ready to go. I decided on a full reset. Patching old content into a workflow I no longer understood felt like more work than starting clean.

As of right now, everything is prepared. The YouTube channel is good to go, and I mapped out 120 stories in an Apple Numbers sheet, tied to four different characters.

Shorter stories this time

The stories are for B1 to B2 English learners, and I kept each one around five to six minutes.

When I started recording again for Story Brew, ten minutes felt a bit too long. Not because I can't do it, but because of attention span.

For someone listening in their second or third language, ten minutes is a lot of concentrating. Five or six minutes is something you can finish in one go, and finishing a story is half the point.

The math behind 120 stories (kinda)

My goal is to record three to five stories on Thursday, then start scheduling at least one every three days. One story every three days, 120 stories, that's 360 days. Basically a whole year once all 120 are done.

But I want more than that.

So I strategized over the weekend, mapped it all out, and now I have 120 topics ready to go. Thursday is the day I start recording podcast channel number five, the last one that's still empty.

The TWO Docs website audit

I went back to Apple Numbers and used it to check every page on TWO Docs. The plan for the weekend was simple, and it's exactly what I said I'd do on Friday. I ran the whole site through Screaming Frog, exported all the URLs and titles, and went over each page one by one.

I'm nearly finished. Out of 64 pages, maybe seven or eight need a design overhaul and some tweaks in messaging. The ones in bold in my Numbers sheet are done, and I'm on the final stretch now.

I think it'll take another two to three hours of final work, then one more pass over every page. That's about a day's work.

The post-audit process will take more time, but I prefer to single-focus on this one task. The last time I jumped between pages without a plan, I got nowhere.

Why TWO comes first today

This is my priority for today. Once it's done, I can sit back and zoom out before deciding on the marketing approach, or whether to take another shot at building the native Mac app I'm supposed to build.

I don't want to make either of those calls while the website still doesn't say what the product does.

Read also: My MVP is ready. I still don't have a marketing plan.

Content and writing

Last week I was supposed to write blog content for Indie Hacker Blog, my Life in Taiwan journal, and TWO.

The problem?

I got nothing fucking done on that end. So my ideal Tuesday is writing two to three pieces of content. As long as the writing is finished before Thursday, because Thursday is recording day first.

Deciding what to ditch

I think this is also a good week to decide what to cut, what to ditch, and where to continue.

I did a lot of thinking, and I feel it's healthier for me to pursue two main SaaS builds first: TWO and Study Brew. The rest should be tied to Idea Bench. Low-level projects, plus the most ridiculous app ideas.

Two SaaS products are already a lot for one person. Each one is months of work, and every extra build splits my attention a little thinner.

But don't hold me to this. There are a few things I was really set on building under OnPoint VC & Ryoka.

Giving myself another week

I think it's better to give myself another week to settle down, and to wing it more instead of being extremely strict with my goals. I'm out of survival mode, but I still want to keep my workload goals extremely flexible.

Adding too much right now might cause me to make wrong decisions mid-week. I'd rather go day to day, document it, and then decide what else I can or should do.

A little less pressure on myself this week feels more productive.

Final note

That's the week I think. The TWO website today, writing on Tuesday, recording on Thursday, and whatever fits around it.

Last week I planned more than I could carry, and the list followed me into this one. This time the list is shorter, and the two biggest things on it are already mostly done. I'll see on Friday how far it got me.