New year thing 1: My free time is my responsibility. I will not delegate it to the internet.
New year thing 2: I get to do this life once. I want to do it all the way.
New year thing 3: Wanting isn’t enough.
I have three things I’m focussing on this year.
Physical health
Learning BSL
My Bonanza Clementine writing project
My status in December:
I ran three times a week, but that’s not enough when you are as ancient as me. The rest of my body needs work too.
At Level 1 BSL, you can skate through with attending all the classes and a little practice before the exams. At Level 2, things start serious and get seriouser. I was still doing Level 1 amounts of work.
Bonanza Clementine is a big project, but big chunks of writing time don’t often appear in my life.
I was set up for failure. I didn’t want to fail, so here’s what I did.
I chose three easy goals. Every day I will spend at least 10 minutes exercising, 10 minutes practicing BSL and 10 minutes writing Bonanza Clementine.
10 minutes, because I can always find three 10 minute chunks in a day.
Every day, because:
These are things I want to do, they rarely feel like work when I’m doing them.
Momentum.
I brush my teeth everyday, even on rest days. I don’t see why personal growth and physical health should be less important than oral health.
Everything I do over 10 minutes feels super awesome.
The system I chose for achieving the goals is Jerry Seinfeld’s Don’t Break the Chain. All it requires is a calendar and a pen. I’ve known about this system for years but never used it. This year what I want to accomplish fits perfectly with Jerry’s system.
For me those marks on my calendar are a super strong motivation.
So there’s one practical method for going slowly and getting more done than you thought you could.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor!
Grow slowly
Jeff
I have been wanting an elegant way to track more than one task using the Jerry system (I swear by the Jerry system!). I love your asterisks. Why hadn't I thought of that? Adopting today!
Bravo! A very pleasing calendar of X's!