Well, apparently the weather does take requests because I got my rainy Sunday afternoon for listening to music, drinking tea, and reading, and it was divine. Even better, the weather looks like it will be similar next Sunday afternoon.

I don’t have any real obligations this week other than choir, so I’m hoping to make big progress on my book. I had just started to really dig in at the end of last week, probably thanks to me finally turning on the project tracker in Scrivener. Being made acutely aware of how many words you’re writing and how many words you need to write makes a huge difference. The moment I see that red bar on the screen, I’m driven to turn it orange, then yellowish, then green. Then there’s the joy of seeing the next day’s goal recalculated if I go over the goal.

I guess this is the adult writer version of getting a sticker.

It’s a bit sad how well this works. I’d hope that I’d be capable of doing what I need to do without that visual reminder, and sometimes I can, but it’s almost like magic for creating accountability. It even seems to make writing sessions go faster.

Now I need something like that for tracking things like housework. I know there are to-do list apps and things that turn it into a game, where you score points by having good habits, but I tend not to check into those. I want to be online less, not more. This works because it’s part of the tool I use for the task I’m tracking. What I need is a vacuum cleaner that shows you how often you’ve used it and gives you points. A Fitbit would do the same thing for exercise, so maybe I should break down and get one. In the meantime, I am actually giving myself gold stars on my calendar on days when I exercise. It’s surprising how motivating that is.