This is definitely a day when I would normally be crawling into bed right now, leaving words unwritten, if I didn’t have this “Writing 365 Days a Year” project. I’m tired, but I’m pushing through it to write. I just put in another 30 minutes on my “Reality TV” concept.

I’m glad I took the time to delineate the top projects I wanted to work on. And I’m amazed I was brave enough to include some estimates of how long they’d take. Being realistic with your project time seems to be a recurring meme this week over at one of my favourite productivity sites, 43 folders. A post a few days ago explains “The Planning Fallacy”, or the reasons why everyone always misunderestimates the time it takes to do anything (my thanks to George W. for the great word).

Touching on a similar topic, but within the context of proper e-mail management, was a great slide by the site’s creator, Merlin Mann. I believe it’s Slide 15 of his presentation that notes the following:

The things you COULD do are infinite,
while your time and attention are FINITE.

In other words: make sure you’re doing the things you really really want to be doing.

I started this blog (and this project) since I wasn’t finding time to write. Which was why it was so deliciously satisfying to face the flip side on Day 4: I actually had to throttle down and force myself to leave the project I was working on, after a good two hours on it! I felt a few more hours might have allowed me to finish it – a hopelessly optimistic assessment, but I can’t remember the last time I felt hopelessly optimistic about my writing.

In less than a week, I’ve put in at least 7 hours of writing, which probably matches my output for the rest of 2008 put together.