Why track productivity?
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.
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.