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I was thinking this morning about why I track productivity. In my case, I track first draft word count on novels and first draft finishes on short fiction, and indirectly through that recordkeeping, I also track writing days.
It isn't for the edification of anyone reading here. If my reports serve that purpose, great, but, hey...this is all about me, innit? It isn't even for the usual purpose of managing reporting metrics, which is to provide an executive dashboard of leading and trailing indicators utilized for continuous process improvement. (Sorry, that sentence leaked over from the day job.)
It's to keep me honest.
Writing is all about excuses. It's almost always easier to do something else. Laundry, dishes, shopping, childcare, lots of things which are quite legitimate and don't even qualify as cat waxing. Not to mention writing-related program activities, such as reading, research, send-outs, outlines, reading LJ and other sites, writing and reading email, making long-winded blog posts, etc. At some point the professional sloughs away the excuses and writes.
And that's why I track productivity. Not to impress anyone, not even myself. Not to micromanage my processes. But simply to keep myself honest, so that at the end of the day, the week, the month, I don't have one of those uncomfortable conversations with myself that go something like: "I'm sure I spent time on this, and I know I meant to, but I only have four pages of a short story done, my goodness, what happened to all the time?"
From that perspective, it doesn't matter what I, or you, or anyone else, tracks. It only matters that the tracking be consistent across time, and meaningful to the one doing the tracking. I know a writer who keeps a stopwatch by his computer. Whenever he goes to the bathroom or gets a drink, he stops it, then restarts it when he's back at his desk. He measure "hands on keyboard" time. Other people measure "butt in chair time", which is a slightly looser version of the same. Pages per day/week, wordcount per day/week, finished product per day/week/month -- there's lots of ways to do it. What they all have in common is giving the writer a structured framework in which to manage their productivity.
If you're wondering why you never get anything done, or why some writers (me, possibly, from your viewpoint) seem to have superhuman productivity, it's that simple. Because once you start measuring, then you understand costs. Want to go to that cool concert Thursday night? You won't be putting in your measurable productivity that day. Friends having neat parties Friday and Saturday night? Promised to help your brother move on Sunday? Come Monday morning, you'll have nothing to show for your weekend, writing-wise. Which is fine, if you choose to do it. But letting it slip away from you, then feeling frustrated and angry because you didn't get anything done, that's counterproductive and self-destructive.
So if you're not tracking yourself, find a way to do so. If you want to try an experiment, add this to the mix: track the number of hours you spend with the television on, the number of hours you spend surfing the Web, the number of hours you spend gaming, and/or the number of hours you spend out of your house going to parties, clubs, concerts and bars. Do that for a week or two, then look at how those things balance out. That will tell you how much of a priority writing really is for you. It doesn't matter what the answer is, I've got no judgments here, but you might be quite surprised.
Me, I track because it keeps me honest. If I don't write, I have no excuses. I just decided not to write. If I do write, I can measure my success by the level of my effort. It's all good.
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) fjm |
| 2006-12-07 14:20 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Yes.
I've had a hard time this semester and it was only tracking that got me going again.
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thank you for always being an inspiration. i always look for things like this from you. anyone ive ever spoken to about you says the same. your advice is golden to paraphrase a friend.
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| mizkit |
| 2006-12-07 15:26 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Exactly.
I tried to address this a couple weeks ago when talking about discipline. Somebody else ultimately phrased it better than I did: if you have a typical day job, you don't get up in the morning and say, "Gee, I don't have time to go to work today," which is so, so easy to do with writing.
What's bizarre to me is that I'll have whole months where I feel like I haven't accomplished *anything*--people visiting, taking time off, doing other things, etc, etc, etc--and then at the end of the month I look back at my wordcount and discover that "not accomplishing anything" actually came out to "wrote sixty thousand words". Buh. :)
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| jaylake |
| 2006-12-07 15:29 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Boy do I know that thing about "not accomplished anything" -- it's part of me feeling lazy.
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| shadawyn |
| 2006-12-08 14:36 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| Gather Ye Rosebuds |
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Woo. I am quotable.
Tracking HOW you use your day is important. When people listen to me (re: never) I tend to suggest going around for a few days and seriously keeping track of your life in 5, 10, 30 minute increments. I once did this and realized I was spending hours and hours a day reading LJ and email. Actively sitting there, rereading and rereading posts and comments, refreshing, waiting for more comments...
That's about the time I took an LJ break. I'm better now, though I slip now and then.
Also, tracking your day, much like tracking your process, sometimes helps combines to infinite power with the guilt factor. I'd much rather say I spent that last half an hour writing than refreshing Website X over and over praying for another update to distract me.
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| matociquala |
| 2006-12-07 16:23 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| headbang |
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Yah.
Also the thing where if I don't track, I feel like I'm not accomplishing anything even when I am.
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| juliabk |
| 2006-12-07 16:39 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Thanks for this post. I'm just getting back in the saddle after what basically amounted to a year off due to health concerns. My former discipline seems to be AWOL but reading this just reminded me of what's missing: the *decision* to put down everything else and write.
Now, though, I have to go check the report that's just finished running and then finish the training class I have to teach tomorrow and then finish a project charter and proposal and...and...and. :-) Maybe I'll spend time at the library with my daughter tonight and I'll write while she does her homework. ;-)
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I agree.
I think I've written more lately since I've made myself more accountable by blogging about how much I write each day on my LJ. Makes for a boring LJ though. LOL.
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Excellent, excellent post, Jay.
I learned a method in comics that also helps you not just to be honest, but to get clarity about how close what you DO is to what you THINK you do.
Start working, and estimate how long it will take you do do whatever amount of work you've determined to do.
Do that work.
Check the clock.
If you expected to draw one panel in an hour, and it's taken an hour and a half, you are slower than you thought, and might need to revise plans accordingly. If you came close, then you can probably give yourself (and editors) a pretty fair estimate of the workload you can manage.
A caveat: this ALWAYS changes. Constant vigilance is a must.
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Nicely put. I've had a weak year for writing, but I also just did well with Nanowrimo, so this pep talk hits me at a good time.
What are your thoughts on tracking vs. goals? I know you also set goals, whether the famous "story a week" or a novel draft by some date. Do you find that goals and tracking keep you honest in different ways? Are they both necessary for your productivity, or is tracking the real motivator and goals are more to shape your writing agenda?
I love setting goals and tracking productivity, but these efforts are rarely effective or lasting. Nano has worked well for me, with its hearty monthlong goal and the incentive for daily tracking, but those successes have been mostly isolated and may not generalize. I know I need some motivator, whether tracking or goals or a magic feather. It's hard to even experiment with my options, though, when I have this discouraging pattern of setting things up that I soon ignore.
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| jaylake |
| 2006-12-09 00:15 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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What are your thoughts on tracking vs. goals?
Well, tracking is a way of measuring performance to goal. I deliberately set my goals at a simplistic level, and outside of novel production, my tracking is minimal -- finished drafts only. I don't normally note or manage to daily wordcound except within a novel process. So tracking is another piece of process, I guess, which keeps me honest about and focused on larger scale goals.
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| callistra |
| 2006-12-07 22:27 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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I track because it gives me a goal. I just did Nano, and that got me into the goal thing. Can I do three thousand words today? Can I make it to the 30K mark today? Just two hundred more words and ...
I also like to maintain a min of 2k words a workday during the week, and tracking also allows me to re-arrange when I do the words to ensure I still keep the son happy, and the husband happy, and the rest of the world happy, and can still work on my other hobbies.
I also type really quite fast when I have things I want to say, which helps me a lot. I'd never be trying to write novels again, if it weren't for the fact I can do 50 - 70 K in a month, and it wasn't a huge stretch for me.
:-)
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| vg_ford |
| 2006-12-08 01:15 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| artist |
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Awesome post. You hit the head on the nail.
I used to look at the people who rack up 2k, 10k, 5k a day and feel like I was sloughing off. Then I'd look at my own worksheet and see that I was writing every day, even though it was only maybe 500 words or 1k. You know what? I was writing EVERY DAY. That's what's important.
No, I may not finish a novel in 3 months, or 3 weeks, but I'm finishing. And that's all that matters.
Great post, Jay.
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| (Anonymous) |
| 2006-12-15 15:57 (UTC) |
| Best of the Biz |
Terrific reminder that keeping track helps you stay on track. I've hosted writing productivity challenges for several years and am always surprised how motivated people become when they're required to track their progress.
We're featuring you in the 12/15 AuthorMBA "Best of the Biz" report (authormba.blogspot.com). Thanks for the great blog.
Kay Lockner
Founder, AuthorMBA
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