Don’t break the chain

Have you heard of this productivity technique for setting and achieving goals? You can read about it here, but it is really simple.

You pick something you want to achieve and then you do a minimum amount towards that goal every day. To keep track of your efforts, you mark each day off on the calendar. The idea is that you don’t ever want to “break the chain” by skipping even one day.

I decided to choose three areas in my life that need improvement. (I could have chosen dozens, but I don’t have that kind of time.) I committed to spending fifteen minutes a day working on each goal. So, that’s fifteen minutes of exercise, fifteen of cleaning and fifteen of writing.

It’s much too early to tell you how this will work out for me, since I just started yesterday, but I’m hopeful. It’s not a big time commitment, it lets me work on more than one area of my life at a time, and it chops big goals into tiny, bite-size pieces.

Last night I gathered up and took out the trash. (Of course, I had to bring it all back in this morning because I forgot what day it was. Maybe I should work on my memory, too.) Tonight I folded some laundry and put away some clutter.

For exercise, I spent 15+ minutes playing Wii Fit games yesterday and tonight I took the dogs on a 20-minute walk.

As for writing, well, here I am. It’s not the next best novel, nor in any other way earth-shaking, but it’s getting me back into the habit of writing. That can’t be anything but good. At least for me, for you folks, it’s probably pretty painful at times. Ah well, no pain no gain, and I always prefer that the pain belong to anyone but me.

I’ll keep you informed, but so far so good.

3 Comments:

  1. Thanks so much, Becky, This came at the perfect time in my life! I really feel inspired. Keep up the good work!

  2. The writing part got to me. I do try to write at least once a week but when I think of how much writing I used to do, this is a bit pathetic.

    You go, Girl!!

  3. Susan you are an inspiration to me and I really miss our old writing group. I may not be writing anything meaningful, but I'm working hard to get back in the habit.

    As for you, Sandra, where is your blog? I'd love to read anything you write.

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