101 Days of Writing: Progress Report 1

If we want to improve at something, it needs to be reported on. 

To report on something we want to improve, we need to measure, observe, and make conclusions on the work achieved (or not achieved as the case may be).

Our “101 Days of Writing” goal is 10 days in.  It’s a good sectionalisation of the goal: 10 groups of 10 days (plus one outlier last day, to make the 101). 

Looking back on the first 10 days of this caper, I get a strong (but imperfect) 7 out of 10.

I posted 7 times in the first 10 days:

·         Newsletter
·         AS2885.info blog (twice)
·         Facebook Page (twice)
·         LinkedIn (Post and Article)

I certainly was aiming for perfection:  to post EVERY DAY.  What happened to the 3 missed days?  And worse:  the misses were three days in a row (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). 

Some say that if you miss a daily goal one day, never miss twice; that’s how habits get bedded in.  And how the commitment is solidified.  So I missed three days (day 6, 7, 8), but still came back on Day 9 to restart at the goal.  What happened: well, it’s not a habit yet, I’m still learning; I ran out of time.  I ran out of energy.  It was a weekend.

All of those reasons/excuses are valid, and any or all of them can apply at any time we’re trying to build a new habit.

That’s why this is a 101-day challenge, not a 10-day challenge.  I have time to recover from that imperfect score, and build into the next one.  We’re now into the next group of 10, and all I have to do is post every day for the next 10 days (well, 9, because this newsletter counts!).

I’ve learned a few things in these first 10 days:

·         Block off time (30mins minimum, 60mins preferred) for this task. 
·         Think about what I’m going to write about while doing other tasks (walking, dishes, etc)
·         It’s not just the writing, there’s also the editing and the admin of posting it on different platforms that is taking a bit of time to figure out.

The stretch target for this next 10 days is to write (or just start writing) a long-form, multi-day article, an article that takes more than the allotted daily 30mins to write; it takes a bit of research and thought organisation.  These are more challenging than how I currently write, which is a ‘journal’ approach of just writing what comes to mind (which is how these newsletters are currently crafted).  Over the 100 days, this should morph into something more structured and thought-out. That will be an indicator of improvement, in my eyes.

Here's to the next 10 days!

Susan
September 11, 2024

Intrinsic Goals are Important.

It’s September 1st, 2024.  I’ve set myself an intrinsic goal, and I’ve named it, too. #101DoW:  101 Days of Writing. 

As an early member of my newsletter list, you’re getting to see the early stages of the development of a writer.  I’ve had a lifetime of thinking I want to be a writer, and now’s the time to test it out.

The #101DaysofWriting challenge will test my conviction.

It’s an intrinsic – internal – goal, because besides this little announcement, it’s not something I’ll talk about or tell a lot of people about.  That makes it mostly intrinsic – in that I’ll get the satisfaction internally, not through external means.

Back in 2019, I started a similar challenge, to write “100 words a day”, 100 times.  It was borne from the advice that if one wants to do something (ie, write), you have to, well, DO that thing.  So in 2019, I was given the advice to “write 100 words a day”, as a starting point, to get going so that I wrote something every day.  Well for some reason I took that to the precision of writing and posting 100 words precisely.  I’ve published a book of the first “100 words” essays (are they essays?).  And I kept going, for another 4 years.  I have over 600 of those 100-word essays.  They are currently all on my website, as well as in MS Word documents stored for posterity. 

The goal now is expanding my writing beyond 100 words, into proper essays, articles, and even book chapters.  In the four years of writing 100 word posts, I got very good at writing 100 words at a time.

It’s time to develop my skills a bit better, and use this newsletter as one medium for this campaign.

The ‘rules’ of this campaign (because, striving for a goal takes structure, and rules) are:

1.      Post something coherent in a public place

2.      The ‘public place’ means it can be linked to, or seen by more than just me.

3.      The acceptable ‘public places’ are (and this list can grow):

a.      LinkedIn

b.      My website

c.      Facebook – personal page

d.      Facebook – Stampede with Susan page

e.      Substack (if I get one going)

f.        EAXchange, the Engineers Australia site (posting an article/comment)

g.       Newsletter Audience (which also goes on website)

4.      The minimum is posting 100 words on LinkedIn; that’s the accepted fallback if nothing has been posted and it’s time to shut down for the day.

Intrinsic goals like this are important to some people, but not everybody.  Some are more motivated by external or extrinsic goals, in which case there is external validation.  I wonder if people are generally aware of which type motivates them: internal or external.  I would say that it’s helpful to be able to identify your preference. 

An essential outcome of striving for goals, whether they are intrinsic or extrinsic, is feedback.  Those who prefer extrinsic goals rely on that feedback from others for satisfaction and the sense of achieving something.  For intrinsic goals, I wonder where the feedback comes from.  It must be the internal sense of achievement.  Also, as with me and this campaign, I am checking on how I feel while doing it, whether it becomes a chore or a joy, whether I look forward to it or dread it.  I also realise that it’s not going to be either of those – actually, it will be both – in the first few weeks.  It will take at least 30 days, I think, before I can really decide if I want writing to be a part of my life.

In time as I do this more, I’ll come up with a cool salutary sign off.  As well as a newsletter title. 

For now, Susan Says, see you later.