It just doesn't work that way.. I've spent entire days trying to get a feature to work perfectly, often winding up with fewer lines of code than I started with.

It just doesn't work that way.. I've spent entire days trying to get a feature to work perfectly, often winding up with fewer lines of code than I started with. Were I to judge such progress by lines of code, an achievement would be transformed into a failure. That's why I suggest going by TODO-list entries. Those are concrete things that you know need to get done. You can even score them in terms of anticipated difficulty, then try to reach a certain number of points per day/week. Think of yourself more as an editor than an author. An editor might spend a lot of time re-factoring, looking up syntax, trying to make things flow better, asking people for advice, etc. Amassing words and lines isn't your goal.