Organization, Task Management and Workflows for Creators

It is release day of the first episode of your first podcast! You wrote, you recorded, you edited, you created a website. Everything is in its place. You click the publish button… and nothing happens. How is that possible?!

Creators know how finicky putting the stuff you make online can be. Publishing a podcast requires dozens of small, tricky, detailed steps, and getting any one of them wrong could mean disaster. Even when you do everything right, things can still break for no reason!

Organization, checklists, and smart communication will help you reduce errors and get your work done faster. I’ve rounded up my top recommendations for documenting your workflow, organizing your tasks, storing files, and communicating with your team below! Plus, some tips on staying sane when you have creative side projects and a day job to balance.

Documentation

The first step to organizing your podcast life is understanding what, exactly, there is to organize.

Try this: the next time you publish an episode of your podcast (or video on your channel, article on your blog, etc…), write down every step you do along the way. Be as specific and granular as you want — you should include enough detail so that someone who’s never done this before could follow along (because one day, they might). Screenshots and links are great too. If you work with a team, ask your colleagues to do the same thing for all of the tasks they do to keep your podcast going. You should start with publishing new episodes, then branch out to all the other things you do: pre-recording preparation, editing, social media, marketing, etc. After you write out your process, create a table of contents at the top. If you feel fancy, hyperlink each item to the corresponding section of your document. Here is an example of the publishing workflow for one of our shows.

The idea here is to build a reference document that any team member can use to fill in for one another. If you’re a team of one, this is still a valuable exercise because it lets you put all of your hard-won knowledge someplace outside of your head. You now have a show bible to rely on instead of your brain. I promise, it will be helpful next time you’re so sleep-deprived you can see a ProTools session imprinted on the back of your eyelids.

Now, you have your list. But how do you actually track all of these checklist items each time you publish an episode? Behold the wonderful world of task managers!

Task Management

I resisted using a formal task manager for a long time, preferring handwritten lists or lots of emails to myself. And, to a large extent, I still rely on those systems for little things that come up during the week. My work inbox is my to-do list, and I use gmail labels (“To Do,” “[Boss] To Do,” “Waiting On”) to keep them organized. I also keep a paper notebook with me all day at work, and write down to-dos as they come up so I don’t forget them. At the end of the day, I turn the page and rewrite whatever is left over to start my list for the following morning.

A producer cannot persist on Post-Its alone. For recurring tasks that would slip my mind or longer-term projects with self-set deadlines, having a digital task management system is a lifesaver. I have dozens of those small, forgettable podcast tasks on weekly schedules: drafting episode copy, collecting notes for intros and midrolls, scheduling posts, and more.

Now, which task manager is right for you? Here are some popular choices:

• Omnifocus. A powerful task management system based on the Getting Things Done methodology, Omnifocus’s main draw is that it lets you organize your tasks in two ways: by project and context. Sometimes I’ll want to blast through all my Spirits to-dos, but other times I’ll be distracted and want to check off a few minor tasks while watching Top Chef. Good news: I not only have projects for everything I do (each of my podcasts, my job, my resume business, housework, etc.), but also contexts like “Home” and “Office,” “downtown” and “midtown” (great for grouping errands!), “Phone Calls” and “Emails,” “Focused & Creative” and “TV Tasks”. Omnifocus takes a bit of time to set up properly, but if you’re willing to invest a couple of hours into watching tutorials and reading blog posts from Omnifocus devotees, I promise you won’t regret it!
• Asana or Trello. These are great fits for teams that want to keep one another posted on their progress on different projects, or people who really like visual organization systems. Cards represent different projects or tasks, and can be moved from left to right along your screen as the project advances. Asana is more linear in layout, while Trello allows you to group cards like on a bulletin board. I also like that both of them offer web browser versions in addition to desktop and mobile apps. If your team is less siloed in your duties and more “all hands on deck,” one of these will be a good fit for you.
• ToDoist, Due, Wunderlist, iOS Reminders, Google Keep. These apps are straightforward digital versions of paper to-do lists. The first four in the list are simple checklists, whereas Google Keep combines reminders with a cross-device digital clipboard. Google Keep integrates well with Google Drive, so you can tie images, chunks of text or other attachments to tasks. These are easy-to-use systems that will be perfect transitions for people used to paper lists.

A combination of two or more systems might be the best answer for you. I use Asana with coworkers and Omnifocus for my own projects, as well as a paper notebook.

Communication

If you’re fortunate enough to produce your project with a team (and I hope you are — more on that here and here!), talking to your teammates is the most important thing you do. You probably have a preferred medium for talking with them already. Since you’re going to be talking way more than you thought possible as your project grows, and you’re reading this article anyway, take a moment to consider the best communication platform for your team.

If you primarily use iMessage or text, I implore you to choose a new method for talking about project-related stuff. Maintaining a friendship with someone you’re also in business with (and related to, working with, dating, or married to!) is hard. Separating work and life is important for your productivity and sanity, starting with separating your personal vs. business communications.

Here are pros and cons of a few communication platforms our teams use.

• Email — Duh. Excellent for sharing files, keeping an easily searchable archive of conversations, and separating personal conversations from work ones. But email threads can cross — there’s no indication when the other party is typing, and you can respond to an old message without realizing a new one has come through. Threads can also get unwieldy when long.
• Messenger (Facebook) — The preferred platform for team Spirits! Messenger lets us chat on any device, even when one of us is out of the country. I use the third party client Goofy to access Messenger on my Mac, since I don’t want to have Facebook open all day long. File sharing support is patchy, but we get around that by pasting links to the files on Google Drive.
• Twitter/Instagram DMs — This might be a weird one to include, but almost every guest we’ve ever had on our shows has initially chatted with us via DM. Not everyone wants to give out their email or cell number online, and cold emails can languish in the void of an unknown inbox. DMs are a great compromise for communicating one-on-one with someone you may not know very well.
• Slack — Ah, the trendiest team chat environment! There’s a reason, though: Slack is the best way to organize conversations around disparate teams or topics. The free version is totally workable for most teams, and it’s really easy to share files, take conversations one-on-one with direct messages, and turn off or customize notifications for different channels. The big downside? Slack Overload Syndrome. Everyone and their mom has a Slack channel — I’m in eight different ones! If one of your team members cannot stand adding another icon to their sidebar in Slack, consider the next bullet as an alternative.
• Discord — This is a chat room environment used primarily by gamers that is gaining in popularity among Patreon communities. Join the Party has a thriving Discord full of dozens of our Patrons, as well as several business-related channels for the team to communicate. Discord supports file uploads, photo embeds, link previews, and DMs, which makes it the perfect platform for our team. Using Discord for business purposes also means my co-hosts and I are in the app all day, making it easy to participate in our Patron community while we’re there.

Whatever one you choose, try separating business and fun chats onto different platforms. I bet you and your team are going to find it really helpful.

Creating While Employed

How do your organization needs change when creating is your side hustle?

To start, it’s crucial to separate the systems you use for your creative work and your job (or schoolwork). Just like it’s important to designate one area of your home for work and another for sleep or leisure when working from home, it’s helpful to associate a particular software or service with its purpose. Plus, using different file sharing, email, and social apps helps reduce mistakes. Nothing quite like posting a snarky podcast tweet to your work account to make your reevaluate your life choices!

Here’s what that split looks like for me.

• Google Drive + Dropbox. Google for podcasting, Dropbox for work. Both do the same thing, but have different apps and live in separate folders on my computer. As a primarily Google-based person, I also appreciate that I don’t have anything personal mixed into my Dropbox account. There are also no third-party apps connected to my Dropbox, whereas I use a lot of third-party apps with Gmail and Google Drive (like CloudHQ to automatically save receipts for podcast accounting).
• Google Chrome profiles. This nifty feature lets you have separate user profiles within Google Chrome, saving different passwords, bookmarks, autofill info, and histories. The best part is, unlike with Incognito or Private Browsing, you can stay signed in to sites even when you don’t have any windows open — even on different devices! No more logging into and out of Patreon 10+ times per day, or losing your logins when you close out of the Incognito window.
• Mail + Inbox. I use Mail for my podcast and personal emails, and Inbox by Gmail for my work email. I try not to get distracted by email during the day, preferring to check once in the morning and once at night. But I do need to respond to work emails quickly. Using two different apps lets me get notifications and display badge icons of unread email counts for my work account, but not any of my personal or podcast ones.
• Tweetdeck + Buffer. Managing social media for two shows, a business, and myself can get confusing. Tweetdeck lets me tweet, like, RT, and save searches from all of my accounts, and set different notification preferences for all of them. Buffer lets me queue tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram posts across all of my accounts, and even cross-post if I want. These platforms’ iOS apps all support multiple logins these days (woohoo!), but none of them allow you to schedule posts in advance. Plus, Buffer helps you understand the best time to post on each platform, and view analytics afterward.
• Omnifocus + Asana. I only mix my personal and professional projects in one software environment: Omnifocus, which I discussed above as my One True Task Manager. But at work I collaborate with remote teams on projects with lots of smaller tasks, so we use Asana to keep each other on track. When I get assigned a task in Asana, I also add it to my Omnifocus, then mark it as done in both places. There may be software solutions out there that would save me these extra few clicks, but I’d rather check an item off twice than forget it!

Keeping your projects separate from your other obligations also helps you stay sane. All the systems in the world can’t give you more energy, patience, or hours in the day, but there’s real value in making it easier to switch modes. Using different software, hardware and working environments helps you leave one role behind as you take up the other one. Maybe you had an annoying day at work, but you’ll get a fresh start when you get home, change out of your suit, open your personal laptop, and fire up your podcasting programs.

My final tip for those of us with day jobs: lean on your team. You don’t need to do everything yourself, and working smarter is much better and more sustainable than working harder. At work, with your projects, and in your personal life, give your friends and teammates opportunities to come through for you. By documenting your workflows and choosing tools that make collaboration easier, you are helping your future self do more and feel better.

Amanda McLoughlin is a podcaster and business builder. She created Multitude, an independent podcast collective and consultancy based in New York City. Reach her via Twitter or email, and check out Multitude’s resources for podcasters here.

The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.

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