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.