Birthday Challenge (Overview)

This is the follow-up my Birthday Challenge (2010).

For whatever reason I lost my momentum and motivation to continue and basically did nothing the last 3 days. Which is a little bit disappointing, because I looked forward to doing alot leading up to those 3 day (for the most part) free days. I think I felt a little overwhelmed with other people's expectations as well as my own. I wanted to be in great spirits and with great energy.. so I relaxed and rested.. and then on the last day I was like "eh.. screw it". My final score ended up being 59.80% (or 56.06% if you counted the 2 bonus tasks I added)

For my Word test I got a 59% on spelling, 59% on word type (noun, verb, etc.), and 40% on defination (25% of the answers I had no idea on, 53% correct, 22% I answered wrong on). Not that great of a success...

Completetion of Tasks (including 2 bonus tasks):

• 9 tasks I completed.. completely
• 8 tasks I completed over 50%
• 9 tasks I completed under 50%, but made some trackable progress on
• 6 tasks I made no noticeable progress on (attempted or not)

So.. what did I not make any trackable progress on?

• Identify 30 local businesses. I don't think I really cared about this one to much. It seemed like something I could easily do in my free time.. maybe I just forgot about it. This was also something I thought about doing while doing the "Bicycle 30 miles within 1 day" task.
• Write 30,000 characters of text for my book. This something I wanted to do, but also was something I wanted to do after completing the "Read 30 chapters" tasks.. which I didn't finish until Day 27. This is something I'll definately do in the future, so I'm okay that this on is here
• Develop and Deploy 3 games. This was probably to ambitious for me, alongside with the other tasks. I would of liked to see myself complete 1 of them, but I didn't. This is another thing I should focus on doing in the future.
• Do a combination of meeting 30 girls and/or going on 30 dates. I'll just say that although I made alot of attempts (every week minimum), not much progress was made. This kind of killed my moral too.
• Ask 30 girls on a date. Never attempted this one by itself as I attended to. I sort of forgot about it.. and focused more on the previous mentioned task.
• Read 30 words worth of text in front of 30 people. Orginally, I had no idea how to go about doing this. On my last work week I had the idea of writing a nomination to read in front of my co-workers (~20 people) for an.. at least attempt, which I never got around to. Then I had the idea that I could read something off at my niece's Birthday party.. which transformed into singing a 30 word song at said birthday party, but I ran out of time on that as well.

What unexpected challenges occured?

• Limited free time on a work night. I sort of expected this, but I wanted to get more done on these nights then I was able to. I also didn't up working over 40 hours every week, which I didn't want to do during this personal challenge. For example.. I really wanted to finish the "Reading 30 chapters" challenge within the first week or two.
• Not staying focused for the full 30 days. By day 15 I was feeling a little tired of placing all of my free time in the tasks. I think after Day 15 I would allow myself to occasionally watch a show on a worknight or a movie on the weekend. On Day 22 I completed nothing at home. And then the last 3 days.
• Lack of BC Synergy. Hearing that my brother might do a Birthday Challenge of his own, when I was explaining it a month before I started I was expecting to get some positive energy from him he started. Whenever we were together, I would go over BC with him and help him gather his thoughts on it. I redesigned my spreadsheet and placed his list on the spreadsheet. I also constantly tried to push him to get his own preperation work finished. On Day 20 I wanted to get re-inspired by the start of his challenge and by family at that family gathering that occured. I was also expecting to work with him on Day 28 or 29 (when we were both off) to clean the house or something. I didn't really occur though
• Volunteer Rejection. My work does a great job at promoting outside volunteer oppertunities. After doing Habitat for Humantiy that 1st Saturday and not having things planned the next Saturday I was suprised to see the slot of the house I was working with was closed with less volunteers then when I worked it. I also looked for other oppertunities, but couldn't find anything that worked with my schedule.
• Lack of motivation on unplanned off days. If I had something planned on an off day then that planned activity definately got done. On unplanned days, not so much got done.

What could I have done to better prepare?

• Planning a day off in the middle might have been good. Having that to look forward to would have been nice, but also could've slowed any momentum I might have had.
• Scheduling more stuff ahead of time, would have been good. Especially if it was a commitment with another person or group.
• Doing more one time things would have been good. They gave me a little boost and gave me something to talk about on the blog. I only had 2 that I didn't complete.. "Speak 30 words in front of 30 people" and "30 miles within 1 day". The second one I was looking forward to do as well.
• If I was able to develop something to automatically upload things complete from the spreadsheet to the blog, that would of been nice. Occasionally I would leave forgot to add stuff on to the blog entry. It didn't happen much and was okay, because it was still on spreadsheet.
• Having a full list of new words (ahead of time) that I was interested in would have been good.
• Having a list of guitar exercises would have been good or (even better) a scheduled routine or guitar exercises.
• Better flexability with some of the stuff. As I was going I ended up changing the defination of "Going to sleep by 7am for 30 days" to not doing anything else by 7am (allowing me to finish what I was currently working on).. unless it was 7:30am in which case I needed to turn off the computer immediantly.
• Knowing exactly where I could get cheap new foods would have been good. Like a sampler sort of thing would have been great.
• Having 6 Daily type goals seemed to work okay

Misc. lessons learned (or re-learned)..

• Working out, allways would put me in a "Get stuff done" mood.
• The spreadsheet worked out really well for tracking stuff
• It's easier to do stuff if either.. A. No one is home OR B. The people at home are as focused as you are (but are not interferring with what you want to do).
• Planning stuff helps to insure stuff gets done.
• Posting videos is do-able, talking in front of them is still very awkward.
• Finding a pic for a blog entry everyday can be somewhat troubling at times
• I can support myself as far as traveling larger distances.
• I should take care of my motorcycle more.
• I might be more productive if I found my own place to live.
• In social situations, I probably think to much
• Though.. I have a reasonablly strong will.. it could be better.
• The distance from entrance to entrance and back (in my housing area) is 2.16 kilometers
• I shouldn't rely on other people completely
• Having it my mind that other people are reading my entries acts as a double edged sword.. helping me to put entries.. some with good quality and giving me more motivation, BUT ALSO also putting extra pressure towards what they might want to see and making me question what I should(n't) post
• Pickled pigs feet do not taste good

I'll be taking a little off time and then figure out what I want to do next.