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Look what you did!

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2021 has been a record-shattering year at Pacemaker because of YOU and all the work you’ve done! Whether you contributed 1 word or 1000, 10 minutes or 10,000, together, you all have contributed more to Pacemaker in the last year than any previous year and by the looks of it, engagement is on the rise! What’s more is that all of this amazing progress was tracked in a year that was otherwise full of challenges and an unprecedented number of opportunities for setbacks.

For the thousands of you who completed plans, great job, keep the momentum going! And for the thousands more who haven’t yet completed your plans, you didn’t let the possibility of not finishing stop you from starting, and at Pacemaker, that’s always worth celebrating!

In 2021, with your help, we launched a full site redesign which you can read about here, and we added Projects– an innovative new way to organize your plans by grouping them together in ways which make sense to YOU! We also updated the progress editor to give you the freedom to make multiple progress updates per day, eliminating the need to manually calculate one cumulative figure! On top of these and other visual updates, we delivered a ton of fixes and tweaks behind the scenes that improved usability for you!

For 2022, we are doubly committed to continuing to add value to your Pacemaker Premium subscriptions and the Pacemaker Free experience, by adding more of the features YOU request, and some we’ll come up with ourselves. In short, in 2022, we are committed to bettering Pacemaker for you!

As always, thanks for being the best users any startup could ask for.

We wish you a strong finish to 2021, and a truly brilliant new year!

Pacemaker’s new look!

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We’re excited to roll out Pacemaker‘s new look!

Now the features you use most often are just a click away! Our new collapsible left navigation bar is stacked with bite-sized bits of information so that at a glance, you get a snapshot of your commitments, and easy access to other settings.

Here are some features we hope you’ll find particularly helpful:

  • the day’s date and to-do list so that you know what your day is looking like

  • direct links to your calendar view, full plan list and latest progress for a wider angle view

  • access to all the Challenges you’re hosting or participating in, by simply clicking the ‘Group Challenges’ link

  • account settings so that you can quickly see your user information, and set your preferences for application across the site.

We’ve even made the nav bar collapsible which makes the site a lot less visually overwhelming, so that you see more of what you want when you want it, and less of what you don’t want when you don’t!

Adding the day’s Progress has never been easier than it is now. Simply select your plan in the left nav and click ‘Add Progress’ when it loads. That’s right- no more need to click through 3 or 4 links to get there!

The Team has worked really hard on putting this together based on your feedback, and delivery of this product is part of our commitment to continuing to build a Pacemaker experience for you that you would be proud to use and share with others.

So, if you haven’t already, log in today to play around with it. As always, your feedback drives development and innovation on Pacemaker, so let us know if you have any recommendations for further improvements!

Stay safe out there everyone!

Pacemaker Gift Cards!

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This holiday season, we know you’re busy, so this will be quick. At Pacemaker, we are committed to always having your back, especially when life happens. Here are two major ways that we’ve got you covered this holiday season:

  1. Introducing Pacemaker Gift cards!

With just 3 days left until Christmas, and with restrictions being what they are to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus, shopping in-store simply may not be in the cards. With a Pacemaker Premium Gift card, you can gift friends and family monthly or yearly Pacemaker Premium subscriptions! You won’t have to leave your home to buy or send them, and they won’t have to leave their homes to receive or use them. Gift cards can be e-mailed instantly or you can schedule e-mail delivery for a future date!

Whether for Christmas or just because, Pacemaker Gift cards are an ideal gift for the creatives in your life. It may even help them get ahead of New-Years-Resolution season which is right around the corner!

2. Same amazing support from the Pacemaker Team

We’re happy to be able to guarantee you the same amazing support you’re used to during the year. During the holiday season, feel free to write in with feature requests, bug reports etc. as normal, and, as always, we’ll do our best to respond and resolve any issues within 48 hrs.

This is especially important to us as we roll out our Pacemaker Gift cards. We want to make sure that your gift recipients are able to enjoy their subscriptions as quickly and seamlessly as possible. So we’ll be standing by to help them get set up if needed!

The Pacemaker Team wishes all our users a joyful holiday season that is truly bright, and a new year that reignites passions and realizes dreams!

Own your progress- it’s yours after all! :)

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At Pacemaker we believe that we need to celebrate progress towards our goals and not just completed goals. We stressed the importance of celebration in our last blog post, but we want to help you follow through. In the spirit of personal celebration, we hope you’ll be inspired by these four ways to ensure you’re owning your progress.

REST – Take the day off!

Our lives are so fast-paced. Responsibilities, deadlines and commitments come in from all directions and if we’re not careful, the burnout WILL catch up with us. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it is so important that we plan our rest days!

That’s one of the many reasons Pacemaker allows you to personalize your workload on particular days and even factor buffer days into your writing plans. To celebrate your progress, schedule yourself an extra buffer day. Even a few hours without thinking of your daily word count can relieve stress and help get the creative juices flowing for the next phase of writing! Give resting a try!  

REFLECT – Writing is a journey!

This is particularly important in cases where we’ve set a big goal and fallen short of it. There is a big chance we’ll end up preoccupied with the part we missed, even if it is minuscule compared to all that we completed.

Reflecting can help redirect our focus in a way that encourages us to celebrate what we’ve achieved thus far- our progress! Think of all the twists and turns that your writing project took that you didn’t expect. Think of the surprises in your story that bowled you over. Think of all the words you’ve written, and all the words you’ve deleted and replaced. It probably amounts to a few pages at least, which is nothing to say of the miles and miles of words and pages you turned over in your mind to get those out!

BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF – Treat yourself as you would treat another writer in your situation!

In general, we are a lot harder on ourselves than we need to be. In fact, we’re willing to wager that as a writer, you’re probably harder on yourself than you would be on another writer facing the same challenges as you are! Imagine it- another writer comes to you and says, “I feel like a failure, I only wrote half the words I scheduled this week!”.

In what universe would your external dialogue with them mirror the internal dialogue you would lambaste yourself with if you were in the same position? None! We all would, as quickly, and as sincerely as we could, redirect our Creative-peer away from their shortfall, overwhelm them with praise for their progress, and infuse them with hopes of glorious future triumphs! We would commiserate with them, and tell them, from the bottom of our hearts that we know how it is, and that that’s just the journey. That’s exactly what our internal dialogue needs to sound like!

SPREAD THE WORD – Share your progress!

Find your community, and keep them updated! We’ve spoken before about the importance of the social aspect of writing. We HIGHLY recommend telling family, telling friends, telling followers through social media, about your progress! They are your tribe, and can be a lifeline- refusing to let you sink into despair, pulling you back to the reassuring reality that this is indeed the process. Allow them to help you celebrate you!

Oh! And no more disclaimers and apologies (this ties in with being gentle with yourself). Your progress is not an apology! When you tell others about your progress… tell them about your progress! Don’t sandwich it between laments about how much more it coulda, woulda, shoulda been. Own it! So no more, “Yeaaaa, I suck at writing. Today I wrote 3 pages. What a fail!”. NO! – “TODAY I WROTE 3 pages!” — PERIOD!

These are just a few small ways to get you started! What are some of the ways you celebrate your progress? We’re thinking of starting a page on Pacemaker where writers can leave words of encouragement and praise to be delivered at random to other writers! We think that would be a lovely surprise for our users! What do you think?

Enjoy your writing journey, and as always, remember, Pacemaker can help!