Last year when I asked writers which day of the week was best for writing Tuesday topped the weekly word-count chart with Sunday in the nethermost position. Running a test of writers’ habits gave me the chance to gather data on what days writers actually write.

The weekly chart

Over the five weeks of the test writers ‘tracked’ when they wrote. The graph below shows the total number of ‘tracks’ by day of the week. It doesn’t show how much was written, just the day of writing.

Average Monday, productive Tuesday and skiving Sunday

The first thing to note is there’s not a huge difference – writers get scribbling on all days of the week.

If writing activity was equal across all days a week would divide into 14% a day. This is represented by the horizontal blue line on the chart. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are all bang on target.

I was fascinated that Tuesday once again proves to be most productive. The only other day with above average activity is Friday.

Writers take a bit of break come the weekend with below average writing activity. As with the original survey Sunday’s the day for scribes to skive off from the page.

But why Tuesday?

In the last post about writing days I played around with a few theories of why Tuesday’s best. Studies of workplace productivity have found that workers are more productive at the beginning of the week, with Tuesday proving the peak day.

A second theory is more fun: researchers found that Tuesday is the most popular day to play workplace truant. So I like to believe writers are putting their writing before work, calling in sick and showing up to the page to make the most of Tuesday’s peak productivity.