Increments

My most direct measure of progress has remained my writing word count. Thankfully Microsoft Word® does all that work for me. While I have yet to meet my daily goal five days in a row, I’m starting to even out production across the week and get closer to my targets. I’m also tracking my progress month-by-month, which really highlights the difficulty in maintaining my desired performance. For that reason, I’ve really been focusing on making sure my monthly production continues to increase. While the majority of the gains have been modest, I’ve been able to grow my word count consistently for the past five months.

I’m certain my attention to this level of detail has to do with my analytical nature and experience in project management. I’d actually be surprised if the average published writer uses something similar. Far be it from me to suggest how anyone approaches their vocation, but this attention to small changes is important in another area of lives. While we’re often forced to track and report on our progress in our professional lives, how often do we even chart out our personal life goals? Sure, some of us come up with long range plans, when we wanted to get married, buy a house, have kids, etc. What seemingly gets even less focus however, is who do we wish to become as individuals? I don’t mean that in the “Boy I’d like to be a rock star,” sense, but from a character development perspective, such as I’d like to be a more generous person. This question might often get avoided not only for the sometimes less-than-flattering experience of looking directly in the mirror, but also due to the fact that working on our selves is, well… work.

Seriously, how many of us spend more time planning vacations than we do considering what we could improve about ourselves? And I’m not trying to chide anyone, I can say that until I developed ideas for this book around seven years ago, I probably put almost zero thought into it. And even with that, I’ve wavered throughout that time in my pursuit. The realities of life seemingly get in the way of “extracurricular activities” like personal development. I recently heard one individual’s rant that trying to live a virtuous life was almost impossible when you live “in the real world.” This all led me to realize that writing a book, or any long-term project for that matter, is very similar to making changes in ourselves. These changes very seldom come “wholesale” and quite frankly, the life trauma that brings on wide-arching character development shouldn’t be wished upon anyone. So if we’re going to make progress, it has to be a little bit at a time.

I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. For example, in the pursuit of being more generous, start with the smallest of things. Try sharing your French fries at lunch or offering to do something for someone when you know you aren’t required to. Whatever you can identify as something that would expand your character in the desired direction, use that as your focus. Two suggestions though, make it small and make it something that you’ll change permanently. Don’t pick something so challenging that after a week you’ll revert to old habits. The point is to pick something so small, so easy that after you work on it long enough, it will become second nature. Once that happens, you can move on to the next thing, building incrementally upon your success.

I apologize for morphing this blog entry into a how-to on character development. I suppose that’s something I’ve learned along the way in this experience. Take this blog entry as an example, I didn’t write it all in one sitting, it came together in steps. After four months of incremental gains in word count, last month I crushed it, increasing my totals by over 35% from the previous month. Perhaps the habit has taken hold.

And if you don’t believe me, how could you argue with my fortune cookie wisdom of the day? “He who waits to do a great deal of good all at once, will never do anything.” If that wasn’t a sure sign that I should finish writing this entry… I don’t know what is.

Best wishes to all!