I unpublished yesterday’s post. I added a lot to it last night and ended up with 1,300+ words. Then I looked at it and it seemed like a whole bunch of the same old thing so I put it back into draft rather than try to put it into any kind of order. :) Sorry about that! In case you want to know, I barely topped out at 3 hours of writing yesterday and my word count was dismal at 459 for the day. Procrastination wasn’t the problem as much as lost time.
It’s day 3 of writing with my morning tea. It’s going great! I love the ritual. I really see this working for me long term, even if my numbers are small that early in the day. (I’ve had most of my longed-for but rarely reached 1,000 words an hour sessions at around midday. I’m slow in the morning and less slow in the evening.)
I’ve come full circle back to my schedule, but with changes to reflect my attempt at some motivation hacking.
- The single biggest issue I face with procrastination is impulsiveness.
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Relying on willpower probably isn’t going to work. I know my weaknesses so I need to work around them.
- When I rely on fixed time goals (schedule based) I lose the motivation to work efficiently because there’s no reward for getting done early.
- When I rely on word count goals, I put off starting until it’s too late because I’m terrible at estimating how much time it takes me to do things.
So I made a new schedule that mixes time goals and word count goals.
I didn’t like the last schedule at all, but I think it goes back to the fixed time issue and lack of reward for efficiency. Also, two hours and thirty-six minutes is just too long for me to work without a break.* So the redone schedule puts me writing in chunks of 90 minutes. There’s even some interesting theory that says this is great length of time for a work session, so why not take advantage of that?
1.5 hours or 900 words
30 minute break
Repeat 3 times.
This should give me my 1,800 before lunch and 1,800 after lunch. Getting started at 8 am is the plan (I usually have my tea at 7), but if I sleep in, I can always start anytime after my tea and breakfast. But once I start, I really hope to be able to push through until I’ve done all 4 sessions. :D That’s the goal anyway!
*Just no way around it … my bladder doesn’t like long work sessions! And once I’m up and about, all bets are off when it comes to distractions.