I’ve posted here before about my experience as a member of Sunday Night Success and my reverse-but theory, and now I’ve graduated to Girl Tuesday blogger at Sunday Night Success with my Daily Desk project.
The Daily Desk project is my silly, sentimental method that will photo-document my way to a very ambitious goal: 100 days to 40 billable hours a week.
Why such an ambitious goal? Like Jeremy says: Plans don’t work with out actions. I finished my business plan and I need to make sure it works. My boss (ie. ME!) can be pretty generous with the time off. I need to be accountable and make sure I finish what I started here.
We work in ebbs and flows. My Daily goal project will help me, on any given day, be more accountable to the “ebb” rather than the flow. At least, it will allow me to maintain one eye on my goal.
How’s it going so far? Pretty good. Week one I finished a major piece of research I’d put off far too long; some tedious research I really needed to complete. When I finished it, I celebrated by taking an afternoon off to quilt (my favourite thing).
Week two was really busy. My time was taken up with many meetings, but I planned my week in a clever way that allowed me to continue feel like I moved forward.
Of course there are BAD days. They get documented too:
I have learned that when I’m not feeling “it” and I want to do anything but work, I shamelessly abuse rewards.
Note the knitting & farmville here. I believe that day my system was for every 5 company websites I researched, I allowed myself 5 minutes of farmville. Each time I researched ten companies, I was awarded twenty minutes of knitting. Not perfect, but I finished all the research I needed to complete that day. Conversely, the next day I was motivated to get a similar task finished in as short a time as possible!
Today is Day 16.
It’s a good day. I realized my main task for the week is going to take much longer than I budgeted, but that’s okay because on Day 100 I believe I’ll have billable clients to show off.
I’ll be posting again next week to tell you about my progress!
Love your reward system (and the rewards). I need to find a similar way to motivate myself since I telecommute. Best of luck with your future goals
A great start Jocelyn although I really don’t get Farmville. I bust high school students playing it all the time so there must be something to it, just not something I see.
I think your do five, get five, do ten, get ten is a great system, but I have to ask, do the reward times last longer than the work times?
Nice Macbook!
And ice cream is always a good support environment!
Jeremie
[...] 1) I made a big commitment recently, 100 days to billable clients. It’s scary and it’s HARD. To work through the fear I’m working with Jeremy Miller to stay on task. I’ve called this project my Daily Desk project and I’ll be blogging about it on Tuesdays at Sunday Night Success. [...]