Want to Write Faster? How Tracking Your Word Count Can Boost Your Productivity

Today’s post is by author, editor and book coach Nicole Bross.

If you could improve your productivity by adding one step to your writing routine, would you do it?

Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, tracking your word count to measure your daily progress benefits all wordsmiths, because tracking can make you a more efficient writer.

One of the foundational lessons in business school comes from Pearson’s Law, first stated by famed statistician Karl Pearson. It says, “That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.”

Although this concept is usually applied to balance sheets and production quotas, it also applies to writers. We can’t know what’s working or where we can improve if we don’t have data to learn from, after all. So if you want to meet a deadline, inspire yourself to write more consistently, or just make it to the end of your draft, word count tracking can help you get there. Here are five reasons why.

1. It encourages habit formation.

Apps like Snapchat encourage us to start and maintain streaks, and tracking your word count can give you that same hit of dopamine. If you’ve ever been motivated by putting a checkmark or a gold star on a calendar every day, creating a word count goal and then logging it in a way that lets you see your progress is a great way to make sure you work on your book every day. You can buy a pack of stickers and a wall chart, download an app like WordElf or WordOne Lite for iPhone or Writer Tools for Android, or you can use a spreadsheet to mark off the days. I’ve made a free, customizable daily word count tracker that lets you set a specific goal and also tracks your running total and daily average. Watch each cell change from red to green and keep that streak going!

2. It teaches you about yourself.

If you’re willing to take another minute or two after writing down your word count total for the day, adding a few notes can help you find the optimal conditions for writing. The payoff takes a bit longer because it takes time to create a data set, but if you jot down things like the time of day you were working, your location, and any other relevant information, you can look for patterns in your productivity levels. It was from notes like these that I discovered that I was the most productive—and happiest with my work—when I was writing in the evening, in a place that wasn’t my house. That doesn’t mean those are the only conditions I’ll write under now, but if I have the choice I’ll try to plan for a couple hours of coffee shop or library writing instead of at my kitchen table, knowing that I’ll probably get more done if I do. If you write down how long you spent writing as well, you might discover that you need a longer block of time before you can really get into the zone. Conversely that you write the same amount in half an hour as you do in a full hour, which tells you multiple shorter writing sessions with breaks in between will be more effective for you. Like those PSAs on TV used to say, the more you know!

3. It makes the idea of writing a book feel more manageable.

If you get overwhelmed with the idea of how much work it takes to write an entire book, breaking it down into manageable pieces and then charting your progress can completely change the way you think about the task. Maybe you’ve been obsessed with your brilliant story idea for ages but can’t fathom actually committing to writing the tens of thousands of words needed to do it. But what if you thought about writing a book not as having to write 75,000 words, but having to write 500 words a day for 150 days? That’s only five months! That feels a lot more achievable, doesn’t it? You don’t even have to commit to daily writing if overwhelm is your main challenge—this is more about reframing the way you think about the work and creating a roadmap to get you to the endpoint. Many people who track this way will also set mini goals for themselves with a reward attached, like treating themselves to a new book or a dinner out for every 25,000 words they write, which adds another layer of motivation.

4. It takes the stress out of deadlines.

So, you’re on deadline—whether one you’ve imposed on yourself or from your editor—and you have a book to write. For many people deadlines can feel ephemeral, especially if they’re far in the future. Then, without warning, your due date is almost here and you’re scrambling to finish on time. Not if you employ word count tracking! Let’s say you have to submit 80,000 words in nine months. A quick calculation where you divide your total word count objective by the number of days, weeks, or months you have until your deadline will show you how much you need to write in order to stay on track—in this case around 300 words a day, 2,100 words a week or nearly 9,000 words a month. Now you have a firm number as your goal, but just knowing it isn’t enough—if you don’t log it, you’ll have no way of knowing whether you’re keeping up or falling behind schedule.

5. It can improve your book’s pacing.

Word count tracking isn’t just about measuring productivity; it can also help you improve the quality of your writing, particularly when it comes to pacing. Rather than (or maybe in addition to) keeping count of how many words you write each day, you can note how many words go into each chapter or scene and then look for outliers in that data. If your chapters tend to be around 3,000 words but you notice that chapter 7 is only 1,200 and chapter 18 is 9,000, this might tell you that the former could feel rushed and needs more development, while the latter slogs on and could benefit from some editing. This type of tracking is most helpful for revision drafts when a quick glance at the numbers can show you a starting point to look for issues.

In addition, if you use an outline, keeping an eye on your total word count can show you whether your work in progress is likely to finish under or over your overall goal for the project. In the book I’m drafting right now, for example, I’ve reached the halfway point in my outline but my total word count is well below where I expected it to be—around 30,000 when I’d planned to be closer to 40–45,000. Again, this tells me that I’m probably not developing my scenes as deeply as I should be. Armed with that knowledge I can try to correct course for the second half of the draft, potentially saving myself time in subsequent revision rounds.

Tracking and the information you’ll learn from it is most helpful if you’re conscientious about it. That said, doing it imperfectly is better than not doing it at all, and there’s no rule that says you can’t start doing it partway through a draft, either. It’s also important to remember that tracking isn’t about prioritizing how much you’re writing over the quality of your work—it’s a tool to help you establish consistency in your writing routine and learn more about your habits. If you’re looking for a way to be more consistent, more prolific, or meet your writing goals, word count tracking might be the trick that gets your book finished.