Approximately an hour ago, I was working on chapter six of my novel-in-progress. As soon as I finish writing this post and return to writing, I'll be working on Chapter 22. Exuberantly freakish progress?

Yes! Absolutely, yes! Just like (insert baseball star's name here), I found a clever way of enhancing my performance as a writer, all the better to assault the record books. Sure, adding 16 new chapter headings might not mean much in terms of getting closer to being published, but let's be honest with ourselves, isn't this what we want? The appearance of progress, not the actuality of it? Does it matter what the facts on the ground are so long as we can tell ourselves that by some metric, things are better?

I think so. I'm not going to burden myself with outdated notions of success based on doing substantive or difficult things anymore. I'm dedicating myself to constantly revising the metrics so success is guaranteed.

Just modifying the metrics might lead to skepticism, so it's vital to be clever about the language. 

Old metric: Date someone
New metric: Date someone my own age
New metric fine-print: define age in centuries. 

Old metric: Exercise
New metric: Exercise daily
New metric fine-print: Checking the mail counts as exercise. 

Old metric: Do whatever
New metric: Do something to improve yourself
New metric fine-print: playing educational games is self-improvement
New metric fine-print fine-print: All games are educational