Many meaningful goals require sustained, long-term effort, with little to no short-term results. Think about training for a marathon, setting up your own art show, losing weight, becoming a professional YouTuber, or, as in my case, writing a novel. (Not all meaningful goals are long, of course. Eating a cup of dark chocolate sundae is deeply meaningful, satisfying, and requires a short trip to the ice cream shop.)
Think of it this way. Someone tells you about a path that takes you to a beautiful destination. But the path itself is long. (No clue how long.) It has many twists and turns. It is deserted. The scenery is bleak on most days (though you might get flashes of stunning landscape now and again). There are no food stalls or coffee shops along the way (so no dark chocolate sundaes). And there is no GPS.
Sure you might start on the path and stay on it for a few days. But pretty soon you grow weary of it. You are scared, alone, and worst of all, bored. The destination is nowhere in sight! Inside you, a 6-year-old is crying out, “Are we there yet!”
In order to stick to the path, most of us need to feel motivated – we need to feel like we are making progress. One year – or even one month – is too long a time for us to wait for this cue.
In other words, we need to feel like we are making progress before the weighing scale shifts or before the first draft of the novel is written. The more frequently we receive this cue, the higher the chance we stay motivated. Because without motivation, we will fall back to our old patterns. (You know, take the exit at Netflix junction.)
But what measure should we choose as feedback? Writers often use ‘Daily Word Count’ as a measure of progress. Writing 500 or 1000 words constitutes progress and ‘success’ for the day.
I have tried this and it has not worked for me. Because there were days when the words flowed and I managed to put down 500 words on the page. But there were also days when I stared at the screen for an hour and generated a measly 200 words. On those days – that is, on most days – I felt like I had failed.
There is nothing wrong with receiving such negative feedback per se, but if you don’t hit the daily goals repeatedly, the message that goes out is, “You probably can’t do this.” If (or when) this happens it is likely you will step off the path.
After trying and failing with the ‘Daily Word Count’, I felt I needed a different way to measure progress.
For me, that measure is time-spent. Every time I sit down to write my novel, I start the timer for the project, on a time-tracking tool called Toggl. My goal is to work on my novel for 25 minutes every day. It doesn’t matter if I stare at the screen for 20 minutes and write for five. It doesn’t even matter if I sit there stewing in frustration without typing a word. As long as I spend 25 minutes (or even 15, because I, well, cheat), I feel like I have ‘worked on my novel’ for the day.
I know this may not sound convincing to many people. This may feel like a cop-out – an exercise in mediocrity. My own mind is first to voice such doubts. But you know what? I don’t care. All I want right now is to stick to the path. And right now, seeing that I am spending some time developing the novel is helping me stick to it. I have put words on the page, come up with (what I think are) interesting world rules.
‘Time spent’ is like a milestone that comes alive once in a day to give me pat on the back and whisper words of encouragement. It’s the succour I need on the stark, lonely path.