Longtime blog readers probably know that I am a huge fan of personal metrics of various sorts. I spent years upon years tracking all kinds of shit about myself, including how many hours I wrote, how many I read, how many steps I took, how many words I wrote, number of rejections I got, times I exercised, blog posts I wrote, and on and on and on, even extending into some really weird and arcane stuff (when I was first trying to expand my social media presence, for instance, I gave myself a point for each day that I posted a comment on somebody else’s Facebook post).
Sometime last year this all became way too daunting and meaningless. The amount of data being collected was so much that I had no idea how to use it effectively, and I eventually ended the entire logging endeavor (archiving something like twelve years of data in the process!)
But obviously I’m still the same nerdy guy underneath, so lately I’ve been approaching logging in a different way. The study of one person is obviously never going to be rigorous or scientific, but it also doesn’t need to be. The point of all this logging and goal-setting is simply for me to feel more comfortable in myself. So lately I’ve been passively gathering data in the form of a daily time-use log. Each day I record it whenever I start a new activity or stop another activity.
On days when I’m out and about, the log is obviously pretty sketchy. For instance I might write down (6 PM to 12 PM – Party!!!) But in an ordinary day it’ll mostly be a mix of writing, reading, paid work, TV or computer gaming, and, in the afternoons and evenings, socializing. It’s been interesting to see how I work when I’m just observing myself, without any goals or strictures.
For instance, for years I’ve been dieting (I lost 110 pounds from January 2012 to January 2015), and throughout that time I generally tried to eat around 1600 calories a day. In the last year however, with the tumult of traveling and the book launch and of my wedding, I’ve gained 20 pounds. Now this is in part a totally normal thing. Ninety-five percent of dieters regain their lost weight within five years. I’m actually significantly ahead of the curve in that I’ve kept most of it off for more than five years. However, the body does strike back against what it perceives as a period of extended starvation.
In any case, in the last few weeks I’ve tried to reassert order, but in a gentle way. Rather than alternating between having zero sweets and having cheat days where I binged on them, I now allow everything, so long as it gets logged. Unsurprisingly, this has reduced the binging. It’s interesting to see that my calorie consumption has tended to be closer to 1900-2100 in reality (I’m 240 pounds, so that’s still a level at which I’d lose weight). I’ve also felt less desire to binge now that I know nothing will ever be off-limits. I don’t know, probably this scheme will fall apart eventually too, but nothing lasts forever.
Other interesting data: I write much more than I think I do. For years I struggled to have more than two hours of writing time in a day. But I think relaxing and allowing myself to write during all the odd moments when it occurs to me has been a good thing. In the last week I’ve averaged almost 3.7 hours of writing per day. And that’s real writing time. I’m not just counting time in front of the computer. Whenever I switch over to a distraction (computer games, often), I mark that.
Writing time does however include the hours spent doodling in the notebook or staring into space or just sitting poised in front of the keyboard. I’m trying at the moment to think of an idea for a novel for adults. I very much want to write a book for adults, but nothing has ever yet gelled for me in the way that Enter Title Here or It’s Probably Just A Phase had. I think though that the aimless time is actually very productive. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the extensive periods of writer’s block in my life, it’s that the right character is a necessity. The write character–someone who’s strong and larger-than-life and animated by deeply-held yearnings–can make small talk in the kitchen seem like it’s of riveting, earth-shattering importance. Conversely, the wrong character can make impending nuclear war seem dull. So right now I’m spending a lot of time just listening for the right character. Again, not sure if this effort will bear fruit.
Oh, and one more insight, which is the original reason I came here to write this post, is that writing blog posts only takes fifteen minutes!
Usually I put off blog writing because it seems time-consuming, but it’s not. Only fifteen minutes. Sheesh. Probably it’d take longer if I did more editing of these posts, but who’s got the time?