Productivity Tool

[shadesofmauve]

We're only 4 days into the New Year, so it may be a bit premature, but I'm THRILLED with my new creative productivity tool.

I started with an author's writing tracker spreadsheet shared on tumblr, which tracked time written per day, wordcount, and writing pace, and had a little section to show you the average per month. The cool thing about it was that it used conditional formatting to color-code your word count based on your goals -- as this (pro) author had set it up, if he wrote 2000 words in a day, the cell turned a happy green; if it was between 1000 and 2000, it turned yellow, and if it was below 1000, it was RED.

Actually, the whole sheet was a stripe of red, because his spreadsheet showed zero for days that hadn't happened yet. I wanted mine to be more motivational (and I have a slight spreadsheet fetish, and large desire to do things the slickest way possible) so I fixed that. :P I also got the bright idea of tracking multiple arty/creative goals on one sheet. I have too damn much going on in my life to commit to x number of words written per day, or x minutes of music practice, or x minutes of drawing. Every time I try, it seems I've set myself up for failure. But I CAN aim for "Achieve at least one of these x-es every day." That gets more of the whole picture, and is far more motivating!

The creativity log spreadsheet includes

• Columns for wordcount (calculated) and writing and art time (entered) which change color according to goals. Currently, it's set such that 250 words is acceptable, and 750 is good; 15 minutes of writing or art is acceptable; 45 minutes is good.


• The automatically calculated wordcount column doesn't show a 'zero' unless the day has already started. (The way it was before, it reminded me of the teacher I had who gave us all progress reports with failing grades because she'd entered the scores of work we hadn't been assigned yet).


• Writing time is calculated from start and end times, as in the original. Music and Art time isn't. I should probably make it all one way or the other -- I can see the benefit of the calculated time for many people (and it allows the 'automatic zero' function above), but I often work on art and writing in a haphazard bit-here bit-there manner, which makes it difficult.


• includes words per hour calculation, which doesn't necessarily have much utility for me, given my shoddy timekeeping.

I want to be able to make it do more, but all of my ideas would require a more robust conditional formatting feature than a google spreadsheet offers -- or excel offers without actual coding, for that matter (I dream of a spreadsheet where my conditional formatting can be a formula that references other cells, rather than being determined by the data or formula in the formatted cell. I have strange dreams).

Comments

[stasia]

I thought Excel would do formatting based on other cells, but I'm a neophyte compared to you. Maybe I was using the data produced by the other cells rather than the formulae in those cells.

I've had a couple of teachers who did their grading that way - showing everything not-yet-assigned as zero and wow, was it upsetting the first time.

Stasia

[shadesofmauve]

I'll look into it when I'm at work -- I only have Open Office Calc at home, and I know it can't. It has a few more options than google spreadsheets, but it still only formats based on the cell being formatted, not on *other* cells.

(I suppose it's irrelevant for this project -- using google is important to me because I want to be able to access it anywhere).

[emony42.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to help you figure out the more complicated conditionals. It's fun. (We both know I'm weird that way.) I also might have a copy of MS Office that you could have. It'd be older (2007ish), but still functional.

[shadesofmauve]

Heheh, I think it's fun too! CAN it do conditional *formatting* based on data in a different cell? I've got some reasonably interesting conditionals going on already, but neither of my available tools have the option of doing that.

(also, peak at the screenshot I showed Sinvraal below, and see how well I'm doing!).

[emony42.livejournal.com]

Excel 2010 does (I was able to turn cells purple if the adjacent cell contained a number greater than 10). I'll have to do some digging to see if 2003 supports this as well, since that's the version that I have available to give you. I found the disk as I was searching for old hard drives in the spare room.

The screenshot looks great!

[sinvraal.livejournal.com]

That sounds really interesting... especially since you can adapt it for art as well as writing.

[shadesofmauve]

Yeah -- the big "Ah-ha!" moment for me was realizing I should put art, music, and writing on the same sheet. Otherwise, I'll say "Oh, I didn't write for a week, how dismal" and not realizing that I spent a ton of time making art and playing music, which are also good things. Tracking all three at once better suits my generalist goals. The color coding makes it easy to evaluate at a glance, too!

Here's a screenshot:



I'm considering throwing exercise in there to, like on the chart I made for stasia, but that might be a bit much (and it's not thematic :P). I currently keep track of that on a wall calendar.

If you'd like to play with it, I can make a clean copy to share. It's just a google doc.

[t-c-da.livejournal.com]

*puts hand up for a clean copy as conditional formatting is, at this point, outside my experience/knowledge and could prove useful.*

I'm also in that "MS Office @ work; Libre Office @ home" camp, not wishing to enrich Micro$haft when a suitable free option is available, also Micro$haft doesn't provide a product that will work (for free, 'cos I'm stingy) on a Linux platform.

[shadesofmauve]

I can do that -- the current version is the simplest possible conditional formatting, though. Not much to learn there -- google just doesn't offer much for conditional formatting. If I remake it in Excel it could get much more interesting, but that'd mean using excel... :P (I don't want a productivity tracker I can only use at work).

[sinvraal.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'd love to see a clean version. :)

[tersa.livejournal.com]

If I felt that motivated towards creativity, that would be AWESOME.

I'm pretty sure Excel can do those conditionals you speak of but I'd have to get my hands on it to be sure. :) (And also be motivated to doing something with it, haha).

SPREADSHEETS.

[shadesofmauve]

You're right, excel does! I checked as soon as I got into work today. the menu for it is kind of a baffling mess, to my mind, but I think that about all of the new version of Office. :P

...I still probably won't use it, because I'd rather have my wussy little google doc i can get from anywhere than a fancy schmancy excel version, but it may come in handy some day!

[tersa.livejournal.com]

You might be able to do all the conditional coding in Excel then upload it to Google Docs.

Not that I've ever done that before. *shifty eyes*

[shadesofmauve]

Ha! *puts on detective hat* If it works, that'd imply that they intend the functionality to work but haven't implemented it publicly yet. Aaaand...

Whadya know. Turns out google is working on seriously revamping their spreadsheet tool, and you can already test run the new one -- which DOES off that formatting!

*dances*