Thinking Smaller
The other day my dear friend Laura and I discussed whether we wanted to tackle the big adventure that is the 100 Day Project. I’d been thinking about doing 100 days of blogging, and she’d thought about doing 100 days of her (amazing!) plant illustrations. It seems like such a fun and meaningful creative challenge, and one that I’ve thought about tackling for a couple years now. We both loved the idea of seeing one another’s projects unfold, but to both of us, the project seemed daunting, especially in a busy season of life.
The great thing about having creative, thoughtful friends to bounce ideas off of is that they naturally encourage you to explain the real reason you want to do something. They force you to get clearer on your vision as you struggle to explain why the amazing idea inside your head is such a good idea after all. Sometimes that clarity leads to an assuredness in your initial choice, and sometimes it makes you realize that you need to pivot slightly or set different goals.
I’m a Questioner, which means I’m always trying to get to the root of why I’m doing something: what’s the underlying motive? What’s my real goal? When I’m working with clients, I want them to tell me their reason for doing something that’s one step beyond the stock answer of, “because it’s a best practice,” “because it’s what you do,” or “because someone told me that’s how they built their business.” When you get down to the root of it and understand your guiding intentions, your strategy can be more effectively tailored to match.
When Laura asked why I wanted to do the 100 Day Project, my reasons were pretty simple: I loved my experience doing Blog Post Writing Month last November. I miss the habit of writing and observing my life. I so admire daily bloggers like Seth Godin and (up until a couple years ago) Elise Cripe. I need to process the things I’m learning, and I want a place to do that.
Stripped down like this, it became pretty clear to me that while the 100 Day Project would be a great ‘excuse’ to make more room in my life for all of the above, it was by no means the only way to do so, let alone the best way. In fact, in this season of my life, I can say for sure that it would not be the best way to meet those goals.
As truly great as my daily blogging experiment was, it was tiring, and difficult to make time for every day. I ended up feeling so relieved after the last day of the challenge that I have not written another non-Inspiration post since then! It’s easy to imagine how the same would be true after 100 days of daily blogging. But my goal is not to blog for 100 days and then never again until my next sprint. My goal is to cultivate a regular habit of writing that sustains me over time.
I needed to think smaller, slower, steadier, and more sustainable. I needed to ask myself: Can you maintain it? To remind myself: you don’t need to have a huge goal, you can have a small goal that meets all the same needs.
I realized that all I really needed was to make myself a container to play in, an expectation to meet, and an excuse to make time for my creativity.
Which is a very long way of saying that I have decided to forgo the 100 Day Project this year in lieu of a smaller, mightier goal: to start writing one post a week. On Tuesdays for now, hopefully forever. It’s not a daily writing practice (Still the goal! Still wish I was Seth Godin!), but it’s a step in the right direction. See you next week!
