9 months in: Lessons learned on agile, data, and writing
November 2024 progress vs. my STELLAR roadmap goals for writing: recap on AISW interviews & podcast, book proposals, LCAM, 'Xodus' to Bluesky, new lessons learned, actions, and plan for December.
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 learned in my 9th full month on Substack, and what I’ll do differently in December.
During November, I met my reduced target range for posts and again exceeded my target range on Notes. I also wrote one draft book proposal, found a workaround for the 🫛 AI6P podcast RSS issues, and spun up a🦋 Bluesky account. (See @karensmiley.substack.com).
For December, I’m aiming for slightly lower overall goal ranges than November, but increasing my book proposal writing target.
How It’s Going
In retrospective #8, I set goals for November. Here’s how I did on each element of the STELLAR framework(other than ST, the starting position, which isn’t changing).
Table 1 maps my results to my quantity goal ranges in November. Archive links are below in the References1.
Articles: Not counting a cross-post, I wrote:
5interviews(2 audio, 3 text). My queue of completed interviews shrunk during November from 4 to 2.
2posts(the October retrospective and a holiday gift offer post).
2 bonus documents (a draft book proposal and an author bio).
Social media posts: Total new Notes and restacks with comments (46 as of Nov. 29) exceeded my target range and my previous highs (in the mid-30s).
Figure 1. Table of writing and interview targets and actuals for Nov. 2024.
As of the month 8 retro, I had written and logged 114 posts and 129,800 words. During November, I added 9 more writings, of which I’m measuring 2 for 2,221 words. New measured totals for month 9: 116 posts and 132,021 words.
Figure 2. Stacked bar graph of total words written in Substack posts (excluding interviews and footnotes in posts), by month from March to November 2024.
Note: Lung Cancer Awareness Month is observed every November. Lung cancer advocacy is a long-term (20+ year) passion for me, so I posted a Note on LCAM. I hoped to build it into an AAaB article, with an updated flyer, to raise lung cancer awareness for my subscribers. However, time was tight this month, and interest in the Note wasn’t high (just one commenter), so I regretfully set aside the article and flyer. If you’re curious to know more, please comment or email me!
Although I only measured 2 posts, my balance of lengths was ok (1 Short, 1 Medium). My average post length dropped somewhat vs. October (1311 to 1111).
Figure 3 shows my post size distributions through November.
Figure 3. Bar graph of my post sizes by month for March to November 2024. VeryShort = (1-199); Short = (200-799); Medium = (800-2499); Long = (2500+)
Quality Goals
During November, I estimate that I stayed at quality level 6. Post size distribution has stabilized around my 50/50 target, and reading ease metrics are fairly steady.
LL - Lessons and Limits
My recent lessons have focused on executing AISW interviews in a sustainable way. Based on my expected November time constraints, I had slowed down the interviewing pace to max one per week (any format). Even then, given continuing family health concerns (and the need to do much more research than planned for evaluating my 2025 health care coverage options), November was tight.
A - Actions
Here are updates on my previous self-assigned actions.
(A9) April-June Lesson 1: Voiceovers - November update
A9-1 Planning and executing audio voiceovers
In November, I had only 2 non-interview posts. I didn’t publish any voiceovers other than the AI6P AISW audio interviews. I might still go back and add voiceover to the gift offer post so that podcast listeners will be able to hear it, though.
A9-2 RSS troubleshooting
Through mid-November, all of the AISW interview posts kept going into a separate ‘People’ RSS file, not the main one, and there was still no progress from Substack tech support on a fix. I decided to work around it (for now) by moving all of the audio interviews from the People section to the main section, where the external podcast is configured. This “worked”; all AI6P audio interviews are now available externally as well as internally. (Text-only interviews are staying in the People section for now.)
Also, I confirmed in November that switching to the Audio post format made the Substack podcast tab work. I’m not going to create new Audio posts for the older interviews and voiceovers, though, for 3 reasons.
I want to keep the tracking history on the original older posts.
I want my archives to have only 1 post for one interview or article.
I don’t know if many people even use that podcast tab of the site or app.
(A12) June-NovemberLesson: 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 and beyond. Here’s where it stands.
The AISW interviews remain my top priority. Growth has slowed on the LinkedIn newsletter for AISW (563 subscribers). Experimenting with other ways to create its content has helped to reduce the effort. I’ve also established a practice of reusing much of the LinkedIn post content for the Substack Note restack. I’m also now using Bluesky and posting interview links there. That’s a bit more work but not much; I’m mostly reusing the same post text.
In October, I started on a second “What Is AI?” article and part 2 of “But I don’t use AI” under AI Fundamentals. Both remain in draft. Working on the book proposal document, which covers these topics, took precedence over finishing them.
is now scheduled for December 3. I’m looking forward to learning how to use Audacity more efficiently!
R - Review (Retrospective)
I committed to doing a monthly review at the end of November to see where I stand on my goals and actions - status: this article is it.
In addition to the analyses above on E, progress towards end goal, I had looked at post stats in my October retrospective to explore if the LinkedIn AISW newsletter is worth the effort. LinkedIn source stats are still low. However, I still don’t fully trust this data yet.
Interestingly, the stats on my AISW interview with Lis Sandi-Diaz in November showed Instagram and Facebook - sites I did not post in - as the sources for 15+ reads. I’m guessing Lis or someone she knows shared the link there 😊
I’ve reassessed the content plan for the AI for Music series. For 2025, the company profiles will be de-emphasized. The broader analysis articles on AI ethics (which were among my most popular earlier in 2024) will be prioritized instead.
I’ll continue my interviews at the same slower, more sustainable pace. Only 2 AISW interviews for December are already done or in final editing. But I have 3 new interview calls scheduled for this week. And I may use the holiday week for a year-end wrap-up and analysis of the interview data. So my December and January interview posts feel like low schedule risks.
Writing a formal book proposal for one of my WIP AI books has helped me clarify the focus and market - who I’m writing it FOR. (Thank you again to
for encouraging me to do this!) I’ll write more proposals for my other WIP AI books during December. Investing the effort to write the book proposals now feels like a good “slow down to go fast” activity to set me up better for 2025. Starting in December, I’ll add separate counts for what I write that doesn’t get published on Substack (book proposals & chapters).
The 33% November spike in my Notes was mostly due to election-related topics. That increased commenting volume is likely to carry over somewhat into December, along with the adverse repercussions of the election outcome.
I noticed during November that my non-AI Notes and comments drew more reactions than my posts about AI or technology. My 2 best-performing comments so far, by far (100+ hearts), were on political issues. No AI-related Note to date has yet won 10+ hearts. What I suspect this means is that my Follower base skews to my personal interests and newsletter, whereas my Subscriber base for the
newsletter is mostly not using Notes. In a way, this further validates my decision to run two separate newsletters. Analyzing my data earlier this year showed me that the two subscriber lists didn’t overlap that much. This experience with Notes is consistent with their audiences being distinct.
New Actions from this November 2024 retro
Aside from working on more AI book proposals (in my content plan), I’m not assigning myself any new actions this month.
New Targets for December 2024 (month 10)
I’m slightly reducing my goals from November (7-10 total posts) to 6-10 total posts for December. That allows:
4 AISW posts (interviews or a data analysis), one per week on Thursdays.
1 retro post (this one).
1-2 more book proposals.
0-3 non-interview articles (a year-end summary is in draft).
For Notes, although I exceeded my range in November, I’ll keep my target range the same for December. November’s pace was too intense. I expect the political notes to ease a bit in December, although not entirely.
Figure 4. Summary of my December 2024 target ranges
For Bluesky, I’m not setting a target range. Instead, I’ll treat its use more like a DoD checklist item, like the AISW LinkedIn newsletter. For each interview and article, I’ll share a ‘skeet’ (that’s what they call them!)on Bluesky with a link.
Taking the year-end holidays into account, my effort budget for 3 weeks of December will remain at 6-8 hours/day or 30-40 hours/week. Interviews are likely to keep my effort bursty.
What’s Next?
That’s my writing retro for November. I commit to doing another one after the end of December. I will re-evaluate my targets and plan then. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of this!
Great update - and of course I’m especially excited about the book proposal progress! 🤩