For those of you who don’t know, I am a productivity nut. I devour self-help and productivity books like I am orchestrating some sort of master plan to take over the universe. In reality, I am just trying to make it through another day in this crazy world we live in. That being said, the books that I’ve read offer some really useful advice when it comes to writing.

At the moment, there are a lot of projects that I’ve decided to take on:

• Committing to my writing advice blog
• Developing and releasing a supernatural web blog series
• Completing an anthology of literary short stories
• And selling hand-made journals and poetry at the Twin Falls Pride Fest on Saturday, June 8th (come check me out 😎)

All these projects are going to take a lot of writing, which is why I’m starting a productivity experiment called Don’t Break the Chain (queue the Fleetwood Mac music). This concept has been around for a while and has been talked about in length by so many people:

James Clear in his book Atomic Habits

Cal Newport in his book Deep Work

And Ali Abdaal in their podcast Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

I highly recommend all three, but essentially what it boils down to is by repeating a habit/practice every day consistently–without breaking the chain–you will improve your skills in that habit/practice and have something to show for it.

The goal is to essentially hit one of the following word counts:

Top-Level Word Count: 1000

Mid-Level Word Count: 500

Low-Level Word Count: 250

The point of these different levels is to maintain the practice without feeling upset that I didn’t reach the 1000 words mark. This is something I also stole from Ali Abdaal. From where? His book, his You Tube channel, his podcast? I can’t remember. Whatever the case may be, this is a way for me to be flexible with my goals, because life happens (and it’s been happening a lot lately).

So, how am I tracking this? Two different ways.

Microsoft Office has a relatively new program called Loop where I’m keeping track of my word count. It has a pretty snazzy desktop and mobile app interface. I am also keeping track of my daily writing habit on an Excel sheet along with a few other habits. Yes, I am in fact a nerd.

Listen, do I need all these fancy gadgets and gizmos to do this. No. I could have just as easily used a paper journal. But these tools give me something pretty to look, and I’ll admit, I’m motivated by shiny stuff. Regardless, they provide me with a way to track my progress, and the visual representation of this habit will make it more likely for me to keep up the practice.

If everything goes well, you can look forward to the following:

Short term:

Two blog posts a week on writing advice, inspiration, insights, resources, and my journey through all this

Long Term:

The releasing of a blog series

And, the spirits of my abuelos be willing, a published anthology

It’s going to be a hell of a ride, and I hope you can join me in it. How do you keep track of habits you’re trying to improve? Are you a nerd like me, or are you a little less intense? Let me know down below by leaving a comment!