How I use my content schedule to manage my work.

Seated at the heart of my content creation system is my content scheduler, which enables me to track what content I’m planning to publish next. It helps me to keep on top of my creative work. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to post at least one blog post a week since I started blogging in October 2020.

My content scheduler

I started keeping a content scheduler not long after I started blogging by just capturing blog ideas and storing them in Excel. I didn’t lay out my posts back then and worked on one post at a time.

Looking back, I’m not sure how I managed to write two blog posts a week as I was at the time. It didn’t take much to blow me off course.

Around May 2021, I discovered Notion and quickly realized the application's potential. Like Lego, you can use the Notion components to define systems that meet your requirements.

Not long after I started using Notion, I created another content schedule, and for some reason I can’t remember, I redesigned my content schedule, which I called content scheduler version 2. This second attempt has worked pretty well.

I have written another post on how my current content scheduler is set up in Notion, which I will link to once it has been published in my CTNET blog. Alternatively, you could subscribe to our monthly CTNET newsletter and receive a monthly newsletter containing information on the most recent posts on CTNET.

content scheduler status property

The status field/parameter in my content schedule does all the heavy lifting in managing where a piece of content is in my schedule. Each piece of content can have one of seven statuses, which are:

- Idea and Backlog: This is the default setting for new pieces of content, and it acts as a backlog for ideas I think of but have no plans to publish any time soon.
- Research: This is a dumping ground for content I wish to publish, but I don’t yet feel ready to write and need to learn more about the topics contained within that content.
- Layout: The first stage in my creation process is where content sits until I have drafted a layout for that blog post. I usually schedule a date to publish, but this date isn’t set in stone.
- Create content: After the content is laid out, the status is changed to create content, which remains until I have written the first draft.
- Edit: Content that is in the process of being edited.
- Publish: This is where content sits while it’s in the process of being published.
- Published: This status is set when a piece of content is finally published.

As I said in the layout stage, I will typically schedule a possible publish date for content, but it is likely to change as I do change my schedule regularly. The only constraints I have on this process are that I must publish a CTNET blog post every Monday, and I must publish the CTNET Newsletter on the first Friday of every month.

When I publish content to Medium, I post it on Thursday, and if I publish a second blog post in a week on CTNET, that will normally occur on Friday.

I want to publish more content in 2025, and I have set a goal to publish 100 pieces of content. So, I hope to publish at least two pieces of content a week. But that is my own personal objective and not my bare minimum, which I can keep to whatever the situation.

Matching Content creation with creative statuses

In “Unleashing Creativity: A Deep Dive into ‘Mind Management, Not Time Management’ by David Kadavy,” a post on my takeaways from the book, I share the idea that certain periods of time are more suited for specific types of work. As my experiences back this idea, I try to work in this way.

I try to undertake specific types of creative work at specific times, and I look at the content schedule for the next piece of content that is at the right stage to match the type of creative work I plan to do.

This has changed over the last few weeks as I’m looking to write at least 100 words a day, and more often than not, I will spend that writing time working on an article, while other times are set aside expressly for writing.

This process, on the whole, works well. I don’t stick to it completely, as sometimes I have to change my routine to ensure I publish my Monday post each week. But I am working towards preventing this.

Conclusion

After reading this post, you should now have some idea of how I use my content schedule.

If you are a writer who doesn’t have one, I recommend starting one now, even if it is just a place to capture content ideas.

If you have a system to manage your content schedule, I would love to learn more about it, as it might just help me improve my own.

Suggested reading

My Productivity and Knowledge Management System 2024
Unleashing Creativity: A Deep Dive into “Mind Management, Not Time Management” by David Kadavy