A slow day for writing

At the end of the day I was writing only 216 words an hour. I did get up in the middle of writing and dust a few things.

I don’t have any idea why I’ve become so slow. I didn’t used to be anywhere near this slow, but lately (almost the entire last year in fact), I’m even having trouble cracking 500 words an hour. It’s… mind-boggling. Something has to be up. I just can’t see what that something is.

Oh, well. On to tomorrow. I worked the best I could during my scheduled time today. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.

The schedule and self-sabotage

I’ve dedicated myself to working with my schedule this week. Staying focused is hard for me. But this week, I’m going to push myself to write during my scheduled writing time. It’s 10:26 and I definitely let myself get distracted from my schedule this morning.

I have to be careful of distractions because I often forget what I was doing before I became distracted. This morning I got up a little late, showered a little long, and then still had to have breakfast even though as I was preparing it I was fully aware of the fact that I should be planning to eat at my computer. I chose not to because I had started reading an article I wanted to finish (big mistake) and then that article had several linked articles that I really wanted to read that I was afraid I’d forget to read later, so I kept pushing off my writing start time.

I have a decision to make right now: finish the articles or start writing, and I’ll be honest, I’m leaning toward finishing the articles and I don’t even know why. They’re about being prolific and maybe that’s it, maybe there’s a part of me that thinks I’ll learn something new and exciting that will suddenly make me break through the wall that keeps me writing slowly most of the time and I’ll totally make up for the wasted writing time just by writing faster.

Isn’t it wonderful to be able to see one’s self-sabotaging behaviors and yet still not be able to do anything about them?

Anyway, it’s 10:21 now and I’m going to skim through these articles and account for the time here just so I can face how much time I am wasting.

I’m back! I did that in record time, because it’s now 10:29 and I read three articles (found nothing new or exciting there at all!), deleted them from Evernote, and am back to this post.

Now, it’s time to get serious here. I have writing to do and I shouldn’t have let myself off the hook today to get started on time. I’m left with 1.5 hours until my break. I want to make them count.

My daily word count has increased since I began following a schedule

I had a theory that my daily word count hadn’t increased with my schedule because of how often I seem to be missing the mark when it comes to actually sticking to it.

I was wrong. :)

I wanted the numbers to back up my theory and they didn’t. I then found myself wanting to adjust the parameters of my analysis but realized almost immediately that this would be an attempt to make the numbers prove what I wanted them to prove. So I stepped back to give this some more thought.

I realized I was probably just looking for justification to abandon my schedule. I’ve since moved on (that post yesterday was written after I started this one). I’m glad I resisted!

Although my overall daily average is still down from 2012 and 2013, it’s better than 2014 and even the all time average up until the date I began following the 9–12 & 1–4 schedule.

Since I began the 9–12 & 1–4 schedule: 744 words a day average
All time before the schedule: 658 words a day average

It’s enough of a difference that I can’t ignore it. I wasn’t very productive in 2014 or the early part of 2015 and the schedule has clearly saved me from more of the same.

The only other thing of note is that my daily average for the time period during which I used the 5 minute sessions was just over 1,400 words a day. I was trying to hit a deadline during that time and I was scheduling my 5 minute sessions in one hour blocks and scheduling 5 or 6 of those hour long blocks every day. I take this to mean that if I can stick my current schedule more often and get in the 5 to 6 hours of writing, I can hope to approach or exceed these same numbers without the stress of the timed writing. :) I would still like to see myself reach a daily average of 2,000 words because that would fit with the life I want. :)