September 30 Day Challenge

September's First Week is Done.

I'd consider this first week mildly successful.  Because the first 30 day challenge to exercise every day went relatively smoothly (emphasis on relatively), I decided to step it up this month with 3 challenges.  Woot! 

Again...I've come to realize that I can be overly optimistic when setting goals.  There were obstacles along the way I just didn't foresee - almost all having to do with using my schedule book.

My three September 30 Day Challenges:
1.  No video games - Easy.
2.  Blog at least once a week - Easy.
3.  Use my schedule book EVERY day - Hard.

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1.  No video games?  Easy.  I usually play video games on the iphone at night right before bed.  It's my winding down ritual.  (My favorites, btw, are tower defense games and poker.)  Whenever I found myself mentally looking for the iphone out of habit, I'd catch myself and take a time out instead.  I'd remind myself, "What did I promise myself this month?".  Oh yeah, that's right...no video games. After 4-5 nights of this mental back and forth, I found myself not even wanting to play on the phone anymore.

2.  Blog once a week?  Easy.  As I write this now it's my second time this week.  There are 168 hours in one week.  Finding 1 or 2 hours to blog isn't difficult.

3.  Use my schedule book EVERY day?   Hard.  Sure, I could simply glance at my schedule book every morning, forget about it all day, and call that using it.  But I want to effectively use the book.

I think the BIGGEST challenge is getting confused when I happen to miss one of my scheduled tasks.  Do I just forget about it?  Where do I fit it in the missed task?  I admit, there were a couple times when I just told myself to forget about it.  Yes, I failed.  There was only one time when I really pushed myself to finish the task at an alternate time.

I feel terrible whenever I miss a task because:

- I forgot.

- The preceding task took longer than expected.

- Something totally unrelated came up and distracted me.

(Don't even get me started on how structured my weekends are.) 

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My goal for next week is to:
- make time for transition periods between tasks
- take more accurate records of how long it actually takes me to do things
- force myself to reschedule tasks that I miss