Today is the last day of my 7 blogs in 7 days Challenge. I must admit I glad it’s nearly over. Its been very challenging. But I am glad I did it.
In this final post, I want to delve a little bit into how I felt during the challenge and what I think I got from it. I plan to write a future article about specific writing lessons I learned. For now, here are the posts I wrote and a day-by-day journal of what did, felt and thought during my challenge.
The Posts
Here are the 7 posts I made during this challenge, which ended up spanning over 8 days because I missed one. (3-Feb-21 -> 10-Feb-21)
- When You Feel Like Giving Up, Challenge Yourself!
- How To Find Inspiration For Creative Work
- 4 Free Tools to Help You Write Better Online.
- How to Follow Through With Your Intentions To Build Consistent Habits.
- How to Prevent a Rut. The Habits Forged Out Of Failure
- How I Started My Blog – A Beginner’s Perspective
- Final Day: Thoughts On My 7 Blog Posts in 7 Days Challenge.
First of all, I want to say that these posts are not well written. How could they be? I hardly had a chance to proofread them. The ideas were rushed, the grammar sloppy (until I started using Grammarly) and the messages questionable.
However, that’s wasn’t the point. The point was to do a short experiment so that I could figure out how to do deliberate practice for my blog. I felt that this challenge has helped me understand that better, as well as providing me with some valuable insights.
Day By Day: Actions, Feelings and Insights
Day 1
What I did: Uploaded my first post and declared my challenge.
How I felt: At first I felt good. My motivation was high. Later I thought about the difficulty of the challenge and I started to question my intentions. Was this some attempt at a quick fix?
Insight: Motivation can help overcome the inertia, but the early days are where we face the strongest resistance.
Day 2
What I did: On day 2 I focused on research. Trying to find a compelling story to explain my blog. It was interesting to learn about the creation of Pokemon, but I took me all day to write my second post. Noticed that I like to add extra stories to make the same point. Which seems unnecessary.
How I felt: I started to realise the difficulty of the challenge and just how much time it was going to take. I started to feel fearful and confused. I considered giving up, removing the challenge post and chalking this up one to experience. I felt conflicted – one side of me was saying I should cut my losses. The other side of me was saying ‘But if you quit when things get hard you will never succeed.
Insight: The side of me that wanted to quit is that part that doesn’t like change. Yesterday It was throwing a bit of tantrum. Today it was trying to talk me out of the challenge using logic. This is where a public commitment really helped. The side of me that didn’t want to quit was backed up by the fear failing in public.
Day 3
What I did: I decided to go for a much simpler and easier post. Whilst procrastinating around writing my post, I was researching some tools to help improve your writing. I ended up making that the subject of my post.
How I felt: I felt exhausted from all the internal conflict. Looking up tools allowed me to let off some steam whilst feeling like I was doing work – classic procrastination. But I got that post out.
My insight: Internal conflict is exhausting. But even when procrastinating I could perform some related work.
Day 4
What I did: Came up with lots of ideas but didn’t use any of them. Started to consider the reason behind this.
How I felt: Today I didn’t have resistance I had been feeling. However, now I was dealing with the frustration of not knowing how covert my ideas into posts.
Insight: After dealing with internal resistance I was know feeling frustrated. Things were going smoothly but now I was focusing my thoughts on the problem. How do I get better at turning my ideas into posts? Although It didn’t feel like it, This was progress.
Day 5
What I did: I failed to upload a post today, because I spent most of my time trying to figure out the question of how to turn my ideas into posts. So I reverse engineered one of James Clears posts and broke it down to one idea. From this, I could see a strategy for writing articles. The issue was this strategy took more time.
How I felt: During my research I felt good. I was making a breakthrough. But after failing to upload I did feel disappointed.
Insight: Sometimes you have to miss a day to do some research and figure out a better way forwards.
Day 6
What I did: My main focus was getting back on the horse. I knew I had to upload something no matter how good or bad.
How I felt: I actually felt pretty neutral. I felt like I had learned something important from this challenge and thought that I could stop now. But I wanted to see it out the challenge.
Insight: The challenge could have ended twice in recent days, it felt like it was drawing to an end naturally. I am glad it was ending soon – a longer challenge would not have been a good idea.
Day 7
What I did: I spent a lot of my time procrastinating looking up SEO and setting up google analytics on my site.
What I felt: After making a bit of breakthrough I didn’t feel as interested in the challenge. I allowed myself to investigate other options.
Insight: It’s easy to get distracting once you lose interest in something. But I did it anyway. I had finally built the discipline to upload a post. It had become to feel natural – a habit was forming.
Day 8
What I did: I went for a walk and thought about the challenge. I looked over my previous uploads, and importantly, a couple of older posts before it.
How I felt. Happy the challenge was ending. Excited for the next challenge (uh oh – here comes the motivation for a new challenge).
Insight: Reflecting on the whole challenge wouldn’t have happened if iI didn’t see it through to the end. I realised I learned more from those older posts because I took my time. Also, I am happy uploading at lower frequency then I was – maybe every 2 weeks or once a month.
Insights summary
Overall the challenge gave me some valuable insights. What most interested me was how I felt on each day.
Motivation -> High Resistance -> Procrastination-> Progress – > Breakthrough/Failure -> Procrastinating -> Low Resistance -> Reflective
I was surprised at how quickly I wanted to quit. I expect this corresponded to the difficulty of the challenge. The accountability of uploading was crucial to me overcoming this.
On procrastination. I felt like this was my brain’s natural tendency to explore alternative paths. I actually found that it could be useful if it related to the area I was focusing on.
The beginnings of progress didn’t come until day 4 & 5, quickly followed by a breakthrough, as well as failure. I guess was easier to fail at this point for two reasons: (1). I was no longer relying on accountability to write my posts (2). I had got a reward from the challenge so carrying on seeming less attractive.
Again I was surprised that after 6 days I had got quite used to writing posts. The resistance was much lower than before, even after failing. I felt a habit was forming.
Seeing the challenge through to the end helped me draw a line under it. it allowed me to reflect on it as a whole. By reflecting, I discovered these higher-level insights that I would not have got if I had just stopped after day 5.
Final thoughts
Lastly, I want to highlight something worth mentioning. Whether It was a good day or bad I focused on the challenge the entire way through. For someone who tends to flit from one thing to another, this is huge. It did come at a cost. I was often writing to well into the night. I was snacking a lot and not focusing on healthy eating – I even put on a couple of pounds. But the challenge was intense and I expected some sacrifice. As I said I am glad it’s done, but I am even more glad I did it.
So next time you feel like quitting . Challenge yourself. – but only for a week 😉
