Tracking your writing time can help you feel productive
Feelings of accomplishment are available to you now
I’m the weird person who enjoys tracking how many hours I work.
I’ve been tracking my writing time for years and now I have all this cool data! Yay charts and graphs!
But seriously… At the end of the day, week, or year, I tend to look at what’s still not done and think I should have done more. This is especially true if I’m working on a long-term project, like a book, and I don’t have anything finished yet.
I combat this by keeping track of my hours. When I see how much time I put into the project, I can see that as progress even if the word count doesn’t reflect that progress.
And for me, that translates into a feeling of accomplishment.
While tracking writing time helps me feel productive, I’m aware that it might not do the same for others. It could be discouraging to see how many hours it takes to complete a book project.
But for some people, this might be the trick that helps them feel like they are making progress on a project instead of treading water going nowhere.
Not all the work that goes into creating a book results in a word count to track or another clear output. When planning a new book, brainstorming how to fix a problem for a revision, or researching, it can be difficult to feel like you’re making progress. Tracking your time can give you that sense of progress.
In these phases of the project, you could set a goal of hours worked on the book per week instead of word count or chapters completed.
In my accountability group for writers, I encourage members to set a goal that they can measure using word count, chapters, or hours. Which one is best depends on the personal preference of the writer and the phase of the project.
I provide a spreadsheet to help group members track their progress, and I check in with them every week.
If they are behind, we create a strategy to get back on track. If the writer realizes their goal is no longer the right goal for them, I help them adjust to a new goal.
All of this to help writers show up for themselves, complete their books, and have that delicious feeling of accomplishment.
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Thank you for reading! If you’re new here, I’m Katelin Cummins, a Catholic writer, book coach, gamer, and fantasy fan. If you would like to know more about what I write, check out this post. If you want help planning, writing, or revising your novel or nonfiction book, check out my services on my website.