The 12 Week Year for Writers

CHAPTER 7SCOREKEEPING

Measurement helps determine the success of any planning and execution system. As Peter Drucker, an icon of modern business management, is often credited with saying: “If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.” Measurement is what helps us understand whether we're on track and whether our plans are working. In the sports world, athletes keep track of their training and progress in minute detail to fine-tune their regimens and achieve peak performance. In the business world, companies measure all sorts of indicators to figure out how to increase productivity, sales, and profits. When you go on a diet, you track the number of calories you eat, how much you exercise, and how much you weigh. Without objective information about our efforts and outcomes, there is no way to know how we're doing. Nor do we have any way of knowing how to make things better.

THE BENEFITS OF MEASUREMENT

Problem Diagnosis and Process Improvement

Measurement has at least three important benefits for writers. The most important function of measurement is to help you improve your planning and performance. The first way measurement does this is by providing you with timely warnings about problems. If your plan calls for three writing sessions each week, but you've only managed two sessions for the past three weeks, a tracking system should flag that as an issue. If your plan requires you to write 10,000 words per week, but you only wrote 3,000 this week, your tracking system should ...