Day 577: Public accountability again

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My IBS is feeling better, but I had a bad sinus headache yesterday. And while I can sometimes work through IBS discomfort, I absolutely can’t work with a headache. Every time I try, the headache only gets worse and can sometimes turn into a full-blown migraine. So I did only a little work yesterday, just to keep my streak.

Streak versus public accountability

I know I talked a few days ago about how my writing streak took the place of the public accountability of my blog, but I realized something yesterday that made me realize that maybe I was wrong.

The writing streak does ensure I do some writing every day and keep my thoughts in my story world, which makes me much more efficient on the days when I feel well and can get a lot done. It forces me to work when I’m not feeling 100%, and I thought that was all I needed to combat laziness.

But I realized that while there are a lot of days where I feel like I’m microwaved poop, there are some days when I’m feeling okay-ish and I could probably get a couple hours of work done.

The streak only requires me to do 100 words minimum of writing and blocking. So when I’m lazy, I could just do the minimum and call it a day.

But the public accountability of my blog makes me have to admit how much or how little I got done. And if I confess I was feeling okay-ish, I can’t confess I only did 100 words.

So now I’m back to one of the reasons why I started this blog, which was to force myself to admit how much or how little I got done each day. And to hopefully shame myself to not be lazy when I’m actually feeling okay-ish.

I’m still only doing about 100 words of writing each day, just to keep up my writing streak, but I’m spending more time on the blocking so that I can hopefully get the books blocked sooner. Switching between different time points in my series is giving me vertigo.

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Editing: Time spent: 21 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 11 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 246 words

Writing streak: 56 days

Blocking: time spent: 2 hours, 43 minutes

Blocking streak: 50 days

My takeaway for today: I need the public accountability of my blog to shame me to get more work done than I otherwise would on days I’m feeling better.

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