Tag: journal

A 1,000 miles

Posted on by philipdodson

Ok, so those who know me will know that occasionally I do things without much thought. My mate Bernie always laughs about my 30-day challenge, I did 8 challenges all at once, instead of just 1, every day for 30 days. Yes, unsustainable.

Anyway, I chap called Simon Jordan, who I only know through Facebook, I am not even sure how we got connected, a friend of a friend. Anyway, he’s a super active bloke, I like his posts a lot, last year he climbed to Everest Base Camp, started an amazing campaign called ‘5 Things Clear’ about clearing up rubbish from beaches and is a super positive and inspirational person.

This week he posted a challenge on Facebook to join him in running (or walking, phew!!!) a 1,000 miles in 2018. Well, that doesn’t seem much I thought and I like walking so I said ‘I’m in’ and joined the club on Strava and set off yesterday for my first walk to the nearby lake through the woods and fields, up and down hills, very muddy, Cookie our dog loved it as always, got home 3.1 miles done. Great.

Set off today for the same walk, upped it a bit by taking a slightly longer route back, 3.7 miles. Great.

That means I have 993.2 miles to go in 359 days!! SHIT – that is 2.8 miles a day, every single day for the next 359 days.

I am going to need to up the game a lot more, as there will be days when I will not be able to do it. Or is that the old mentality of ‘not enough time’ bullshit, Philip?

Well, yes it is and as I know from my daily blogging (2 years and 4 months now) and my daily writing journal (928 days completed out of the last 929 and current 757-day streak) that there is always time for the things that you really want to do.

So, I have decided to add to the 1,000 miles challenge in 2018 by doing a 1,000 pieces of writing and that will include my personal blog (365) and my daily writing journal (365) and that leaves another 270 blogs to write on things like coworking, productivity, deep work and other articles related to my Deep Work Project. I won’t publish my 750 Words writing journal, I’ll spare you the ramblings of my mind, but the other 635 posts I will on here as always and on the Deep Work Project site.

Finally, as I do a piece of daily art/photography already as one of my daily rituals, I am going to create/take a 1,000 photos/pieces of art in 2018 and then publish them too. I will post these on my Instagram.

So that’s 1,000 miles walking, 1,000 pieces of writing and create 1,000 pieces of art/photos by the end of 2018.

Shit, it’s going to be a busy year!

Today I become a Phoenix

Posted on by philipdodson

Phoenix

So for those who don’t know me well, I signed up for a daily writing site called 750Words.com last September, I completed about 290 odd days in the first year, not bad to be honest and wrote over 240,000 words. About 5-6 average length books.

It’s a site that gives you a blank page to write on each day, and the minimum goal is 750 words each day, in order to get a tick, well a X actually in the box (another 10 words used up!!) to say that you have completed that day.

If you do 5 in a row, 10 in a row etc etc you earn various badges, which I have completed many times. I have even got the albatross a few times for 30 days in a row. You get some for doing so many days in a row within 20 minutes, a cheetah, and so on.

The one I have been trying to do, and the best I got to was 60 days in row previously, was the Phoenix, which is a 100 straight days.

So here I am tapping away on day 100, so when I hit the magical 750 word count today and see the green ‘auto save’ pop-up I know that I am a Phoenix.

I am now thinking of an appropriate way to celebrate that personal success, well didn’t need to add ‘personal’, as all success is personal.

I am not telling you all of this to sound my own trumpet, and say ‘wow, look at me, what an amazing thing I have achieved’. OK so there is a tiny bit of that, after all, we are human and we like to shout out a little about our achievements.

The reason I am writing all this, apart from the fact that I have already used up 303 words of today’s count, is that despite what we tell ourselves at times in life, we are capable of so much more than we think.

The thing is, we have to set ourselves things that are easily broken down into relatively small, almost unnoticeable burdens in our daily lives, in order to maintain the consistency required to achieve our bigger goals.

I am at something like 267K words in just over a year, and had someone said to me or even if I had said it to myself ‘write that many words in a year’, well I would have probably laughed, but I would of very quickly convinced myself that it wasn’t possible.

Where would I find the time to do it? What would I have to write that much about? What is the point, especially if you’re not likely to publish 5 books?

Well, I normally takes me 20 minutes a day to write the 750 words, it can take longer depending on mood/interruptions, and if I am in the flow, I can end up writing 1,500 words and then that takes a lot longer.

I rarely struggle to know what to write, as right from the outset I told myself, this is for me, this is private and I only have to share if I want to. Immediately there is no pressure, guess what? You can write freely and endlessly, sometimes just ramblings, other times some of your best stuff, when there is no pressure.

The point of all of this has been, that my writing, which has always been good, in my humble opinion!!, has now got much better. How do I know? the stats on my blog site and the feedback I am getting from many different people, not just my Mum and wife.

The bigger point though, is I have done it for myself and I love doing this writing every day, it has given me a much healthier, fitter mind. This is like my daily brain gym, a chance to talk to myself, to go through issues out loud, to talk things through, to plan, to note down my successes, feelings and so much more.

I can genuinely now see myself doing this every day, well maybe not every day once I have collected all the badges, for the rest of my life.

It will provide me with a fantastic log of my life to look back on if nothing else.

So I have reached 714 words, just 36 to go to becoming a Phoenix, and doing this has been like the mythical Phoenix, as I feel in the last few years I have been through a process of (750 Words – 100 days YIPPEEEEEEE) self improvement, self awareness and massive change and this is yet another way of me showing myself what I am truly capable of.

The other bonus of sharing today’s entry, I do not have to write my blog now. I am off to celebrate.