When I was a kid, one of the favorite games my pals and I played was “Hide and Go Seek.” The person who was the seeker in the game had to face a tree, close her eyes, cover he face with her hands and loudly, slowly count down from ten to one. While she was counting, the rest of the kids would run and hide, “Three . . . Two . . . One . . .” the seeker would shout, “Ready or not, here I come!” Then she would open her eyes and go hunting for her pals and not stop until she found the last one.
I thought of that when I named my goal to complete a 100-day challenge of adding something to my blog here for 100 days. I wasn’t at all sure I could stick with it. 100 days sounded like an awfully long time. Anything could happen between now and the 100th day, after all.
It was while I was wrestling with my doubts that I remembered the advice of one of my most productive friends. The way to get things done, she told me, is to start. As soon as you make the decision that it’s something you want to accomplish, start it. Then just don’t quit until you’re done. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Just do something every single day.
She was right of course. That really is the secret. You have to break through the inertia, and you do that by taking the first step, however tentative it might be. So I took my decision to make daily additions to these pages, pinned it to the my mental bulletin board and said to it in the firmest voice I could muster, “Ready or not, here I come!”
Well, I’m pleased to tell you that this week I passed the half-way mark to my goal. Today I made my 51st entry. I can’t say it hasn’t been a struggle on some days. But it’s like that game of hide and seek. You can’t let Mary Lou stay hidden just because she’s been really sneaky and hard to find. You have to keep looking until you find her. Those are the rules. So I persevered. And now I find that I get curious as each day unfolds to see what will end up on my blog’s pages next. It turns out I’ve put some good stuff there, if I do say so myself.
Then, two weeks ago, I got a whim to start a drawing. I make these things I call scribble drawings. They’re doodles of sorts, often decorated with patterns I discovered when I ran across zen doodles a couple of years ago. So I made my scribble on this 8 1/2” x 11” sheet of paper and started to fill it it. It turned out that it was a much more complex project than I thought it was going to be when I began it. It took me the whole two weeks to complete. But I did it. See, right after starting, the most important thing you have to do to reach your goal is to keep on keeping on.
So if you have a notion that you want to accomplish something, now you know what to do. Get started, whether you’re ready or not, and then just don’t give up ‘til you’re done.
Wishing you a week of creative productivity!
Warmly,
Susan