Okay, first order of business tonight: clean sheets fresh from the dryer. ARE THEY NOT JUST THE BEST THING IN THE MULTIVERSE OMG. Yes, that is a statement and not a question.
Second order of business: The dogs are snuggled up against me right now winding down and getting ready for the sleeps and I love it so much. Seriously, guys, I used to dream about this when I was a kid. We had outdoor animals, cats mostly, and I wanted so so bad to have them sleep with me at night but we weren’t allowed. I suppose if I had pushed the issue for a while I probably could have made it happen…but those were the rules and I was pretty good at being a rule-follower.
It’s just the most magical thing, an animal snuggling up to sleep with you. It means that they accept you as part of the family, as part of the pack, because the pack sleeps together. As a kid, it made me think I was just a little bit wild, like them. Like Mowgli, raised by wild animals who treated him like he was one of their own. Did anyone else ever watch The Jungle Book and find it *impossible* not to intensely crave bananas and pineapples and all the fruit that Baloo eats during “Bear Necessities”? Just me?
I wrote today, I did Netflix today, and oh! I do have a work-related thought that I’d like to write down so I don’t forget it…
…it’s no major realization, given that I feel like I’ve talked about it before and read it before, and I’ve certainly been practicing myself kind of unawares in other capacities, but it really, REALLY clicked for me today that I need to be close tracking my writing productivity.
Allow me to explain: the big breakthrough that I had with doing videos for Study.com came when I figured out how long it was taking me to edit 1 minute of finished video. Once I figured that out, I could start setting targets each day based on how many hours I was going to work…and I knew that I could hit those targets if I stayed on task, and if I dicked around and fell behind, I knew exactly how much time I would need to put in to catch back up. Within reason – obviously sometimes shit just takes more time – but those are outliers, the exceptions and not the rules.
Once I had a very clear picture of exactly what I could get done in a given amount of time…I was pretty much able to double that rate within 6 months or so of regular practice. So, not only did I start hitting my initial goals right off the bat, which meant *finally* being able to make good money working from home, I was able to them double my output (and the money I could make) because I knew what my hard “limit” was…ie- there was a line, and once there was finally a line I could see, I could start pushing that line forward.
SO…
I’ve repeated that process now two more times with other jobs, but I realized today that I HAVEN’T done it with writing yet. Which is so stupid. What a friggin oversight. I was lamenting to myself that I set these goals, these deadlines for getting work done, but I don’t really know if I can hit those goals, because I don’t have any system to tell me how long it’s actually going to take to accomplish the tasks that need finishing.
Well, that shit is changing tomorrow, yo. I have a goal for this section of the rewrite. And, the plus side of things going into writing my next book, now, is that I’ll have gone through the whole process once now; I can use that information to set measurable goals for book 2. And if I keep detailed track of my work, I can get a good idea of where that “line” is – a base line of productivity for each phase of the writing process.
And then I can start pushing that line. I’ll bet you if it takes me an hour tomorrow to get through 30 pages of typing in rewrites…by the fall, I can do 60 pages in an hour. Maybe even more.
So, yeah. Guys, if I can give you ONE tip about working on your own, being your own boss, and making it work for you, it is to track your productivity. Find out exactly how much time it takes you to do something. Use that unit of finished product/time to then schedule out your goals – get consistent at hitting those goals…and then push the line. You’ll be amazed at how productive you can be when you’re fully aware of exactly what you can do in a given amount of time.
That’s all the wisdom for tonight.
G’Night!