Status Report: Week Thirty-Two

Week Thirty-Two – The Stats

Weekly Wordcount: 12,185 words (compared to 15,800 words last week)
Average: 1,741 words per day (compared to target of 3,001/day)
Most productive day: Wednesday 6 August, 3,782 words
Least productive day: Saturday 9 August, 315 words
Year-to-date: 517,575 words (91,715 words behind target)

In order to divert attention away from the poor performance this week, I have some different statistics…

I’ve been noticing the past few weeks how Tuesdays have been good word count days (relatively speaking) -- although this week my peak came a day later. This felt like a shift in work habits: as I remembered it, Tues-Weds-Thurs was the mid-week lull, with a big effort on non-school nights lifting the weekly tally to respectability.

But then I crunched the numbers.

Not surprisingly, Sunday is my most productive day on average, but it is followed closely by the mid-week lullers: Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday. Saturday is way down in fifth at a paltry 2,233 words (I blame all those weekends away…)

Sunday	2,581
Thursday	2,554
Wednesday	2,416
Tuesday	2,398
Saturday	2,233
Monday	2,097
Friday	1,921

Or graphically:

I’m not surprised Fridays are my worst. I don’t have a lot of afterwork drinks or watch many dvds, but when I do, it’ll be on a Friday. Even if I do nothing, sitting in front of a Word document after a full working week is never that fruitful.

When I started this quest, I thought its merits lay in forcing me to sit down and write regardless of my mood. But what I’m finding is that it’s teaching me the various ways in which you can write whilst doing other things. I may not begin 2009 with as many words/manuscripts under my belt as I may have hoped in those heady December ’07 days, but I feel like I’ve learnt how to be productive after hours (the foreseeable future) and I’ll damn-well take advantage when I have less demands on my time.