Lesson 1: Being successful in something is not influenced by strength, intelligence or wealth, but by how often this something is prioritised above other things.
Towards the second half of September, when I was supposed to be half-complete with the challenge, my progress fell behind because I gave up my time for other commitments. I was hooked on to anime, and got immersed in what was supposed to be the next challenge - #4: Gamification.
Watching anime was such an easy task while it allowed me to feel good with the excellent graphics, gripping storylines and brilliant music. On the other hand, setting up the game that my productivity system would be based on was very difficult, with me needing to learn up on a lot of formulas to get the game's spreadsheet to function well and trying to integrate real-life tasks with online rewards. The process of growing and seeing my game becoming closer to reality gave me a huge sense of satisfaction every day. These observations meant that my putting in of consistent effort is not dependent on the difficulty level of a task. Instead, the decisive factor is about how much gains I can perceive from having done such a task. The expectation and realisation of rewards (be it a good stimulation of my senses or expanding my knowledge base to increase my capabilities) made the doing of these tasks look attractive to me.
Lesson 2: Great progress comes from small actions, hence habits are not formed through big undertakings.
There were many days that I dropped the reading because I simply did not feel up to it. Such a feeling might be because of how much I demanded myself to read regularly. Setting expectations that will be difficult for me to fulfill will only lead to disappointment and cause me to miss out on many of the things that were taught by the trainers. I should fight back the guilt of not reaching the daily reading quota, and do the longer and safer way of only requiring myself to read very little daily (like one page per day).
The most effective change comes from within and from being regularly enforced. Limiting my reading quota could have made it less likely to put off the reading. This is so that the act of reading a book (no matter how few pages the book has) is easier to start.
Lesson 3: Time-bound tasks are more likely to mobilise effort
Creating a daily habit is not as easy as setting a deadline to form the habit by and just pray that I will be doing it everyday. Chances are, all the distractions and obligations in life will most likely prevent me from doing so. To increase my chances of success at forming a daily habit, I must set a timer for the minimum amount of reading time I must hit so that I focus on reading instead of worrying about other things.
Knowing how much time I have left aids in focus, since I do not have to split my attention to attend to the other things I need to do.
Resolution: Extension of the challenge
For the daily reading part of the habit, I will extend it till the end of September 2020. This will help me to spread out my reading more over time to avoid making reading seem like a chore.
As for the news readings, I will set more reminders for me to do it and record what I have learnt from the reading.
Finally, for the reading notes, I will only expect myself to complete one, and it will be ready by the end of September 2020.
For now, my goal is to conclude the challenge and get ready the challenge completion post by 4 October 2020, Sunday. To help me get there, I will break the challenge down into time-bound tasks that I can jump into so that I am less able to put them off for later.
