My attempt to be productive during the pandemic took an interesting turn. I moved away from measuring and toward showing up.
Why I stopped being super productive in 2020
Years ago, I started to track things. It started with an article on Lifehacker espousing the best way to be productive is to use the Seinfeld Method. Also known as Don’t Break the Chain.
The idea is simple. If you want to build a habit, make sure you do it every day.
You can start anytime. Just print a blank calendar and do the thing you need to do. When you do, put a big black X across that day. After doing it for a few days, you’ve built a chain! Then you won’t want to break it. Even if you don’t feel like doing it, you’ll drag your butt off the couch to keep the chain alive.
Psychologists have studied how many days in a row are required to make something stick. It is something like 6 weeks. Whatever. The point is to do it every day and not miss one.
This also goes by a different name: gamification. Build up that sensation of “winning” when you do the things you need to do and you’re more likely to do them.
I’ve done this long enough to tell you that it works.
Until it doesn’t.
Don’t Break the Chain is like dieting and New Years Resolutions. They work and then they don’t. Because the point about all of these things is that you’re trying to take something hard and make it easy. And when it remains hard, we give up.
Enter the Productivity Super-Builder: Habit Tracking
I named the habits I wanted to establish and started tracking them. And over the years, they coalesced around three main ones:
Writing
I counted words, trying to average that coveted one thousand words per day.
Reading
I counted pages read. Minutes spent reading. Books finished.
Walking
And once I got a FitBit, steps.
I started with the paper calendar, of course, but quickly switched to apps on my phone. When I started bullet journaling, I doubled-up there for a better overview of what I accomplished.
Then I stopped.
First to go was the tracking of my writing. It became hard to maintain the process. I’d write, look up the word count, get out my phone and log the number. This was a simple enough process for a methodical approach. But when interrupted, running late, or squeezing in 20 minutes of writing, the two or three minutes spent logging the work was counterproductive.
I also write a lot of little things throughout the day, and tracking these became crazy: emails, letters, newsletter entries, Facebook posts…
Meanwhile, other work habits started getting in the way. Working on a longform piece meant cataloging words was messy. I started leaving notes in the draft document so I knew how many words counted against yesterday’s total. Or I’d forget and guesstimate that maybe 700 words was from yesterday.
How do I measure serious editing time? Is the day I write 1,500 new words more productive than the day I write 500 and spend two hours seriously editing yesterday’s mess?
Besides, I told myself, the point isn’t the specific number so much as the daily practice. So I simply started logging in that I wrote that day.
I quietly redefined what it meant to me to be productive.
But I kept laboring under the old evaluations.
I found similar problems with my reading logs. Especially the difference with ebooks and their wonky page numbering. Or academic books with their smaller font. And audiobooks!
The constant interruptions throughout the day to measure, analyze, and catalog 10 pages read in the morning only to later read 24 pages in a different book, then 12 more in the first one; the next day, reading 9 pages at bedtime, but because I logged it in at five after midnight, it counted on the wrong day…
What’s the point of this, again?
Now I’ve all but stopped tracking. The metrics, meant to make this thing a habit just got in the way.
I’m writing the same amount as ever. I’ve surpassed last year’s books read total. And pandemic steps are really all over the place, but still inline to match last year’s. Without cataloguing. I managed to be productive anyway.
The astute reader will notice something, however. I haven’t stopped the daily approach. I haven’t stopped the desire to avoid breaking the chain. But I’ve stopped fixating on what the measuring stick is to keep the chain going.
Write 500 words. Read 10 pages. Take 10,000 steps.
These are good goalposts for those striving to establish new patterns. And we often need to set standards for ourselves so we can do them! But they are awfully limiting.
Two hours spent crafting a 90 word poem is delivering your work.
Reading ten articles online is doing a lot of reading. So chill.
Spending all day on your feet and skipping sweets is the definition of active.
Showing up every day to do the work doesn’t have to fit your guru’s model. All it takes is you. Showing up. And doing the work.