30-Day Medium Writing Challenge Progress Tracker in Google Sheets (Free Template)

Another use case, another Google Spreadsheet

While drafting my pledge post for the 30-Day Challenge where I’m sending 30 articles to 30 publications in 30 days, I realized I didn’t have a proper way of tracking my progress.

You will never believe what I did. Are you sitting down? You’re about to fall off your chair. I… made a Google Spreadsheet to track my progress throughout this challenge! Shocking.

“But wait, your sending that piece off to your own publication,” I hear you thinking, “We’re only on day 2 and you’re already cheating?” Maybe a little bit. On the other hand, I didn’t specify in my own rules that I was not allowed to do this.

I won’t judge myself too harshly on this one. This template is one for the public. At least, anyone who wants to take the 30-Day Medium Writing Challenge as well.

Have a look below. We’ll then go through the setup steps. There are only two, so it’ll be fast.

Getting started

[Click this link] to make a copy of the template. It will be saved directly to your Google Drive. *Please note that any edit requests will be ignored and deleted.*

You’ll see two tabs inside the spreadsheet named “Progress📈” and “Dashboard🚀”. The Progress tab is where we’ll track what we’re doing. The Dashboard tab needs no modification whatsoever.

Go to the Progress📈 tab. Then:

1. In field B2, overwrite the field with the date you’ll start your challenge. This was 16/6/2021 in my case. No need to fill out the other dates below, as all fields further down in this column add +1 from the previous field. Fun detail: the current date will be shown with a purple background! If you hate the color purple, follow these steps: highlight fields B2 to B31 > right click + click on “Conditional formatting” > click on the rule on the right side bar > change the purple fill color to whatever you may prefer > press “Done”.
2. Still in the Progress📈 tab in field B34, overwrite the current end date with the date you find in field B31. That probably means you’ll only need to overwrite the “15/07” part that’s currently in this field. Do not delete the content of this field, as this is where the countdown timer on the Dashboard is pulling from.

Done! This is all the setting-up we’ll need to do. What remains is for you to track your progress inside this spreadsheet and see the numbers on your dashboard skyrocket.

What else?

The rest is pretty straightforward. In the Progress📈 tab, there is space to add:

• Column C: A link to your draft
• Column D: The title of the piece
• Column E: The word count. When writing your story inside the Medium editor, highlight everything. In the upper left corner next to your name, you’ll see your total word count, which you then can jot down in the spreadsheet. I draft my articles in Google Docs. By the time I copy them into Medium, they’re nearly good to go, but I usually end up making last-minute changes. It, therefore, makes sense to wait with noting the word count until right before I’m ready to publish.

• Column F: The publication you’re submitting or pitching to.
• Column G: The date you submitted your draft or piece to a publication. A quick tip: use command+; (on Mac) or control+; (on Windows) to write today’s date in the field.
• Column H: The date you receive a response from the pub.
• Column I: How much time has passed since submitting and receiving a reply (or facing rejection). No need to touch this column. The formulas calculate the difference between the dates in columns G and H themselves.
• Column J: Subsequently with a reply from the publication editors, you can mark the field in column J with a value from the dropdown menus.

At the bottom of this tab in rows 32 and 33, you can gain a quick overview of where you stand.

You see:

• The number of days left
• The total amount of words written
• The number of pubs you submitted to
• And your wins and losses in terms of getting accepted or rejected.

This same data from rows 32 and 33 is repeated on the Dashboard🚀 tab. The main difference is that it’s more visually appealing. At an eye’s glance, you can see how well you’re doing.

The Dashboard has a to-the-minute countdown timer I found on the Info Inspired website, a gem for Google Sheets tutorials.

If you’re at all curious about how the sheet is set up, you can make all formulas visible by clicking in the menu bar on “View” > “Show formulae”.

Edit 18–6–21: The formula in field B32 was incorrect and is now adjusted. It should be: =DAYS(B31, TODAY()).

Edit 30–7–21: I added 2 columns (N and O) to add the publish date and a link to your published piece.

Edit 5–8–21: Added a “count unique pub names” in field H33.

Good luck with your 30-Day Challenge! I hope the template is of use. May we come out at the other side with lightning-fast typing skills and a calloused, beat up ego from all the rejection endured, one that Goggins would praise us for.

Sign up for the Google Sheets Geeks newsletter! Download my 3 most popular Google Sheets templates, and get updates on new templates (when I make them) in your inbox.