If you want to improve it, measure it

A wise man once said, “If you want to improve something, you better start by measuring that thing.”

The wise man was right. If you have no way to measure your performance, you have no way to improve it. That is the reason why some things – like “being organized” – are easier to aim for, but harder to achieve.

Writing is no different. Most of us want to improve the way we write. There are many books and websites that provide us with helpful insights on how to go about the process of writing better. We read them, even follow some of the suggestions, but at the end of it all we are asking ourselves the question : has our writing improved?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this?

If you have, then I think I can tell you what you have been doing wrong.

You have not identified a metric that you will be using to measure your writing. If you had, all you had to do was subtract the final value from the initial value, and you would know where you stood.

Now, it is important to note here that identifying a metric to measure your writing is neither easy, nor unambiguous. It is a highly individualistic process that requires a lot of self-evaluation. Some examples of metrics that you could use are:

1. Number of hours spend writing every day.
2. Number of words written each day.
3. Number of posts published on a blog/website
4. Number of page views your piece/article/story gets
5. And you could add a few more metrics of your choice here.

But, before you choose any one number that you are going to use, you have to look into your strengths and weaknesses. For example, let us say you are already spending two hours writing every day. The numbers of hours you write every day, then, would not be a good measure of how much you have improved as a writer. You could use the number of words written every day as a measure in this case. This is to say that if you choose a measure that is already your strength, you might end up having a distorted idea about the effectiveness of the steps you have taken to improve your writing.

The identification of weaknesses is important because it is these that you need to get rid off. If possible you need to turn them into strengths. Therefore, it is a good idea to use something that measures your weaknesses as an index for measuring your improvements.

What metric do you use to measure your writing performance?