Since I took Dean’s Productivity workshop last year, I’ve been pretty good about tracking the number of hours I spend in the chair, writing (not enough) as well as the word count per writing session (that I’m pleased with–I maintain a fairly high number of words per hour.)

I haven’t been tracking everything else that I do. Not really. For example, I haven’t been tracking how many hours I spend publishing.

My sweetie had maintained that I was publishing close to full time – 25-30 hours per week.

I started tracking the number of hours this weekend.

He…wasn’t wrong.

There are some weeks, like this week, where I’ll easily spend 30 hours on publishing things. It isn’t all work for me–I’ll be creating covers for one client, finishing a print book for another client, etc.

I wanted to maintain the fiction that I don’t spend that much time doing publishing every week, but I actually do, due to maintenance. For example, there are covers that need redoing, and there’s this new platform that I’m loading everything up to, and and and…

Soooooo…..I spend 3-4 hours five days a week, writing. That’s 20 hours or so. Plus the nights when I write, and the weekends when I carve out an hour or two. Maybe 25 hours total.

Then I spend 25-30 hours per week publishing.

I have a client contract that I spend another 10 hours a week on.

I’m starting into the busy season for the vacation rental. That’s another few hours every week.

There was a reason why I wasn’t getting everything else done that I wanted to do. And it wasn’t because I was being lazy or goofing off. It’s because I’m really super busy with a TON of things on my plate. Starting to track everything again was just such an eye opener for me.

At some point, I’ll learn this lesson fully, that I’m not actually being lazy when I don’t get everything done, and not immediately start beating myself up for not doing more. This weekend was just another clue-by-four whacking me in the head.