The Backlog – The Climb #870

Sunday 11^th July 2021

I’ve started the long process of posting the backlog of The Climb. There’s over 4 months worth and after today I think it’s going to take me more than just a solid afternoon.

On the plus side, they are all written and thumbnails done, but there is cover 70,000 words that need a quick sanity check / edit. I got about 20 issues done yesterday but that still leaves over a hundred.

I’m slightly annoyed that it was something I wanted to get done by the end of the week, but, underestimating the scale of the job, I left it to the last day of the week. It’s probably going to take me a lot of time over the next week or two.

It’s also not just a simple case of posting the text and thumbnail. As I’ve reported, I’ve built some pretty complex systems inside Notion, with a view to giving me better understanding of my time management.

I brought in a day log sometime in May, that allowed me to work out where my time was going each day. It wasn’t that there was any particular problem, it was just handy to have those stats.

I then recently linked in my writing metrics into the log, and did some work so that the totals roll up. It means that if I log my words daily I can instantly see the number of words by week, monthly, quarter, year or writing project. I’m quite proud of it, but I’ve been keeping the stats with my unposted editions of The Climb meaning, I haven’t been using it until now.

Once I have it all populated with the last 4 months I can really get an idea for my productivity and areas where I can improve, or trends (I already notice if I have a big writing day, I run out of things to write and then slow down as I gather my thoughts going forwards)

I couldn’t spend all day on it as our World of Warcraft guild had their first run at the new raid tonight. It clashed with the football, so I was raiding, watching the TV and drinking Pimms all at the same time. I reckon I’m going to have such a stinky head tomorrow.

The raid went really well though. I got several pieces of new gear as we managed to take down 5 of the new bosses. It obviously gets harder as we go on, plus there’s still the whole heroic difficulty to consider, but for a first attempt I thought it was pretty decent. My DPS also seemed pretty good at times, despite my drinking.

My plan is to continue with rep grinds next week. Now all my alts are in Korthia, I’ve left them for a time, but I’d like to dip into them once the rep grind is done, and then use the various catchup mechanics to get their renown up.

I also want to get some momentum going on the writing as I really need to finish this draft. Hopefully I can alternate between writing, posting The Climb and Warcraft.