Platform-Building Pt. 2: Desktop and Workflow

I want to share the workflow I created for myself. If you’re a writer, you may find this helpful, especially if you’re building a “hearing with others” via an online platform.

[You might start by reading Platform-Building Pt. 1: Leaders Should Be Writers]

My weekly writing, reading, and platform-building activities are numerous.

It’s difficult to track them and to see how they fit together. If you’ve ever found yourself researching “twitter marketing” only to realize that you are late on posting your blog, you will sympathize.

I realized I was having a hard time seeing the big picture. My computer desktop was messy and I didn’t have a great concept of how all my “really important things” were fitting together.

So I listed out everything I do. I called it my “workflow.”

There were several dozen items, so I nested them to show how they related to one another. I ended up with six major groups of tasks. That helped a bit with my sense of mental organization and sanity.

Then I asked, is there a logical order to these groups?

Here’s what I came up with:

Then came a sudden realization:

Since each one of my tasks are associated with documents or folders on my desktop, and since these tasks have a logical relation to each other, my desktop needs to reflect this!

It took about 30 minutes to get things looking how I wanted. Now the center of my desktop looks like this:

My desktop is my work-flow.

Now it’s much easier to keep the whole purpose in mind as I manage seemingly disparate tasks.

To see why I organized the groupings as I did, check out my next post: Platform-Building Pt. 3: How to Understand the Process.

You’re reading part 2 of a 4-part series:
Platform-Building Pt. 1: Leaders Should Be Writers
Platform-Building Pt. 2: Desktop and Workflow
Platform-Building Pt. 3: How to Understand the Process
Platform-Building Pt. 4: Ten Principles