30 Day Challenge: Projects
This challenge definitely has a bit of a mad scientist element to it, but stay with me. I think it’ll make sense in the end.
I’ve been quite happy thus far with the success of my 30 Day Challenges. The momentum that I feel building in my practice and my fitness level feels great, and I’m confident that the same type of momentum will continue with my sleep, fiber & vitamin challenges.
I believe that these personal habits are building a strong foundation for long term health and happiness. The question that I’ve struggled with is “How do I consistenly motivate myself to do the work on my projects?” I see creative people like Ze Frank doing mad cool things and I’m inspired. I know that I also have mad cool creativity inside of me. If I could only get my brain to organize itself better and do the nitty gritty day to day work that goes into realizing the aforementioned “mad cool creativity” then I’d be a much happier camper.
Thusly do I present to thee the 30 Day Project Challenge:
For the next 30 days I’ll spend a minimum of 50 uninterupted minutes a day either working on one of my projects, or engaged in active “Me Time”.
Say what?
Basically creative work is like a well. (Major hat-tip to Julia Cameron for the “well analogy” that follows.) You’re either pouring your creative self into the next actions that will make your project a reality (emptying the well), or you’re taking a break from that creative effort in order to rejuvenate (filling the well). Day to day creative work is either emptying the well, or filling the well. The trick is to build momentum by consistently working on your projects without burning out. Balance. Ying, Yang and all that.
I’ve had periods where I’ve been incredibly productive. It has usually (but not always) involved some type of deadline, where I put things off until the last minute and then bust my ass getting the work done. I have something to show for my work and it feels great! (This is a good thing.) I then have periods during which it seems I’m doing absolutely nothing. (This is not such a good thing.) These jumps forward are good, but this way of working is inefficient, unsustainable and doesn’t lead to the type of exponential growth that comes from consistent day in/day out effort. It’s tough to hit a tipping point when you’re moving three steps forward, and one step back.
So, I know that in order to build momentum I want to create a challenge that I can do successfully for 30 days. How do I work on projects for 30 days straight in a way that allows for potential burn-out, and allows for my potentially topsy turvy schedule? I enlarge my definition of what a project is. For the purposes of this challenge “working on my projects” means either the actual doing of the project “next actions”, or filling the well… engaging in active “me time” that will allow me to rest and rejuvenate without guilt so that when I come back to the project my batteries are fully charged.
But enough “Blah, Blah, Blah”… here are the nuts & bolts:
- (I’ve created the following files called “me_time.txt” & “projects.txt”.) “me_time.txt” is a list of activities that I find rejuvenating. (Photography is one example). “projects.txt” is a list of all the projects I currently have on my plate, broken down by category. Anything on those lists is fair game for this challenge.
- I’ll spend a minimum of 50 uninterupted minutes a day working on items from the lists above.
- I’ll track my progress here. This is a simple record of whether (or not) I worked on projects, or had “me time”. I’m keeping the nitty gritty details of how I’ve spent my day in my work diary.
That’s the challenge. I might tweak it as I go along. Maybe it’s a harebrained scheme. Maybe it won’t work. Either way, I’ll know in 30 days when I check in.
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30 Day Challenge guidelines can be found here.
30 Day Challenge: Projects
Start date: Tuesday, 6/13/06
Check-in date: Wednesday, 7/12/06