Every once in awhile as I’m pursuing one of my 101 goals in 1,001 days I will find myself hopelessly bored or uninterested with a next action.
When you find yourself feeling that way, it’s important to take a step back and ask: why am I really doing this?
A seemingly trite illustrative example from my own life: two of my goals are to watch every movie starring Robin Williams and Johnny Depp, respectively. I’ve had “The Survivors” (with Robin Williams) and “Corpse Bride” (with Johnny Depp–his voice, anyway) sitting in my “To Consume” box for nearly a month now.
I started watching both of these movies, wasn’t particularly interested, and yet felt obligated to watch them through to the end, so I kept staring with annoyance at the DVDs and thinking of all the other movies I would rather be watching.
Now, the original point of these two goals was that I enjoy these two actors’ work, and wanted to enjoy it more. Watching a film that I don’t like just to check it off this list is therefore contrary to the entire point of the goal.
Once I looked at it from this perspective, I immediately stuck both of these DVDs in their Netflix sleeves and sent off for two other movies. And if I don’t enjoy one of them, I’m sending them back a lot sooner!
Update: This viewpoint was reinforced by Tyler Cowen in a recent EconTalk podcast.
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I had to get this way about books. I had to read way too many I didn’t like in grad school. If I don’t like them now, out the door they go!
Kudos to you, Marina. I admire anyone who puts themselves under pressure to develop. When I first entered myspace, I put myself under a blog challenge – 5 posts each day for 5 days… and they couldn’t be little boring ones either.
I learned a lot about myself (and my readership) that week.
Thanks for stopping by…
Sam
ps (check out my article how to get followers fast on twitter im putting up today..)