A Post a Day in May 2019 #26: Of words and measures

I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May. 

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” the top sales rep told me years ago, and I could see from his numbers that he knew of what he spoke. He set goals, had targets and met them by systematically doing the work to achieve them. It was impressive. And he got to attend some pretty fabulous rewards conferences in exotic locations for his efforts. 

Exotic locations and rewards conferences are not my objectives. For my efforts with words and writing, I want to grow my readership and have my writing published beyond my blog. To achieve this, I need to write regularly. To do that, I need ideas to write about. And to come up with ideas, I need to be alert to the riches and the vagaries that daily life offers as springboards to those ideas. 

To help me keep even vaguely on top of any of these needs, I began to keep a daily log last year. I use a hard-cover sketchbook and, every day, I write something in it. I know this sounds remarkably like a diary or a journal, but I find those terms too restrictive for what I want this book to do for me. 

I didn’t want pre-printed dates on every page. I didn’t want lines to restrict me. I wanted a wide open blank space to fill with words, maybe pictures, possibly a small collage — anything that would help me be alert to, and keep track of, daily life and all the possibilities it might offer me for my writing. 

Remarkably, I have been doing this every day since September 1st, and it’s achieving what I wanted: I put something into the log every day. It’s become a practice that keeps thinking and writing top of mind for me in among the busyness of full-time work. And it’s become a valuable ‘container’ from which I can pull ideas to fuel my writing. 

In addition, it’s recording the minutiae and the milestones of my everyday life, which, likely, will never be of profound interest to many others, but is valuable to me as a writer. I kept no such record in my growing-up years and, in writing a couple of recent posts for this blog, I have realized how fickle memory is. My mother, a loyal reader if ever there was one, is pretty sure that star chart I wrote about the other day was not about breaking my thumb-sucking habit but about breaking my habit of waking her up in the middle of night. And that shopping expedition to buy brand-new clothes with Aunt Vivian? Well, Mum remembers taking me on one herself long before Vivian ever did. 

Not remembering such incidents entirely accurately is maybe not the end of the world, but keeping a daily log is surely a good way to help remember — and build on — what is important in our life: The milestones, for sure, but also the minutiae, because I believe that the minutiae can add up to milestones if we manage our life with intention. 

Thanks for reading. 

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Writers want to be read; at least, this writer wants to be read, so comments, rebuttals and feedback are all welcome. Subscribe to the blog to receive the posts direct into your email inbox.