100 Day Goal

You might remember that I signed up for this in January and I was surprised to find at the end of March just how much I'd achieved even with breaks for surgery and dealing with the vision scare. I achieved so much - daily microactions really do add up - that I've decided to do it again. Gulp.

The latest round began on 1 May and I hope I've been more realistic this time in my goal setting. The house declutter is still ongoing as is my commitment to continuing with the family history and photo sorting. The last is something I've been intending to do since my father passed away. When that happened I just bundled any papers that weren't needed immediately along with loose photos and photo albums into boxes meaning to go back to them at some indeterminate future time. Well, that time is now. In the decluttering process I've discovered a lot more photos and memorabilia scattered around the house because Pisces is a great one for randomly shoving things out of sight and then complaining because he can't find them when he wants them later. I'm amazed at some of the places these items have ended up. For now all this is safely in some large plastic containers and I've skimmed through them so I know what is in which box. As well I've scanned some of the very old family photos. Many of these are starting to deteriorate and saving them on the computer will ensure their survival at least. The next step is to sort thoroughly and cull the dross and I suspect there's a lot of dross. I don't expect to get all this done in this 100 Day Goal period but I can make a start.

The reason the 100 Day Goal worked for me was that it kept me accountable. No more making large scale plans that fall apart because they're simply overwhelming. Instead you keep track of each individual microaction - those on the list you made at the beginning - and cross them off. Some days you finish a lot, and other times you're lucky to achieve one but even one microaction a day off the list builds up.

The other area where goal setting really worked for me was in writing. Because I was struggling with my vision I had pretty much stopped writing except for the daily journal I've kept for years and even that was difficult since I couldn't see what I was writing without a magnifying glass. But I could enlarge things on the computer so I set myself a target of writing 500 words a day or editing for 30 minutes, increased the size of the print until I could read it without a magnifying glass and set to work. My aim was to not break the chain - this in the context of the 100 Day Goal means that you don't miss a day - and this worked very well for the most part. I did break the chain when I was ill for a few days and when I was in hospital but other than that I did what I set out to do every day. I'm doing this again this time and, surprise, the more you write the more you get into the rhythm of writing and the more your creativity flows. For some unknown reason somewhere along the line I'd forgotten this.

So there you have it. I have my list of microactions plus determination. May this 100 Days be as productive as the last. Here's the link if you want to find out more about it. I admit I did modify some of things suggested on the website to suit myself but, hey, that's fine. Whatever makes it work for you.