7 months in: Lessons learned on agile, data, and writing
September 2024 progress vs. my STELLAR roadmap goals for writing here on Substack: recap on post sizes & readability, new interview series, new lessons learned, actions, and plan for October
I committed in March to doing (and sharing) a retrospective each month on how I’m doing vs. my “STELLAR” goals. Here’s what I’ve learned in my 7th full month on Substack, and what I’ll do differently in October.
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Some acronyms I use:
AAaB = my Agile Analytics and Beyond newsletter
AI6P = my 6 ‘P’s in AI Pods newsletter
RF = Readability Formulas tool
WIP = Work In Progress
How It’s Going
In retrospective #6, I set goals for September. Here’s a look at how I did on each element of the STELLAR framework (other than ST, the starting position, which isn’t changing).
E - Progress towards End goal
Quantity and Length Goals
Table 1 summarizes how I hit the high end of the ranges for my quantity goals again in September. Archive links are below in the References1.
Articles: 9 Posts plus 2 unplanned pages and 9 interviews published (4 audio, 5 text; not counting 7 more interviews completed and scheduled). I did not count the auto-generated “Substack Summer” post.
Social media posts: Total new Notes and restacks with comments stayed about the same in as August (39 vs. 38), still above my max target of 32.
As of the month 6 retro, I had written and logged 98 posts and 108,345 words (as counted by MS Word and RF). During September, I added 20 more posts, of which I’m measuring 11, and 14,425 words. New total for month 7: 109 measured posts and 122,770 words.
Post Sizes and Distribution Details:
I stayed on track with my balance of short and long posts at 45.5% short (5 short, 6 long). However, my average post length went up significantly vs. the two previous months, from 937 to 847 to 1311.
This increased length is partly due to a single Long post of 4201 words (AI Fundamentals #1), my second-longest ever, and a heavily-researched Long post on crediting the 3Cs and 4Cs to CIPRI (2839 words). They were long because their topics and scope needed them to be.
Figure 2 shows my post size distributions through September.
Quality Goals
During September, I estimate that I stayed at quality level 6. Post size distribution has stabilized around my 50/50 target. However, my reading ease metrics dropped a bit due to the longer, more technical posts.
LL - Lessons and Limits
My main lesson in September was on planning and executing AISW interviews. As August proved, audio interviews are way more labor-intensive. I limited myself to publishing at most 1 audio interview per week, and I’m holding to that.
Aiming to keep each interview under 30 minutes has been a challenge, though. Recent AISW audio interviews have gotten longer. The extra time is due to lots of amazing insights from my guests, which I love. The downside is that longer calls (over 30 min) take hours more editing time.
I’m still unsure if the audio interviews are useful to subscribers, or if generating transcript from the audio and only publishing text would be equally valuable. And the ongoing issues with Substack’s RSS not picking up new audio interviews are severely limiting the reach of audio episodes. But I’m not ready to give up on the accessibility and engagement benefits yet.
A - Actions
Here are updates on my previous self-assigned actions.
(A9) April-June Lesson 1: Voiceovers
One unexpected factor disrupted my audio recording in September. I moved my recording workstation to a new room to get some much-needed space. Then I discovered that the acoustics are much worse than in my old, crowded, soft-surfaced room. All of the open hard surfaces make my voice sound very echo-y! (You may notice it on the newer AISW interviews …)
I had collected some tips on audio quality in my May 11 post about text-to-speech and voiceovers. Based on that advice, I plan to add fabric curtains to this room soon, but I’ll need to do more to fully address my sound quality.
Aside from that, here’s where I stand on this action as of September:
A9-1 Planning and executing audio voiceovers
In August, 5 of the 9 interviews had audio, and 3 non-interview posts had audio. In September, I didn’t publish any voiceovers other than the AI6P AISW audio interviews. (I actually recorded a ~30-minute voiceover for AI Fundamentals #1, but realized I needed to rewrite parts of the article to clarify and include more examples, and I decided not to invest the time to re-record.)
Once I’ve improved my acoustics, I may go back and record voiceovers on some of the short AAaB posts from September.
A9-2 RSS troubleshooting
AI6P podcast sync with Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Overcast, and Pocket Casts remains problematic. Podcast RSS issues have kept all of my September AISW interview posts from synching to the external AI6P podcasts. And Substack tech support seems to have given up on trying to fix it 🙁.
In my July retro, I had self-assigned (A13) to help me figure out if or how I can get visibility into whether people are listening to the audio voiceover tracks. I didn’t make any progress on this yet. Absent data which shows me it’s worth the effort, I haven’t yet set targets on audio. If you’re finding the audio useful, or have suggestions for improving the post voiceovers or interviews, please let me know!
(A12) June-September Lesson: Becoming a better writer - content planning
I had self-assigned action (A12) in my July retrospective on planning my content. For August, I made 3 changes to my AI6P content plan for this action, and kept it during September. Here’s where they stand.
A12-1 AISW (“AI, Software, and Wetware”) interviews
I’ve made the AISW interviews my top priority, and it shows.
I’ve connected successfully with more people outside the US (Denmark, India, Italy, and Sweden this month) and in non-software roles. I still want more diversity in all dimensions, but it’s good progress. This post mapped completed and planned guest locations:
I’m on track for a steady 2 interviews/week - one audio, one text.
I’ve built a healthy backlog of completed interviews (including guests in Canada, Costa Rica, India, and Italy) to let me enjoy my planned family week in October without disrupting my publishing schedule.
The LinkedIn newsletter for AISW is now up to 500 subscribers (vs. just over 100 here on Substack). But creating its content has taken more time than I anticipated.
A LinkedIn newsletter not only requires you to create a new ‘edition’ (post), it requires writing a personal post about the newsletter edition for sharing it to your network and subscribers. It feels redundant 🤷🏼♀️. But I’m getting more efficient at it.
I recently switched from one weekly newsletter edition with 2 Substack posts to two weekly newsletter editions, one per Substack post. This seems like it would be more work than weekly. But it actually lets me decouple the interviews, so if I need to delay or reschedule one or the other, I don’t incur rework on the 2-post edition images and texts.
A12-2 AI Fundamentals section
I finished one draft AI Fundamentals article in WIP on “What Is AI?” and still have another draft pending. I’m hoping to release the second one in October.
A12-3 Ethics of generative AI for music
My focus for PART 3 of ethics of generative AI for music had been on accelerating and streamlining the WIP company profiles. With the bulk of my September effort going to the interviews, I didn’t finish off any WIP profiles.
I’m no longer sure these detailed AI6P music company profiles are worth the effort they’ve been taking. Plus they’ve been holding up the completion of the remaining parts of the series. And at this point, I’m not fully convinced that they should. I’m reconsidering the content plan for this series.
R - Review (Retrospective)
I committed to doing a monthly review at the end of September to see where I stand on my goals and actions - status: this article is it 😊
Bottom line:
The AI6P AISW interview series kickoff has been both a great success and a heavy time load. As a result, the AI for Music series has stalled and I’ve made no recent progress on my AI books. I’m hoping my newest AI6P collaborator will help with the workload.
I’m not certain anyone’s listening to the external podcasts. So I’ll stop stressing over the RSS sync issues 2 for now (in the spirit of ‘accepting the things you cannot change’). Before giving up, I will try one more thing: Substack has an Audio post type. I’ve been using Text posts with voiceovers added. The Audio post type might integrate better with the podcast (she said hopefully).
I’m reconsidering the effort for publishing detailed AI6P music company profiles for the AI for Music series. For me, the value is in the research, which I do anyway. If publishing the profiles isn’t adding high value for others, I should move on.
I’ll reassess my targets and plan in my next monthly retro.
New Actions from this September 2024 retro
Carrying through on my current actions will keep me plenty busy in October.
My next planned step for improving my writing will be striving to be more concise. I’m not quite sure yet how I’ll measure conciseness. 🙂But I don’t want to veer off-target on ease of reading. I’ll be watching those metrics more closely.
I still want to give the new content plan a few months before making any further big adjustments in WHAT I write about. I may decide this month whether to finish the remainder of the AI for Music series without blocking on the detailed AI music company profiles.
However, I do need to make small changes in HOW I deliver my content.
(A14) Improve my audio production proficiency: I’ll invest some time in learning how to use Audacity more effectively to get a recorded audio interview to ‘done’ quicker. Thankfully, has kindly offered to mentor me on this in a live session in early November, and to help resolve the RSS issues - I’m looking forward to that!
New Targets for October 2024 (month 8)
My September goals felt “aggressive but achievable” when I set them. I again overdid it a bit with my enthusiasm for getting the new AISW interview series off the ground. In October, my work time will be reduced for a week-long visit from out-of-town family. So my goals need to go down a bit.
Seven AISW interviews for October are already done or in final editing. This avoids any visible publication gaps during family week. So that target can stay at 9 max. But I’m lowering my other October goals to 10-15 total posts, including 7-9 interviews and this 1 retro post. That only allows 2-5 non-interview articles this month.
My effort budget for 3 weeks of October will remain at 6-8 hours/day or 30-40 hours/week. Interviews are likely to keep my effort bursty.
That’s my writing retro for September. I commit to doing another one after the end of October. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of this!
“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” (Confucius)
What’s Next
I have 3 fun sneak previews to share for October:
A new collaborator has volunteered to join me on starting in October. I’m looking forward to her contributions!
I’m honored to be featured soon in Jana’s “Behind The Substack” interview series. Check out her !
of will guest-post on this month. She shares 5 ways to use AI to boost kids’ learning - you won’t want to miss it!
(Yes, all 3 of those deserved exclamations. I’m excited 😊)
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References
Archives analyzed in this retrospective
My August 6 post on podcast lessons learned:
My Oct. 2 note asking the Substack community for advice on my latest attempt at working around the Substack RSS and setup issues:
For the RSS issues, message Apple from within Apple Podcast Connect. They are quite responsive. I had to do this a few times with Substack feeds, but never with feeds from other hosts.
Oh, thank you for the mention, Karen. The interview turnout great 😊 I can't wait for the release date 👏