Enter the Matrix: Free Your Mind & Your Schedule
On knowing the path and walking the path
Hello friend, 👋🏾
With just a few weeks to go in 2024, my planning for 2025 is well underway. I’m taking my time with it, essentially giving myself the entire month of December to figure out a master plan for next year—my year of “Hell yes.”
The mindset shift itself—focusing on things that I’m excited about—is liberating on its own. However, since I am running a business, I can’t do that solely based on what my emotions tell me.
In order to make sure that I’m being deliberate and selective about not only the events I agree to but the projects I take on, I decided I needed to improve my decision-making system. Sure, excitement and joy are factors, but so are practical concerns like money and time. Enter the weighted decision matrix.
Using a tool like a decision matrix is a way to ensure that the things I spend my time on are aligned with what’s really important to me. It’s like a compass guiding me to what fits my goals, energy, and whatever other criteria I determine are fueling me now.
It’s so easy to get caught up in what we think we “should” be doing, or what we’ve heard other people are doing. We’re all inundated with podcasts, Substack posts, YouTube videos, social media, conferences, books, and general chatter like never before. Both so-called experts and our peers are full of information, and there is no shortage of techniques to try.
Being a High Input personality, I’m often swayed, not necessarily by FOMO, but by curiosity. What if I tried All The Things? There’s a chance that one of them will be just what’s needed to catapult me into wild success.
Unfortunately, piling my plate with techniques or strategies to try doesn’t necessarily bring me joy. Most of these activities either don’t positively affect my business or are a downright waste of time. So taking the time to figure out what my actual values are and how important they are to me is a great way to create a schedule and a plan for next year that helps to free me from overwhelm and exhaustion.
In my weighted decision matrix, you choose five criteria that resonate with your personal, professional, and/or creative goals. For me, these include payment, creativity and joy, time and energy, growth potential, and brand support. Each criterion is weighted based on its importance to you, thus creating a personalized roadmap for decision-making.
If you’re interested, check out this video where I go over how to use the matrix to plan your year.
The decision matrix template is available in the Resources Library, available to all subscribers of Footnotes.
Let’s make 2025 less about chasing after elusive “should be’s” and more about intentional choices that support our goals and dreams. Learning to better conserve our energy and time so we can invest both in things that truly matter is a great way towards planning your best year yet!
I’d love to hear from you! Have you tried using a decision matrix, or do you have other goal-setting strategies that work for you? Share your thoughts in the comments of this post.
And if you find this email useful, please hit the ❤️ button, share it with a friend, and consider becoming a paid subscriber!
📝 Get Your Hooks in Them!
I've just started revising my current WIP and have spent the past few days on the opening chapter. Beginnings are so important in a novel. I never download a book, even a free one, without checking out the first chapter. Readers need to be hooked, as do gatekeepers like agents and editors. This post from Reach Your Apex by author and slush reader Kai Delmas contains some elements of hooking a reader that are vital to master.
In my manuscript, I wrote what I consider a very good first chapter, but it wasn't the best hook for the book. I had my brother, who is my first reader, give it a once over and he agreed. I had focused on introducing my main character and her opening situation—the problem before the problem, as author Junot Diaz puts it. But something was missing.
Delmas states:
How can you hook a reader with a character? Conflict. Many stories start with a character doing something. I don’t know why they are doing it or how they feel about it. I don’t know the character and what’s at stake. So why should I care?
The first thing I want to see in a character is something that makes them endearing. Show their feelings, have them say or do something that will make them likable. Or go the opposite route, make us hate them. What we need is an emotional beat, a link between the reader and the character. Something that will keep us turning the page.
For my manuscript, I’m working on editing the opening to amp up a situation with a ton of conflict that will really introduce readers to my main character in a very active way.
Another vital element that needs to be present from the first sentence is voice. Narrative voice is notoriously tricky to describe. It includes flow and rhythm, word choice, punctuation style, sentence and paragraph length, formal vs informal tone, and the types and lengths of devices like metaphors, similes, and alliteration.
Check out my post on narrative voice for a deeper dive:
🚀 Quick Bite
You can now create universal book links with BookFunnel. According to them, “a Universal Book Link (or UBL) is meant to be a single place on the web where you can send readers to find a book.” I’ve been using a similar service from Draft2Digital for years, and now BookFunnel has entered the market!
🎙️ My Imaginary Friends: Episode 248 “Planning for 2025”
The My Imaginary Friends podcast is a behind the scenes look at the journey of a working author navigating traditional and self-publishing, where I share insights on the writing life, creativity, inspiration, and this week’s best thing.
Watch on YouTube | Listen to the podcast
Mentioned:
✨Ink & Magic podcast: Episode 38 “Masterminds”
Join bestselling authors (and former college roommates) Ines Johnson and L. Penelope as they read and discuss the writing craft, worldbuilding, and romance of paranormal and fantasy novels.
In this week's episode hosts Leslye and Ines are joined by their mastermind partner, Cerece Renee Murphy. Not only will they discuss the invaluable benefits of participating in a mastermind group, but they will also give listeners a behind-the-scenes look at how they run their own. Listen in to learn how a mastermind can elevate your skills, broaden your perspective, and significantly level up your projects.
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