What writing wastes your time?

One of the things I find that wastes time in my writing is numbering the chapters. Inevitably, some of the story threads will change during writing, which will call for the insertion, or deletion, or shifting around of chapters. It means I then have to go through them renumbering each and every one of them. on both the master script, the individual saved chapters, and the file name to each of them. This has happened to me numerous times...

For my next book, I am going to postpone the numbering of my chapters until at least the first draft is finished. They'll still have titles, but it should mean I can shift them a lot quicker than I am at the moment.

 

I try to get the chapter title down to one word. Most times it's hard, and is one more thing that constantly changes as the drafting progresses.

 

Excellent idea... and should keep it all in order too.

 

I know this now... wish I'd known it sooner.

 

Although, I think I should have been a bit more specific with the question. I was looking for things beyond the actual writing of words relating to a story and more towards the things we do in the background, so to speak, but still related to writing, or producing something.

Another thing I find that steals time are spreadsheets. They are useful in tracking what I have done on any given day, and in seeing what I still need to do, but I find myself updating them every 200/300 words. I will have to limit the updating to maybe once an hour or something...