Article Index

On this blog I write about...

The whole process of the 101 goals in 1001 days adventure:
+ Planning your list (where do you begin?)
+ Editing it to avoid common mistakes
+ Starting the adventure (Yay!)
+ Staying motivated once you've begun
+ Growing and adapting with your experiences
+ My own 101 goals learning curve

Projects and adventures in general:
+ Useful resources
+ Sources of inspiration

And clicking on any of those themes will take you to a list of relevant articles. It's worth checking on a regular basis or following the blog - I'll be adding new content regularly... you see it's one of my own 101 goals to post 286 articles to this blog and I have quite a bit of work to do.

Hugs and lists,

Ms Alex

101 Goals Will Change Your Perception Of Time

Hopefully for everyone's sake your sense of timing will be better than that of the Window file copy dialogue author.

Thing is, it's easy to misjudge time when you're not used to counting it. And 101 goals is probably going to need you to make some time estimates, if you're serious about it.

Take a good look at your list. Look for all the tasks that require you to be somewhere or doing something for a lot of time. If you're planning to watch 101 movies... do you actually have those 200ish hours to spare in between the driving lessons, parachuting and new job you're planning on working on?

Your available time is just as big a factor in your 101 success as your available funds. You're just not used to measuring it in the same way.

A New Year, A New Start

I know there's been no new content here for ages. But I'm working on it. One of 101 goals is based around posting a specific number of posts to this blog. I still want to complete that particular goal, I still really want to get helpful/useful content here to aid those who are thinking or working on their own 101 goals experience. So, with the New Year, there will be new content. And I'll be more rigorous about blocking out time to work on this blog and that related goal of mine.

Goals That Didn't Make My 101 Goals In 1001 Days List (And Why)

In my last post I talked about editing the 101 goals in 1001 days long list down and gave some general pointers on why goals might not make your final cut. I figured it'd be fairly useful to talk about some specific goals I cut from my own list and some goals I included on previous 101 goals lists that I would not include now, knowing what I know. So, here's five that don't make the cut for me for very different reasons:

1) Visit my grandfather's grave in Aden.
My grandfather is buried in an RAF grave out in the Yemen. This goal was cut from my list because my family wouldn't feel comfortable with the story of the trip being blogged about and I wouldn't want to track the grave down to tick something off a list. Plus it's not the most stable tourist destination to make plans for. And it might stir up a lot of memories for my grandmother. When I do this it will be privately and certainly not with a blog post in mind.

2) See 101 new to me movies.
Perfectly good goal and works for a lot of other people, I even enjoy reading this goal on other 101 blogs. I just can't do it myself. I don't get the same buzz from films as I do from books and I find it hard to shuffle my free time so I can watch a film when I'd rather be doing other more active or mentally active things. I struggle to watch my LoveFilm allowance every month so actually making a goal out of something so unnatural to me would be kind of crazy.

3) Specific finance related goals.
I have saving goals, but I don't want to share them. My 101 goals blog isn't a financial advice blog and I don't feel comfortable talking about money with strangers on a regular basis, so the specific money related goals stay off my 101 goals list. The only financial goal I put on the list is one where I can talk about a one off process of reviewing my finances without sharing figures or advice.

4) Organise the music on my external hard drive.
Okay, so I'm doing this. And it's taking ages. And it definitely feels like it belongs on a task list where I'd get the pleasure of crossing it off once it's done. But it'd be awfully dull to write about it and I can't imagine it'd be much fun to read about. Plus, if someone stopped me in the street and asked me what I want to do with my life in the next couple of years... well, I'd be pretty embarassed to say this was on that list. It'll happen anyway, but no one needs to read about it.

5) Encourage other people to do 101 goals.
I had this on my previous lists. It doesn't need to be on a list. If people see you enjoying what you're doing and getting stuff done... well, they'll want in on the action anyway. So far in 208 days I've encouraged about 20 or 30 people to do 101, without really trying to. They've just seen me bouncing around the room in glee and drawn their own conclusions. This means that I've not helped anyone set any specific goals, felt obliged to buddy them for goals we both share or driven the conversation in productivity-ish directions. If they've stuck with it, we've had fun talking about it; if they've decided it's not for them after a month or so, well then I don't feel disappointed. It's a much better situation to be in then when I had it as a goal on my list and their motivation affected my list's success.

So there's five very different goals that didn't make my cut. If you have goals that didn't make your cut or you've re-thought after starting your list then I'd love you to share them below.

Editing The 101 Goals Long List

Once you've created a long list of your own ideas and read some other people's lists it's time to cut that long list down to a short list.

Ditch anything you can't honestly afford to do. You're not about to win the lottery so don't plan as if you are.

Ditch anything that you've got on your list because you're trying to win someone else's approval. Do things that will make other people happy, yes. Don't do things to try and prove a point or for other people. Let them make their own list.

If you've got idea crushes, try and figure out whether you're still going to want to do them in two years time. Don't put it on the list unless you're willing to commit to doing it. You can still do things that aren't on the list, you know. :)

Lastly and MOST IMPORTANTLY, don't put daily, weekly or monthly goals on your short list unless you're superhuman.

I'm serious about the daily/weekly/monthly thing. I think it's far healthier to set yourself a target number of times you want to do something than it is to try and commit to doing something every day. I only put the daily photo goal on my 101 goals list when I realised that taking a photo with my camera or either of my BlackBerrys was something I could do every single day even if I was bedridden. Uploading a photo every day might not be something I can promise - I can't guarantee an internet connection every day. But taking a photo every day, that I can do unless I am unconscious for 24 hours. It might not be a good shot but it will be done. :)

If you're adamant you want to aim to do something every day if you can then put it down as 'Do X 1001 times'. Please. For your own sanity. That way you are not going to get dispirited five or six weeks in when your attention slips for a moment or mark everything as FAILED when a crisis day comes along. And a crisis day will come along at some point. No one gets through nearly three years without a single day where everything they touch explodes/implodes/cries. If you're human rather than superhuman... let your plans bend to accommodate those explosions. :)

Next Up: Some Goals That Didn't Make My Short List (And Why)

Being Inspired By Other People's Lists

When I was making my long list of 101 goals, I left reading other people's lists for ideas until after I'd written down most of my own ideas. Then I read just about every list on Day Zero's masterlist. It took a while. :)

I learnt a lot from reading other people's lists. I could see the goals I thought would be abandoned as too boring after a month had passed. I could see goals that would be very dull for the blogger to write about and not very interesting to read about. I saw some seriously expensive wishlists masquerading as goal lists. I saw lists people had made for their partners. I saw one that someone had made for their dog. Yep, 101 goals I want my dog to achieve. I think the author was serious.

Most lists focus on travel, health and relationships. Most 101 lists are by women. A lot of tasks are repeated and copied from user to user.

Reading through a whole group of lists back to back is useful in a lot of ways. It makes you look at how realistic any goal or list is, including your own. If you read a list and it makes you think, 'Never in a million years!'... have a second look and see if you share any goals with it. If you realise that someone has a better way of doing something, go ahead and amend your goal to use that better method. You're living in a different town, with different circumstances and different personalities. Even if you copied someone's entire list you couldn't end up with the same results. Not of course that I'd recommend you just copy an entire list as that kind of defeats the point of using 101 goals to identify what you want to do with 2.75 years of your life. :)

Reading other people's lists might also make you reconsider goals that are frequently included and seem to be stumbling blocks for other 101ers. If you see a goal you're thinking of including on your list on a lot of other 101 goal blogs and the blogs all seem abandoned, maybe you need to re-think how you're going to do that task to make it more likely to be achieved?

Are you going to need a timeline? A diary? A bunch of sub-lists to track the 100 movies you're going to watch as just one of your goals? How are other people tracking goals similar to yours? What can you learn from? What can you improve?

At this point, with your own ideas and all those you've been inspired by from other people's lists you might actually have more than 101 goals... so it's almost time to talk about editing the list.

Next Up: Editing The Long List (why some goals just don't make the cut)

Creating A 101 Goals Long List (And Why You Need One)

Once I'd decided to have a final, do or die attempt at the 101 goals challenge, I started working on a long list of goals.

I wrote down all sorts of random, oddball, unlikely things. I included silly ideas, cool life experiences I'd read and heard about, stuff I'd seen in movies. It took me about two weeks and I ended up with a long list of about 250 goals that I had jotted down whenever they came to me. I was carrying a notebook round with me, making notes on my phone; whenever I remembered or saw something that belonged on this improbable list of goals and dreams I made notes. My friends thought it was funny at first but then they started joining in and suggesting ideas they liked and thought might be fun. Quite a few of those were really cool things I fancied trying so I added them too.

At the time I was doing this my reasoning was that this would give a well rounded list: if you work from a long list you have a much better chance of cutting down to a short list that is balanced, achievable and practical. And I definitely feel it did that for me. There were unexpected benefits too.

The first unexpected bonus was that I really enjoyed the chance to dream and put all these goofy ideas on a list ('Be an astronaut for a day' was on there). I had some very fun conversations reminiscing with friends about what we wanted to be when we grew up, what we'd like to be remembered for, who we'd be played by in a movie (Me: a pirate, positivity, Johnny Depp) and it was quite a headrush to feel so free. At this stage I wasn't filtering at all so every thing was added to the list.

I totally recommend writing down every dream or goal you have over the space of a week or two, even if you have no intention of doing 101 in 1001. It will change your perspective and it will fire up your imagination, your memories and your curiosity. Very, very empowering to do.

The second unexpected bonus of writing a long list down was that it made me think about areas of my life I normally don't think too much about day-to-day. Thinking about what new stuff I wanted to do and have in my life made me think about what I wanted to keep and what I have done before. That was the sort of self-coaching I can handle - bitesize and not too scary. Thinking about motivations gave me an edge when I was writing the long list. Every idea went on the list no matter how silly or contradictory... but I had a much better understanding of which ideas were likely to be daydreams and which might be real goals.

The main benefit though was that separating the gathering of ideas from the filtering of them into two discrete steps and spending longer on them made both steps much clearer and easier to do. No muddling, no self-censoring, no chance of getting side-tracked by navel-gazing. The idea gathering step was much more like mind-mapping or brain-storming than it had been on previous 101 goals attempts and much more enjoyable.

Next Up - Being Inspired By Other People's Lists