Dave, your concept of consistent, low levels of productivity is brilliant.

Without naming it so accurately, I began a similar practice when I worked as an exec at a gas company based in Denver 20+ years ago. I wrote every morning for a minimum of 15 minutes, by a stopwatch. It had to be something I planned to publish, not navel-gazing journal writing. I ended up completing a long essay that won a Wyoming Arts Council fellowship and a $2k prize, as I remember, which financed a trip to Costa Rica with a writer/mentor/friend named Alvaro Cardona-Hine, who tutored me in how to write poetry each morning over coffee and mangos.

That door led to my leaving my corporate job, getting an MFA in poetry in Bennington, and, eventually, to my current gig as a weekly podcaster talking with amazing people about literature and technology.

So that humble 15-minute daily writing practice eventually turned my life from the corporate world to the arts. It was like setting up a tiny nuclear reactor on my daily calendar. The energy turned out to be unstoppable.

Good luck with your writing goal. Twenty years from now you may see a direct line from it to an unimaginably satisfying future!