Mini-Challenge #5: Organizing Upcoming Reviews

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

Today, your mini-challenge is to work on organizing your upcoming reviews of books you haven't read. Create an organizer... update... reorganize. The choice is yours. We'd like to see what you do to organize and how you think you'd improve it.

Organization is a big thing for me, especially since I work, go to school, and have a daughter to juggle along with my blogging. I've found that if I just have stuff written down it makes things run so much more smoother. Some things I do to keep myself organized is:

• Calender: I keep track of scheduled reviews, features, interviews, and other blog related events. This also helps me know what extra stuff (like accepting review copies) I can or can't do per month. By having everything down in the same place also helps me know what days I have open that I can post whatever it may be.
• Spreadsheets: I have a spreadsheet for my review copies organized by their publication month. This is a great tool for me because I can keep track of which books I've read and reviewed and which books I still need to read and review.

I updated my spreadsheets and Google calendar, which was farther behind than I thought...oops. One thing that I am going to give a try, is a review guide. I think Kate and Kristen had a good idea to have a spreadsheet dedicated to which books they would like to try and have reviewed each month. I'm always up for setting goals for myself. So I created a Review Guide based on a book's publication date. I plan to try that out for awhile and see how it works for me.