How Much More will I Get Done?
Over the last year, I've come to realize how addicted I've become to my phone. During work hours it's not a problem but once I'm home, I am hooked. Usually watching YouTube or Instagram reels into the wee hours of the night. There are times, I tell myself only one more video but can't seem to put my phone down once the time is up.
While watching a BookTube video, the creator decided that instead of being on their phone, they would replace the time with reading. It clicked then. I would replace my phone time with writing time to see how much more writing I could get done in a two-day time span. While doing the challenge, I would also place a time limit on the apps to better help with future writing sessions and overall productivity.
Let's see how much I can get done in the time allotted.
Day One: 3 hours and 57 Minutes
It's honestly shocking to me looking at the stats. I thought for sure it would be way more than this, but apparently not. Surprisingly, most of my time was spent actually writing on my phone using the Wix app. I will still count the time against me. With it also being a Sunday, the apps I normally use aren't as prevalently, such as YouTube or Instagram since Sundays tend to lean more productive than not as I get ready for the upcoming week.
Hour One: My first item to work on was a short story called, Crossing Paths. You'll be able to read it in two weeks once it finally posts. I was off to a strong start finishing with 980 words after the first hour. The hour actually went by pretty slow, and I even took a break at the halfway mark to get food(timer stopped obviously). Even so, I was surprised to see how much I had gotten done. I didn't go back to read it as the editing process would not count towards the challenge.
Hour Two: Somehow finished the story with an additional 1,254 words in total. Up until this point that was my best writing sprint to date and I was pleased with the words I had written. I usually follow an outline for my stories which I had written prior to the challenge but decided to go rouge and cut most of the storyline I had intended to write. This was a challenge and curse all in one as I'd thought the story was going to take most of the four hours to write.
Hour Three: Man, hour three was a tough one as I switched between 2 posts I'd already set up. I did a rough outline of each getting most of the paragraphs sorted but lost steam pretty fast. I even started a new post which seemed to help the motivation and word count to keep growing. In total, I had written 1,195 words. Just a slight change in the hour previous.
Final Hour: Not going to lie, the last hour was a push. Because I got everything done I'd hoped too over the entire two-day challenge, I was left finishing up the final post I had started and creating a layout, so it was easier to read. So, not as much writing happened with only 373 words. But in total, 3,802 words for the first day. Not bad considering I probably wouldn't have written at all if it wasn't for the challenge.
Day Two: 3 hours and 58 Minutes
Well, you can't make this shit up! Only a minute difference between the two days. At least you can say I'm consistent. Here you can see a more typical day of being on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram while also leaning into the productivity side of things. Even though a minute more than the day before, hopefully it isn't much harder than the day before.
Hour One: With most of the items I needed to write done the day before, I turned to another short story I knew I would be posting in a few months. I had already written the first few paragraphs, so it wasn't hard to jump right back in. Instead of using the computer, I laid in bed typing on my phone. It isn't ideal as my typing skills aren't the best on the phone(oh how I miss the Blackberry days), but in the first hour I was able to get 838 words for the story. Not bad for resting!
Hour Two: Still working on the same story, I was able to knock out another 1,176 words in the second hour. Most of it dialogue which makes it easy to write. I'm not even halfway through with this story but I'm loving where it is going so far. I can see who the characters are and the entire setting. At this point yesterday, I was already done with my story, but this story feels like it will take the entire 4 hours to complete if not longer. We shall see!
Hour Three: This hour was actually done the next day as it was getting too late and I needed to go to sleep. Does this go against the rules when breaking the challenge? I would think not since I'm still writing instead of playing on my phone. But coming back to the story was much harder and I wasn't in the mood to continue writing out scenes. I decided to do a small montage of scenes instead. With that I wrote a total of 715 words for the hour.
Final Hour: Well, I did it again. The last hour wasn't spent writing but was instead used to edit and update templates within the posts I had just written. But you know what.... I'm fine with that since I don't have worry about them any further. Final word count for the hour was 51 words with a total of 2,781 words written for the second day.
Final Thoughts
If writing was my full-time job, like the girl with the BookTube job, I would have happily gone on for an entire week with this challenge. But between my job and all the other things I do, it's hard to get that much writing done especially when you need motivation and creativity pushing you through.
I did learn though that having the limits on my phone as well as setting out time to write has helped in increasing my overall word count for the year as well as given me time to work more on my novels. My final word count for the experiment was 6,583. I would say that was a pretty good experiment.
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