Quantifying control

I like data—which is pretty obvious, considering how often I talk about spreadsheets and why I make them. For reasons I don’t really understand, I find it easier to grasp some information if I make a spreadsheet with the data relating to whatever it is I’m trying to understand. To each their own?

As even my dodgy memory can attest, I used to publish an annual average of one blog post per day, something that used to matter to me more than it should’ve—right up until it didn’t. When Nigel died, I realised how utterly and completely unimportant it truly was.

Back in the before times, those halcyon days of yesteryear, there came a point at which I realised that I could make a spreadsheet to keep track of every blog post I published and have the spreadsheet monitor my progress toward the annual goal. That turned out to be very useful and helped be hit my targets.

Those old spreadsheets tracked the last third of the year, roughly September onwards. The thing that didn’t occur to me back then is that if I started the spreadsheet earlier—say, oh, I don’t know know, January 1—then I could see at a glance how much extra work I’d have to do to make up for taking time off from blogging.

That realisation finally hit me only recently, and then I realised I could take my last blogging spreadsheet and re-jig it for an entire year. So, I did—because, why not?

That was probably easier than it was to set up the original spreadsheet because in the time since I made the first one, I started using them for lots of things, and they becamse more complicated and fine-tuned for whatever information I wanted. To make this new b logging tracker easier to use, I set up separate pages for each quarter, primarily because it would mean less scrolling to get down the page. I may be anal about collecting and analysing data, but I’m also lazy.

By doing this, I learned that neither skipping a day nor doing two posts in one day affects progress very much. In fact, it takes several days missed or with extra posts added before it affects the countdown very much. That’s kind of liberating in a way, or, it would be if I was still pursuing the annual goal.

To be clear, no, I haven’t suddenly resumed the target of an annual average one-post-per-day. However, I’m also not opposed to hitting it again at some point, and if I was seriously working toward that, the spreadsheet would come in handy. Theoretically. Right now, I’m just interested in passively seeing how it plays out.

The truth is, no one needs a spreadsheet to keep track of progress toward a totally unimportant goal like blog post publishing. I mean, the totals of posts per month (or for the year) show that. However, I like spreadsheets for something like this because I feel more in control. While that may not necessarily help me be any more productive, the feeling of being in control control reinforces the fact I actually am.

I’ve learned that the more ways I can examine and analyse data, the more in control I feel, and that if I’m going to obsess about something, why not make it about something useful, like tracking data relevant to my actual life? In fact, both are among my prime motivators for creating my personal organisation system. Sure, it doesn’t necessarily change anything—or even mean anything, really, depending on what specifically needs to be brought under control—but it has one other thing going for it: For me, it’s fun. To each their own? Absolutely.

I could probably track that on a spreadsheet, too.