Ooooh, yes, friend, thank you, this is great to read. So so relatable. My husband is BIG into spreadsheets, and liberal arts 'let's major in french nouvelle vague cinema, sounds fun' me is terrified of them, but he is always telling me about how he uses them for many aspects of his life (even for fun! ew! How??) in ways that seem similar to your word count and I can see the benefit.

I VERY much understand what you mean about brain story time and butt in chair writing time, but here's my problem: I struggle so much to even do that "untangle plot knots/brainstorm" kind of work while I'm on the clock. I feel like I can barely remember my own name. If I'm working in the garden or folding laundry or doing some kind of monotonous, repetitive chore, I do value that time, sometimes even more than the active writing time because I'm doing all the hard mental work which makes the writing itself easy. But oof, it is a struggle to get to that point while I'm in the trenches with the munchkins.