The "30 minutes for each goal every day" challenge put to the test

So I finally started a new schedule that I had put together for myself sometime ago. I remembered reading in an ebook on how someone suggested that if you wanted to try to get all of your goals met in one day, then devote at least 30 minutes to working on it each day. I decided to see if this was doable for me!

 

And, in my case, I have a lot of goals.

 

Getting in that time to write every day is not just my only writing goal. I am also editing a book, revising another book, and researching/writing yet another book. Let’s not forget I’m still working on my author site! I also have fitness goals, a vocational goal, a daily goal, long-term goals, personal goals (things that I MUST get done every day), reading goals, bucket list goals and a project goal.

 

Up until the time I was able to try out this schedule, I relied on trying to mark all that stuff as “complete” on a To Do list. Unfortunately, I was never able to get ALL of them done this way. But I couldn’t try out the schedule just yet because I was working a gig. Work days and weekends are unscheduled days. Now that I had a free week, I decided to give it a go!

 

Now I got to see if using a 30-minute routine would help to work on all of my goals every day. But one thing I definitely noticed happening is that some things took longer than 30 minutes to get done, even when I broke them down into steps (a must for major goals). In the past, I tried spreading the goals out over different days, but I never really liked it that I spent some days working on this goal and some days working on that goal. Now I wanted to see if I could include them all in one day.

 

I must admit: I don’t like setting time limits to when I am working, especially when I am tackling one of the steps of my goals. I like to see the job to the end, for as long as it takes. I prefer to do a complete, thorough job that I am satisfied with when I am done. Sure, I might think about areas that could use tweaking later on in the day, or think of things to add for that particular step, but I am very thorough when it comes to the task I set before myself to do. If I’m not satisfied with how it turned out, I keep working on it until I am.

 

And because I had so many things to tackle in one day, I knew I would have to get as early a start to my day as possible. So I decided I would get up at 4:30AM to start my day.

 

Here are the results:

 

Monday

 

What I got done: I was able to complete all of my personal goals, all of my reading goals (reading 4 print books and 3 ebooks), and most of my fitness goals. Unfortunately, I had to cut my Calisthenics workout in half because of dizziness, and the dizziness prevented me from getting started with Tae Kwon Do. Drat! But I got a bonus workout in: My morning walk turned into a morning run! So, yay!

 

What I didn’t get done: I was not able to accomplish all of my writing goals (didn’t work on typing out a short story, do research for End Game, or work on the author site), all of my cleaning goals (didn’t get around to the vacuuming and cleaning windows), and I didn’t spend any time at all on my daily goal, project goal, my bucket list goal, or vocational goal.

 

The reason why I wasn’t able to do some things is because I could not get access to the ONE computer we have in this house. I do have a laptop, but it has been iffy lately. I have been trying to fix that. Or get a computer for my own use. I also was too tired to do some other things. Believe me, at the end of the day on Monday, I was exhausted. I just didn’t have the energy to try to do one more thing.

 

Tuesday

 

Tuesday ended up being a little off! The problem was that I kept getting distracted! I was also forgetful and some things had to be canceled because I hurt my leg when I went for a walk. I’m thinking it was easy to miss stuff because the schedule is on my phone and NOT printed out and posted where I could see it.

 

What I got done: Reading goals, personal goals, my vocational goal and MOST of the cleaning goals. Once again, I was unable to clean the windows. It just slipped my mind!

 

What I didn’t get done: Calisthenics, running, religious study, my personal project, work on a long-term goal and not all of my writing goals. I did get started on typing out the short story, but I was unable to work on the GHOST Group or do research for End Game. Mostly because I could not have access to the computer.

 

I discovered that if I miss something earlier then I should try to do it later. I missed the weights workout at the time assigned, but it happened later in the day when I could not do something else. My youngest asked me if I wanted to do weights with them and I said yes, as long as it was arms and not legs due to my injury. I also bumped reading time to when I was not able to do something else. I just did something I missed earlier!

 

Summary: Did I mention I don’t like setting time limits when I am working? I don’t like setting time limits when I am working! Particularly when it comes to one step of my goal. Just one. Because some of my goals are so large (like the task of revising a whole book that I wrote last year), I break them into steps. I do a little here, a little there, until I finish the job. In my experience, I need more than 30 minutes to complete a step! Seriously! With the nonfiction book, I take it a chapter at a time. In the past, when I was working on this book during the weekends, and when I was revising the chapters one at a time, the task of revising one chapter took several hours. On Tuesday, it took me one hour just to revise one chapter! Yes, I know this means that trying to get things done in 30-minute increments was probably not doable for me after all, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. I committed to a week, so I’m sticking it out for the whole week!

 

Wednesday

 

Wednesday got off to a bad start because I overslept! But I have always wondered if I could still do this schedule without assigned times and just focusing on the “30 minutes for each goal” aspect of the challenge so I saw it as an opportunity for just that. Wednesday was a day to experiment!

 

What I got done: Once again, I needed more time to work on revisions for the book. I had to add stuff, look up information, and fix mistakes. THEN I worked on revising the chapter. Total time: One hour. Unfortunately, this was the only writing goal I was able to accomplish on Wednesday, but it’s the most important one because it has a deadline, so I’ll take it!

 

I also accomplished all of my personal goals.

 

What I didn’t get done: My leg was better today. Even so, my sister-in-law, Allison, had suggested that I do some gentle stretches before going for a walk. I did on Wednesday and everything went fine! My walk lasted for 35 minutes, though. Once again, this was the only goal I was able to accomplish on Wednesday. I could not do the yoga or calisthenics or go for a hike because later in the day I had some bad lower abdominal pain that lasted for the rest of the day. Also, I did not accomplish all of my cleaning goals; there were no dishes for me to do and vacuuming happens every other day since there’s only one floor to vacuum. But I did sweep, dust, clean out the litter box, do laundry and picked up the trash. AND I FINALLY CLEANED THE WINDOWS!!! YES! The cleaning took longer than 30 minutes, though. It actually took me 40 minutes to do all that.

 

I also did not accomplish my vocational goal, daily goal, reading goals (just some of them) or project goal.

 

My conclusion is that perhaps being without assigned times isn’t too much of a good thing.

 

 

Thursday

 

Back on track! I woke up at 4:30 and my pain was gone!

 

What I got done: I was able to meet ALL of my fitness goals (woo-hoo!). I was able to get the revisions done on the chapter, but it took longer than 30 minutes to do that. Unfortunately, I was only able to meet all of my fitness and personal goals.

 

What I didn’t get done: Writing goals (no work on the other books), cleaning goals (didn’t clean the windows), as well as the daily, vocational, project, reading, bucket list and long-term goals.

 

I am glad I was able to accomplish all of my fitness goals for that day but pretty bummed the other things didn’t get done. Even so, I had to make a lot of phone calls, had to run an errand that lasted for an hour, and lack of access to the computer were what held me up. Note to self: Get things in order with my laptop! And also, stuff happens, so I’m not always able to crush all of my goals every single day. I’m happy to accomplish just some of them!

 

 

Friday

 

Schedule? What schedule?? Imma busy writing!

 

 

Summary:

 

So, I put the idea of how just spending 30 minutes a day would be enough to get some work done on a goal to the test. For me, that’s not doable for everything! Even when it comes to my workouts, I don’t want to freak out if my 30 minutes are up and it is time to stop exercising. I have noticed this with my Calisthenics workout. I have a series of exercises that I do for that particular workout, and doing all of them has taken me longer than 30 minutes on most days. I also LOVE going for walks, and sometimes I walked for 35 minutes or even 45 minutes. With reading, I prefer to read a chapter or two at a time (it depends on the book and how long the chapters are!), so 30 minutes is the usual time I spend reading each book, but here again I like to be flexible. And don’t get me started with when it comes to writing! As it was, it took me 2 hours to revise a chapter on Friday morning. Working on a chapter in End Game took nearly an hour.

 

As I mentioned, I break up my goals into steps. I do this part (step) one day, then another part on another day. I work in blocks. I like to finish the step that I must complete for that day, such as revising one chapter, and it can take longer than 30 minutes to do that.

 

The suggestion to set aside at least 30 minutes to work on your goals may work well for some people, just not for me. I have many goals for many different kinds of things. This might work well for someone who has only ONE goal (like getting a degree) but it’s not for me as far as my situation is concerned. In some cases, I need more time, especially if I want to get the full advantage of a workout. Also, if I don’t finish the task that I set for myself to do for the day and walk away from it only because my 30 minutes are up, I’m gonna be thinking about it all day! I’ll also be itching to get back to it and get it done so that I won’t have to worry about it the next time I am able to work on it.

 

This has definitely been an interesting experiment. It’s kinda funny that my muse took over on Friday and had me writing up a storm, but I’m not surprised that happened given that I missed out on so much other writing work I had to do this week. It’s like I’m making up for the work that I missed. Now I am finally all caught up with it! And it only took me all day – sans schedule. And as for the plan, moving forward? I think I will just stick to my To Do list!