For the time-based part, I aim for a minimum of an hour a day averaged out over the month. I track time actually spent each day – and no cheating! Social media and breaks don’t count. This keeps me productive through the non-writing phases of a project, which is actually the majority of the work.

When working on first draft, I use a word count target, but again I’m tracking my cumulative progress aver time. Individual days’ output is less important than steady progress on average. Some days will be very productive, some days not so much. But tracking how many total words I’ve written compared to where I expected to be evens out those bumps.