There are a few ways to go about tracking your time in this modern age. You can do it in semi-automatically with a smart device, with pen and paper, or manually on your smart device. It doesn’t matter how you decide to track your time, make sure to do it.

Much like fiscal storytelling (keeping track of everything you spend to get a picture of how you spend your money), tracking your time will help you figure out where your time goes. If you’re anything like me, most of your not-at-work time is spent scrolling through social media on my phone while waiting for something else to happen (because I spend a lot of time on the T or waiting on the T), ingesting some form of entertainment (TV, movies, or books), or doing chores. Also like fiscal storytelling I found that writing down how I spend my time makes me way more likely to make responsible choices with my time. I spend approximately 15 hours during the work week on the T or waiting for the T. If I used two thirds of that time to write plus a couple hours each day of the weekend, reaching the 50,000 word goal seems attainable.

In No Plot, No Problem Baty suggests blocking time off into half hour chunks and filling it all in at the end of the day. My need for precision did not mesh well with that idea, so although I broke things down roughly into half hours, I would also write down walk to bus stop/wait for bus/scroll through social media for a single half hour. Followed by catch bus/scroll social media/write blog post in the next half hour. Also as I’ve mentioned once or twice, I am a regular user of the public transit system in my area, so I would take that time to write in my time chunks instead of waiting until the end of the day. I did all of this on Evernote. Which has the handy features of being able to duplicate the same note six more times and add an alarm to make sure that I will at least be reminded once a day to log my time.

There are also time tracker apps. Currently I’m trying out Timelines by Lukas Petr because I have an iPhone. It’s $4.99, and thus far I find the price worth it because it lets me be as detailed and exact about how I spend my time in a day looks like. My only complaint is that I can’t track multiple timelines at once with the touch of a button. During my 3 hour daily commute to and from work I walk for about 1/2 an hour and I write for about an hour, but in order to log those I have to manually add them.

Once you have an idea about how you spend your time, you’ll be better able to figure out when are good writing times. This Buffer app blog post mentions that writing can be more fluid and words forthcoming when you keep a routine. Which for NaNoWriMo is great. Each person is different– maybe you write best pre-warm beverage with a rumbly tummy or on a full stomach after dinner. I write in Evernote on my phone during my commute to and from work most days. Experiment to find what works best for you.