February’s challenge: write every day
Write a blog post or chapter of my book, every day, for 30 days — well, 29 days actually.
This challenge was partly about building a habit, but mostly about getting things done. After an initial flurry of blogging last summer, I hadn’t done a lot, and it’s one of those things I want to practice to get better at.
Additionally, I’ve been wanting to write a book for a while. Writing a book is on my bucket list, and seeing as I’ve had to find ways to overcome my own chronic procrastination, I thought I would have enough a material to create a self-help style guide based on how I did it.
The main issue with the book was, ironically, that I kept putting it off. I’d think about the chapters, write some notes and then never flesh them out. Likewise, with the blogs, I had the titles in mind, but never found the time to publish them as full posts.
The 30 day challenge is a good tool for overcoming procrastination:
- There’s visual cue — I have the days written on my mirror.
- It becomes the chain you don’t want to break — see Seinfeld’s “Don’t Break the Chain”.
- Never miss twice.
- It’s a visual failure if you don’t do it — this blog series.
How did I do?
Well, it was certainly more challenging than last month’s challenge. That was mostly down to how much more time was needed to write, versus the relatively quick process of smashing out a few pull-ups.
Also, I sort of ran out of material. I already had a backlog of blog posts and book chapters, but after about 20 days I’d written up the good stuff, and what remained were articles that a) I was uncertain about whether they were good enough to be written up, or b) I needed to spend quality time researching.
Time was my enemy. Most days I would leave the writing until too late in the day, then I would be resentfully rushing through it. 30 minutes was probably about the minimum I’d spend. More if I really cared about what I was writing.
Quality was another issue. I gave more care to articles published here to Medium, but the book chapters were mostly dog shit. I suppose beforehand I was writing no chapters, so anything was better, but it was worrying me that I was simply just wasting my time by writing for the sake of writing — to protect my chain. Then, by coincidence, I came across another Medium article that suggested you need 5 drafts for a book anyway — so let’s treat some of these as part of the 1st draft :)
The chain
There was a planned long weekend at the start of the month, but after that I was pretty consistent, only missing two days (when existing plans unexpectedly overran) but never missing twice in a row.
What can I take away from this?
Have I built a new habit? Probably not.
Would I do it again? Probably not. Whilst I’ve written more than I would’ve done without the pressure of the 30 day challenge, I wouldn’t say it is my best work. If I was to do it again, I’d probably not push myself to write every day — perhaps one article every two days, or spend two separate days on each article, so there’s some reflection time between drafts.
Will I continue? It’s definitely given me a good platform for the book now — well, the 1st draft of the book. There is still a lot more time I need to commit there, especially in the planning. But I will probably leave that for now until I can clear a few other commitments out of my life. As for the blogging, I will continue but with less frequency, and I’ll choose articles on topics I really want to write about.
Next month’s challenge
Oddly, given that I was just moaning about time commitments, I have decided to take on two challenges for the next 30 days.
The first is one that I’d planned to do for March: planking. I enjoyed the physical challenge in January, so I think this will be good too. Plus, I still have the charity boxing match to prepare for, and core exercises are great preparation for that, not to mention that I already have strengthened it from my base condition — so the barrier to starting is lower and, therefore, I will be more likely to be successful.
Core strength is also great for posture. I sit at a desk all day and have had historical problems with my back, linked to posture. Not to mention niggling shoulder and hip issues which will also benefit.
The second challenge is doing an hour of Spanish study every day. That might seem like a big ask, but I’m already doing around 20 mins each day, plus several hours on the weekend. This is about making that a permanent commitment. It’s already a stacked habit, since I tend to do it every morning over a coffee in bed, and I’ve really started to enjoy it now that I am showing signs of improvement. It will beinteresting to see what I can further achieve over the next 30 days…
