15 January 2024

Track daily writing progress by project in 2024 and 2025

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Most books on writing recommend tracking writing progress, but none address well how to juggle multiple writing projects in parallel. Many academics have to work on manuscripts, grant applications, grant reports, manuscript reviews, lectures, and books in parallel. My approach is to track my writing progress on a per-project basis in an Excel workbook that automatically tallies the progress for the day by word count and minutes spent and then updates a bar graph of the cumulative progress. The entry of the progress per project requires only a few seconds. I designed the graphs to show the cumulative progress across all projects. Each month has its bar graph. You select the appropriate column and generate the sum to get the cumulative progress for a specific project. I developed this version for 2024 and 2025. I have shared this as an Excel workbook and a Libre Office version on a GitHub repository called writing-progress-2024-25. You can import either into a Google Sheet for faster access.

tags: writing progress tracking - project management - multiple writing progect management - time management - distress management - career planning and management