2019 Annual Time Report for Narrative First and Subtxt

The numbers behind the work

Last year, I recorded every single minute of every single hour spent building up Narrative First and Subtxt. Using a combination of Toggl and Timery (and a whole bunch of Siri Shortcuts), I checked in and checked out my virtual timecard. I present to you the results of 2019 in a quad of graphs:

Writing Content for Narrative First

First up, my time spent writing content for Narrative First, including articles, analyses, and blog posts. 365 of these hours exist within the first hour of almost every day (writing is the first thing I do every morning). As you can see, December is the month most writers disappear from the narrative landscape, granting me more time to deliver thoughtful and helpful content.

Total time: 600 hours

Narrative First Consulting

Next up, the hours spent coaching writers 1-on-1 through consulting (or coaching, I can never figure out what is the best way to refer to this kind of service). Again, the latter half of the year is when everyone gets to actually writing their story. Springtime is developing time.

Total time: 778 hours

Building Subtxt

The next chunk of hours represents my total time spent building and rolling out our cheat sheet for great storytelling: Subtxt. Up and down during the year, but leveling out on the low side during the winter months as I worked to discover a new codebase for future development.

Total time: 1037 hours

Writing Screenplays

Finally, something new to squeeze in between building and deploying, coaching writers, and writing new content: writing screenplays. Actually, writing A screenplay. Those 65 hours in November? One screenplay, two weeks. More on this later.

Total time: 76 hours

Survey Says

Add them all up and you get a number just nine hours short of 2,500—about seven hours of every day in 2019 devoted to improving the quality of storytelling now and in the far far future.

Total time for 2019: 2491 hours

Thanks for the opportunity to make things better!