Day 949 - Dictation might be more efficient?

-

I had a bad IBS flareup in the early morning hours, and so I slept through my alarm this morning and got up late. It’s frustrating to be getting to work late, but I tried to be efficient.

As I blogged about yesterday, I did my dictation first thing. Well, not exactly first thing—I did my “frogs” first, my exercise, house chores, Japanese study and Bible reading. I have to admit my Japanese study lately has been very minimal and takes only a few minutes rather than 30 minutes. I had gotten into the habit of cutting my Japanese study short when my IBS was bad and I needed the extra time for writing, and then I cut it short when I was scrambling to finish my book in time for it to release in December. I guess I just haven’t gotten out of the habit of rushing through it, even though now I’m not as pressed for time to finish the book. However, when I wake up late, I still feel pressured to get started on my writing as soon as possible, which is why I’ve been still doing only the bare minimum in my Japanese study.

Anyway, after my “frogs,” I went walking outside (since it stopped raining) and did some dictation. It really did help to get out of the house—or at least away from my computer. I was able to focus quite well, although my dictation speed still wasn’t great, only 2400 words per hour. All I can do is hope that as I practice dictation more and become more comfortable with it, my speed will improve.

There’s a chance it may never get faster, and that’s just how fast my brain works when I’m writing. I’m prepared to accept that, but I’m also hopeful I can still improve my writing speed, because the faster I write, the more books I can produce.

After doing the cleanup editing, my final writing speed was barely 900 words an hour, which is typical when I type. However, I noticed that when I type, I usually take more breaks in between writing sessions, whereas when I dictate, it’s typically all within the same hour or 90 minutes, and likewise the cleanup editing is all in one sitting. I hadn’t noticed that before, but since I typed the last quarter of my most recent book, I had timesheet data to compare with today’s work, and noticed it. It ends up being a bit more efficient, I think, since the writing isn’t broken up by breaks.

Before when I was doing dictation, I had been so focused on writing speed that I hadn’t realized that I usually take fewer breaks when I dictate and cleanup. So I hadn’t noticed that the dictation might actually be a little more efficient use of my time.

Writing streak: 428 days

Dictation streak: 4 days

My takeaway for today: Since I tend to dictate all within the same hour or so and also do the cleanup editing all in one sitting, the time I spend dictating and cleanup may be more efficient than when I type, which is when I will usually take several breaks.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 21: Bullet journal, Surrender statement

-
Today was my writing Sabbath so I didn’t do any writing today, but I spent a lot of time doing writing-related things. I did some blogging, and I also reviewed my writing To Do list. I cleaned it up by checking off what’s been done, deleting what I no longer need to do, and making note of what I need to do this coming week. Before I started bullet journaling (in an electronic journal app, Day One Journal ), I had my To Do lists in a couple different places and I’d usually forget things I needed to do. Now I have them in my bullet journal, which combines journaling with task organizer, and I’m less likely to forget. I still set reminders for myself in my phone, but since I’m using my journal throughout the day every day, I’m more likely to see things I need to do. I found some of my old To Do lists today and incorporated some things in my bullet journal. One of them was my writing Surrender Statement, which is a prayer I pray before starting each day’s work. What’s a Surrender Sta
Read more

Day 783: Evaluation 7

-
It’s been almost seven months since I wrote my last Evaluation 6 , but I finally got around to Evaluation #7! Here’s the gist of what I’ve learned over the past few months about my writing and productivity. New schedule My IBS was slowly been starting to feel better recently. I am still extremely strict with my diet, but I am also starting to experiment with what foods I can and can’t eat. I have also started a new eating and sleeping schedule, which I have dubbed my “chrono-diet” because I’m trying to take advantage of my circadian rhythm, according to the book Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life (I had borrowed a copy from the library but I enjoyed it so much I went ahead and bought it). I have started waking up at 6 am and exercising first thing, then having breakfast after exercise. I do house chores and/or work until noon, which is when I eat lunch. I’m supposed to not eat until dinner around 5:30 or 6, but I haven’t been able to break the habit of snacking in the aftern
Read more

Day 91: Evaluation 3

-
Even though I was taking a few days off because of my health issues, I ended up doing some work after all, and also came up with some new ideas. But first, let me summarize the past month. Outlining my series Something which I thought was interesting was looking at the raw numbers of how long it took me to outline my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series. It had a rough start, especially because I changed my mind about it several times and had some bouts of writer’s block, but things picked up this year especially when I wrote down my writer’s process and began systematically doing the Snowflake method on each of the volumes in the series. I finished outlining all the books in the Lady Wynwood’s Spies series on August 1st! Yay! This included the serial novel. Unfortunately those numbers were not included in the above post on my raw numbers, but I will eventually do a follow-up post and also list how many hours it took me to write and edit the volumes in the series. Hopefully it will take
Read more