Peace of Mind Organizing

Recap of my 30-day challenges

17 July 2017

Back on June 1, I wrote about the power of the 30-day challenge and created an ambitious list of eight things I wanted to do every day for 30 days.

I just looked back on that list and thought I’d share whether I was able to do all eight things for 30 days. In a word, no. But I did pretty well! Here’s what I accomplished:

• Genealogy research every day for at least a half hour
• Back exercises every day
• I completed the 30-day plank challenge
• I was mindful in my spending (with the possible exception of buying a car, but I was mindful about that)
• Four blog posts per week (split between this blog and my genealogy blog, Organize Your Family History)

Here’s what I didn’t manage to accomplish from my list:

• Clear off my desk every day
• Make daily progress on new products I’m writing. (That petered out after about five days.)
• Work on Quickbooks daily. (I lasted about one day on that.)

I feel pretty good about what I was able to get done. But having such a long list of things I wanted to do every day is a great example of overreaching and setting up unrealistic goals.

I’ve tried (and failed) the 30-day plank challenge in the past but the reason I was successful this time (and I’m still planking) is that my friend and colleague Julie Bestry of Best Results Organizing read my June 1 post, offered me planking accountability and started a Facebook group for planking. She’s been amazing. I’m confident that there is no way I would have worked my way up to holding a plank for five minutes at month’s end if it weren’t for Julie and the Facebook accountability.

So the lessons I learned are twofold:

1. Accountability is critical. Having an accountability partner or other ways of being held accountable can be really beneficial in keeping up with challenges and with creating new routines.
2. It’s important to set realistic goals. I kept up with five things for 30 days (and I’m still going with some of them). That’s huge! But because I set goals of keeping up with eight things for 30 days, I feel like a bit of a failure. Next time, I’ll keep the list shorter.

My routine got thrown out of whack by a trip to visit my father and some time spend in the hospital with him because he fell. So I’m all discombobulated. But I hope to get back on track as soon as I slip back into my routines at home. (Thanks to Plank Constant, I’m still planking daily, though!)

Tagged with: challenges, genealogy, habits, routines

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