January 18, 2023
Emotional State: Tracking Fiend
Mindset & Habits
I recently watched a video from a writing conference last year on how to be productive as a writer. The speaker spent the entire forty-five minutes discussing mindset and ways to use it to be more productive. I watched another video from that same conference where the author mentioned tracking everything you do to get a sense for how long it takes you to do things. This would then equate to either finding ways to do things easier (or getting someone else to do them) and also determining how long it takes you to write and edit a book so that you can schedule your year more successfully.
I, of course, took both of those pieces of advice to heart and began tracking my habits. I had been doing that in a bullet journal last year, but with the move and life, I fell off the wagon. I also wasn’t tracking things I now need to nor was I tracking what I was doing in the time I spent editing or writing. So now, I am using a habit tracking app to do just that.
What I’m hoping to get out of the app is a better sense for how long it takes me to edit a book, in whatever draft I’m in. I also want to see how long it takes me to write. I know approximately that I can write 75k words in five to six weeks, but I don’t know how much time I spent doing that. And if I want to hit my very aggressive writing goals for this year, I need to know that. Or rather, I want to shift my goals by February if I find that I can’t do all the things I have planned.
This way, I won’t be setting myself up for burnout and disappointment. I hope.
What this means, though, is that I need to get better at remembering to track the things I do and leave myself notes when I do them. I don’t just write books, but blog posts, book reviews, blurbs, etc., so just tracking “writing” won’t cut it. Or rather, I won’t be able to slice the data into multiple charts to figure out where I’m spending (or wasting) my time.
Have I mentioned I love spreadsheets?
With all that being said, though, I’m also going to pay attention to my mindset. What I say to myself in the morning, whether I discourage myself from achieving “all the things” or if I stay optimistic toward my goals will all be examined in detail and course corrected where I catch it. I want this year to be a year of celebration.
Celebration of achieving a goal, even a small one, plus a few major ones as well. And so, I’m timing my writing as we speak, and I’ll add a little note about what I did during the time I wrote.
The real question is this, though. Am I using this app to add more layers to my life so that I won’t achieve my goals (procrastination) or am I doing something that will benefit my life?
I don’t know the answer, but I’m willing to graph my way to it. If I remember to track it all.