Hey Team,
Most of my posts so far have been about taking things slowly, being kind to yourself, and building momentum by finding an easy way to get started.
I stand by all of that advice but I also recognize that sometimes people need support to take the exact opposite approach.
Sometimes, we can build momentum by starting with a ridiculous challenge.
I discovered that I enjoy ridiculous challenges when I tried National Novel Writing Month years and years ago. In case you aren’t familiar, the idea behind NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in a month. Not high quality words, not expert words, not beautifully written words, just words.
Committing to that many words in a month forced me to prioritize my writing for that period of time and my brain was willing to get on board with that plan. I generally struggle to prioritize my tasks but in that particular case, the short time frame made it much easy to convince myself to try it.
I have since realized that I like challenging myself to huge short-term projects from time to time in all areas of my life. Sometimes the project is just about pushing to get things done, sometimes it’s about helping myself focus, and sometimes it’s about creating a big ball of momentum for what will eventually be a ‘slow and steady’ kind of project.
So, if you have been finding yourself a bit ‘meh’ about your ideas and plans right now and the work slow and easy approach isn’t drawing you in, perhaps a short-term high-commitment project might fire you up.
Perhaps a big challenge will help you prioritize your tasks for your habit or goal.
Maybe a short burst of focused effort will give you a strong sense of progress and help you get to the next step in your plan.
Working hard in a short time frame might just give you that clear feeling of accomplishment that makes future plans feel more doable.
Either way, it’s worth considering.
Does working in small steps feel like the ‘right’ approach for you or do you feel more inspired by the idea of working toward something huge?
The key here is to find the approach that works best for you right now.
You don’t have to commit to either one forever and, in fact, I would guess that a combination of the two works best for most people most of the time.
So, please do what makes sense for you and be kind to yourself about it in the process.
By the way, even if you go for the big project and it doesn’t pan out, you will still have made some progress and you’ll have more information for planning your next steps. There is no downside!
Here is your gold star for today’s efforts, whether you are going big or going small.
By the way, Jessica McCabe of How to ADHD recently posted a video that includes why having a HUGE goal can motivate us. I also included that video in my post about Planuary this past Tuesday
