I just read a research suggesting that writing a log boosts productivity (book: Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar), up to 400%.


Do you guys log your writing progress?
do you use any outliner tool for this kind of purpose?

I do not. Though I write quite a bit, most of it is for clients and is on case. Amount written is not a meaningful metric for me.

However, I know Ulysses has interesting widgets for tracking writing production. I wouldn't pay the price of Ulysses just to get it, but if you own Ulysses and are not in the 50% who are turned off by it, then it would be worth a look.

I do log my writing progress (activity and output, such as word count) in the same Google Sheet where I'm recording my work times (pomodoros and breaks), but I have not noticed any miraculous 400% improvement.

It's just a necessity for me to deal with my writer's blocks and motivation problems and tendency to procrastinate.

Well, I do earn a large part of my living writing books and articles. And I do not log my progress. It's not the number of characters or words I write per day that counts for me but content and quality (what I wrote) and satisfaction (how I feel about it). And that's not a question of numbers.

In the past, I tried several times to log progress. But found myself "forgetting" to log the progress in the spreadsheet I set up for that. It simply didn't matter to me. What did matter was my publisher urging me to let go of the first chapter ;-)

When you have a large project that needs steady progress over a long period of time, keeping a log or meeting a minimal daily goal is useful for getting one to be productive even on a slow day. With the latest major update Ulysses implemented this very well, allowing you to now set such goals at the project level rather than only at the level of individual sheets (as before). Goals could be something like "at least 500 words per day." I find it useful to set the goal low, because once you reach the goal you are likely to keep going - it is more a way to make oneself set aside time to focus on writing each day than a quota. This only really works for the first draft however, it is much harder to use word counts when you are revising or editing. Then it might be useful to have a goal of spending a minimum of 90 minutes a day or something of the sort.

It serves a different purpose, but Ulysses ability to set a goal of a certain time when read aloud is useful for drafting conference papers...

Dellu wrote:

I just read a research suggesting that writing a log boosts productivity
(book: Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar), up to 400%.


Do you guys log your writing progress?
do you use any outliner tool for this kind of purpose?

I do; I use a simple Excel spreadsheet of my own creation.

A cursory Internet search will turn up quite a few Excel, Numbers and Google templates of varying sophistication, complexity and elegance, e.g. Jamie Raintree"s http://jamieraintree.com/for-writers/ Usually, like Jamie Raintree's, they're designed for writers of novels, but I've also used mine for long-form factual efforts.

Many grew out of templates designed for NaNoWriMo, the American national novel writing month. All enable the recording of words per day and the totalling of those per week and often per month and per year; some offer writing duration in hours and minutes, allowing a "productivity" calculation; and a few go so far as having space for notes on such things as personal mood, details of the writing itself, and comments on the day's work from the writer.

There also used to be some writing-log apps in the iOS app store; I haven't checked lately. Of course, on the Mac, Day One or MacJournal could probably fit the bill. And, for ultimate simplicity there's the nice WordCounter app, which counts the words every day and records them on a calendar.

I do believe that most writing logs can help to enhance writing productivity, if only by instilling in the writer a "don't-break-the-chain" kind of determination to keep going. Use of some of the more complex templates can themselves be a time-sink, however.

But a productivity boost of 400 per cent? If only.

The author David Hewson explains how he uses Ulysses to keep a writing diary for his novels:

https://davidhewson.com/2016/09/07/how-to-manage-a-book-diary-in-ulysses/

Steve Z.

As a graduate student, I was expected to keep a daily journal of everything we did in the lab. Not doing so meant possibly making the same mistakes again. If alchemists had kept better records, they would have spent fewer centuries trying to make gold from the same mixture of metals. Now that we are better at information technology, we shouldn't have an excuse for making their mistakes. That said, I tried using Day One until they decided to go to a subscription format. I haven't found a replacement, but try to keep some records in Evernote. I may try Tinderbox. DevonThink is too much. Bear and Ulysses are subscription. Scrivener might be good.

Jeffery Smith wrote:

That said, I tried using Day
One until they decided to go to a subscription format. I haven't found a
replacement, but try to keep some records in Evernote. I may try
Tinderbox. DevonThink is too much. Bear and Ulysses are subscription.
Scrivener might be good.

Have you tried Findings? (http://findingsapp.com/
It is designed specifically for scientists. I am also in graduate school. But, I am not doing a lab.

Hugh wrote:

I do believe that most writing logs can help to enhance writing
productivity, if only by instilling in the writer a
"don't-break-the-chain" kind of determination to keep going. Use of some
of the more complex templates can themselves be a time-sink, however.

Exactly. Writing a log is not about counting words. It is about reflecting on your directions as a writer.
Logging has a great psychological advantage, like DR Andus noted, to reduce writer's block and procrastination.

The interesting part is the writing tasks (todos) themselves can be included in the log (be part of the log).

The log woud indeed include more notes on crafting the directions of the writing; no making decision about what to write and what to exclude....motivations, moods etc.

I do remember Findings showing up in blogs at about the same time as "Growly Notes". I didn't really fiddle around with either, but inasmuch as there are free versions of both, I may take a look at them after the summer semester.

Jeffery

Dellu wrote:

Have you tried Findings? (http://findingsapp.com/
It is designed specifically for scientists. I am also in graduate
school. But, I am not doing a lab.

Dellu wrote:

>I do believe that most writing logs can help to enhance writing
>productivity, if only by instilling in the writer a
>"don't-break-the-chain" kind of determination to keep going. Use of
some
>of the more complex templates can themselves be a time-sink, however.
>

Exactly. Writing a log is not about counting words. It is about
reflecting on your directions as a writer.
Logging has a great psychological advantage, like DR Andus noted, to
reduce writer's block and procrastination.

The interesting part is the writing tasks (todos) themselves can be
included in the log (be part of the log).

The log woud indeed include more notes on crafting the directions of the
writing; no making decision about what to write and what to
exclude....motivations, moods etc.

If you count that as logging, then I am doing a log, too.
I am thinking by way of writing. I usually do that in a separate document, right now in NotebooksApp on Windows and macOS. Keeping notes, todos, problems I ran into, solutions, ramblings...

I am trying FoldingText for this purpose because it contains all the tools required including notes, todos, schedules,

It very free to adapt to one's needs; must more fluid than the task managers.

I love the fact that I can write extended notes, todos, and schedule (plan) these todos on the same page. The progress note and todo of a whole dissertation can easily be logged with a single file of FoldingTExt.

Perhaps Agenda would serve well as a writer's log? Entries can be grouped in categories and projects, linked to calendars and dates, linked to other entries, tagged, assigned to "persons" (i.e., any sort of entity), grouped in saved searches, etc., contain checklists, and exported anywhere.

That's a great suggestion, Paul.

As an aside -- or maybe it isn't -- one of the developers, I believe, also worked on Findings.

Paul Korm wrote:

Perhaps Agenda would serve well as a writer's log? Entries can be
grouped in categories and projects, linked to calendars and dates,
linked to other entries, tagged, assigned to "persons" (i.e., any sort
of entity), grouped in saved searches, etc., contain checklists, and
exported anywhere.

I like what I've seen of Agenda. But two omissions from its feature set would discourage me from using it as a writer's log: an iOS app (I increasingly write on my iPad), and tables with simple arithmetic (writer's logs may not be all about word counts, but word counts are still the best metric of productivity and progress for many projects).

Hugh,

The developers have introduced an iOS app and it is very elegantly conceived (may still have a few bugs).

Steve

Hugh wrote:

I like what I've seen of Agenda. But two omissions from its feature set
would discourage me from using it as a writer's log: an iOS app (I
increasingly write on my iPad), and tables with simple arithmetic
(writer's logs may not be all about word counts, but word counts are
still the best metric of productivity and progress for many projects).

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Hugh,

The developers have introduced an iOS app and it is very elegantly
conceived (may still have a few bugs).

Steve

Hugh wrote:
I like what I've seen of Agenda. But two omissions from its feature set
>would discourage me from using it as a writer's log: an iOS app (I
>increasingly write on my iPad), and tables with simple arithmetic
>(writer's logs may not be all about word counts, but word counts are
>still the best metric of productivity and progress for many projects).

Thanks, Steve. My error.

Developers Charles Parnot (Findings) and Drew McCormack (Agenda) have discussed their collaboration in their respective forums. I understand there is some shared code in the two apps.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

That's a great suggestion, Paul.

As an aside -- or maybe it isn't -- one of the developers, I believe,
also worked on Findings.

Paul Korm wrote:
Perhaps Agenda would serve well as a writer's log? Entries can be
>grouped in categories and projects, linked to calendars and dates,
>linked to other entries, tagged, assigned to "persons" (i.e., any sort
>of entity), grouped in saved searches, etc., contain checklists, and
>exported anywhere.

As Steve mentioned, the iOS app is there. From reading the drift in Agenda's forum, I doubt dynamic variables will show up any time soon -- but I believe markdown tables are on the horizon. (Agenda's "On the Horizon" list is sort of like seeing Russia from Wassila -- one never knows what's really going on over there). You can link to an external Numbers or Excel or Numi or other file in the context of note in Agenda.


Hugh wrote:

I like what I've seen of Agenda. But two omissions from its feature set
would discourage me from using it as a writer's log: an iOS app (I
increasingly write on my iPad), and tables with simple arithmetic
(writer's logs may not be all about word counts, but word counts are
still the best metric of productivity and progress for many projects).

Paul Korm wrote:

As Steve mentioned, the iOS app is there. From reading the drift in
Agenda's forum, I doubt dynamic variables will show up any time soon --
but I believe markdown tables are on the horizon.... You can link to an external
Numbers or Excel or Numi or other file in the context of note in Agenda.

Thanks for the info, Paul.

Paul Korm wrote:

Agenda's "On the
Horizon" list is sort of like seeing Russia from Wassila -- one never
knows what's really going on over there.

:)

Paul Korm wrote:

Perhaps Agenda would serve well as a writer's log? Entries can be
grouped in categories and projects, linked to calendars and dates,
linked to other entries, tagged, assigned to "persons" (i.e., any sort
of entity), grouped in saved searches, etc., contain checklists, and
exported anywhere.

Definitely good for this task. The only weak side is on the planning (scheduling) part because it doesn't know hours (only dates can be assigned to notes, and todos).