How the HB90 Bootcamp Made Me a Productivity RockStar

I’ve got a lot of things going on. I’ve got a day job that I love. But I’m also carving out my writing career—which includes being more present on social media and blogging, in addition to actually writing books! I’ve got a preteen at home who has boundless energy for anything but school and homework, and an awesome husband who I share all the housekeeping duties with. 

I discovered Sarra Cannon about a year ago. Someone I follow on Instagram posted something about a “Preptober planner” and I was intrigued. I’m a planner girl, so any time I hear about a planner that’s new to me my ears perk up. 

I found out that the Preptober planner was something that Sarra created for writers embarking on the writing challenge known as NaNoWriMo, as in National Novel Writing Month. 

Every November writers everywhere commit to writing every day towards a finished work, only “winning” NaNoWriMo if they manage to write at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. 

Sarra’s Preptober planner guides writers through figuring out how to actually do this. 

So I said what the heck and did NaNoWriMo last year, and actually won by writing over 50,000 words of my first novel. I couldn’t believe it. I was ecstatic. The Preptober planner broke down how to do this using “NaNoWriMo math,” as Sarra calls it. 

The only problem is that once I won NaNoWriMo I had no idea how to actually finish writing the book, edit it, and then figure out how to get an agent and get the thing published. In following Sarra after NaNoWriMo—she posts regularly on YouTube, Instagram, and in her Facebook group, I quickly found out about her author coaching side hustle, which is called Heart Breathings. (I don’t actually know what that name stands for, but it’s catchy.) The flagship product of Sarra’s Heart Breathings business is the HB90 bootcamp. 

HB90 is a quarterly planning system that Sarra developed after getting too burned out by being a full-time writer, mom, wife, and entrepreneur. The asynchronous online program is seven days long and walks you through the process of devising a goals and action plan for actually getting shit done. There are daily videos and activities like creating a vision board or utilizing a kanban board for task management. 

I flailed and didn’t commit to taking HB90 in the first two quarters of this year. But as time wore on, I realized that I had so many things I wanted to be doing and no real system for prioritizing and managing my time to get them done. I enrolled in HB90 for Q3 this year, even though the first two weeks of July were going to be spent with my in-laws in Albuquerque, where I’d work remotely and find time to take the HB90 classes and do some hard thinking about my goals and priorities. 

My current planner stack, featuring my frankenplanners by Erin Condren and Happy Planner.

But I did manage to do all this important work and set up my planner system for the next year and a half. I use two planners every day: I have an Erin Condren Life Planner that I frankenplanned to include some weekly habit and health trackers, as well as my family, personal, and work appointments. I had to buy a giant coil to recoil all the planner pages together. The planner is a beast, but I’ve been using it pretty consistently since July, which is huge for me. I always get sidetracked with the newest shiny thing in the planner world, even though I have so many stickers and inserts in my stash. In this Erin Condren planner I write down all my work and personal time commitments. I also track my workouts, water intake, weigh-ins, and moods. Every Sunday night I set up the next week’s planner pages. It’s therapeutic for me and mentally prepares me for the week. 

Once I’m done plotting my week in the Erin Condren life planner, I see what time is left to assign to the three goals that HB90 has helped me hone in on. Sarra says that three goals per quarter are enough. Do more than that and you’re setting yourself up for overwhelm. She’s right. I tried the Daily Grind planner at the beginning of this year—it’s set up to track 10 (!) goals—and I very quickly wore myself out with stress about trying to work on these 10 goals on a daily basis. So three goals is the Goldilocks “just right” amount for me. 

For Q3 my goals involved 1) finishing the novel I started during last year’s NaNoWriMo, 2) getting my personal website and blog off the ground, and 3) getting more active on Instagram, including doing more posts about myself and showing my face more (which has been the HARDEST goal so far). 

To track my HB90 Q3 goals I use a Happy Planner that has the HB90 pages in a section at the front (I do love to frankenplan!). I use some of the HB90 goal-planning sheets to map out my weekly to do’s for each of my three goals, and then see how much time I have in my schedule to assign task blocks to each one. Sarra uses the pomodoro method of chunking time into 30-minute increments. You assign however 30-minute task blocks you can to all your weekly tasks. 

If it sounds complicated, it actually isn’t. I’m the type of person that needs to silo all the facets of my life and livelihood. If I don’t everything gets mushy and I can’t see the forest for the trees (did I use this axiom properly? I somehow feel it works in this context, but correct me if I’m wrong!). 

Using HB90, I might not have always tracked everything religiously every day, but I definitely spent every Sunday night plotting where all my time would go. This has been transformational for getting my shit done. 

I’m retaking the HB90 class for Q4—once you enroll in the class once, for $199, you have lifetime access to the class and can retake it with all the other students every quarter—and am excited to finish the year on a high note. I’m this close to finishing my first novel, my website is up and has a decent start on blog posts, and I’m making some headway on my Instagram account. 

I’ve learned a lot about my own productivity style and some other goals I want to incorporate in Q4, so things will change up a little in this last slide of 2024. 

I highly recommend HB90 to anyone who needs a new system for getting stuff done. Sarra talks a lot about her program being for people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the overwhelm. And Sarra is incredible. She accomplishes a shit ton in an average day. Her system works for her, so I’m taking inspiration from that. I hope I continue to organize my life this way. 2024 was a year I got so much done. I’m proud and excited to keep that going. 

Information about registering for HB90 (which won’t start up again until Q1 starts up again in January 2025). (This is an affiliate link.) 

If you want to get a headstart on HB90 while you wait for it to open up for Q1 registration, try the undated HB90 planner pages, which you can purchase from Sarra’s Etsy shop. The planner download includes so much instruction, so it’s kind of like HB90 lite. However, I recommend taking the actual course, which Sarra will be relaunching with new and improved videos in 2025. 

And if you have any questions about my experience in HB90, feel free to drop me a line!