Friday, September 9, 2011

Friday Challenge - prioritizing

Dear Readers,
When I thought of this challenge, all sorts of bugs and other insects flew around my brain pan, making a terrible racket - buzzing and chirring their wings. First of all, I fell off my own wagon - the one I built with no outside influence - the one where I was going to repost a month of OLD Friday challenges  - tomorrow was to be the last day, as I started on August 10. I fell off last week sometime. I'm quite sure no one noticed for several reasons. The reason I was doing it, partly, was because I wanted to devote all spare time to my revision. Well, there goes another big buzzing in my head! That meant I wasn't getting around to seeing everyone else INCLUDING the gazillion new people from the Campaign.  And I missed the first challenge on that. Also, I wanted to write something for the project Alex  started - the insecure writers' support group -here - but I didn't. And then it was my mum's birthday and I always like to remember her in my posts. And then I had that funny idea yesterday about writers' university and...and....and.
Do you see a problem here?
The problem, for me, is that there are too darn many exciting things happening in the blogosphere - things that demand my attention. So, my challenge, dear readers, is to ask all of us to prioritize. Let's see, how can we do this? If this isn't a problem for you - well you can just skip the challenge, as always. That would be doing the challenge in a weird way because you would be deciding that this isn't an important thing to do and that, my friends, is prioritizing. Let's make a list of things that will tell us if a project is important to tackle.

?'s to Ask around New Projects


1. Does this project fit into your overall purpose in life? (eg - I think Alex's does because I'm a therapist as well as a writer and I can see that this is a good way to move through resistance)

2. Do you have enough time to do it the way you want to, or will it become a nagging, energy-sucking bug in your brain pan? Have you actually figured out the time it will take? (eg - I think the Campaign will be OK, as long as I don't feel I have to do it hugely - if I can contain my own ambition around it)

3. Why do you want to do this? Do you want to do it? (for instance, I could easily get sucked into doing another NaNoWriMo but I absolutely know that it isn't for me- my only reason to do it would be because my pals are and it might be fun. Those aren't good enough reasons.)

I think those are all the questions necessary - take your list of projects and run them through the list. Now, this list for my purposes only included the blog projects but it could be expanded to include any ole thing you get caught up in - 'yes, I'll make cookies for your class' ; 'I'll knit squares for Robyn's project'; ' I'll start another mystery before I've revised the last one'. You get the idea AND so do I.

7 comments:

Mary@GigglesandGuns said...

Great post -- so great I've printed it and will place it under my blotter so I have it in front of me as needed.
My blotter is clear and this will be alongside inspirational pictures and quotes. I didn't want you to be insulted ;o]

Happy weekend!

Liza said...

One of the reasons I don't do all the things I wish I could in blogger land is #2. If I "join" something, I want to do it write...oops I mean right! :)

Jan Morrison said...

Thanks Mary - I'm honoured!
Liza - exactly - the Be Perfect Driver operates within me too.

Anonymous said...

Jan - Those questions are so important, no matter what projects one's thinking about undertaking. I think it's in most humans' nature to be curious and it's healthy to be interested in life. I think that interest is all the more important as we get past our 20's ;-). But the risk is, indeed, taking on too much. Then one's scattered in all directions. Focus....focus....focus...

Unknown said...

Jan,

Great post. I have such a difficult time prioritizing that I end up doing nothing at all. I will definitely take this advice and begin anew!

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Thanks for joining the Insecure Writer's Support Group. The next post is October 5.

Bish Denham said...

Yep, I've had to learn to pick what I want to participate in, which can be hard. But I can't be everywhere all the time.