theFIREstarter

Overview of Challenge

Main task: To post 3 articles per week minimum on the TFS blog.
Challenge start date: Monday 30th September
Challenge end date: Sunday 3rd November
Challenge total length: 5 weeks.

For more information read my intial post for the challenge here

Week 1 – ending Sunday 6th October

Challenge result: Failed

Final update: I posted 2 articles, which included the actual post of the challenge brief. I initially felt that this was a bit “cheaty” but then I figured, it was literally a post and I did spend a fair amount of time thinking about the challenge and therefore the overall writing of the post, so I’d include it

Reasons for success/failure: Too busy at work! I was going to bash out my final article on the Sunday but ended up working 9 hours (3pm till midnight) instead! I’m taking this in my stride and going to try to make it back up by posting four the next week instead. If I can post on average 3 articles per week over the 5 weeks, I am going to still consider this a challenge a success.

Week 2 – ending Sunday 13th October

Challenge result: Success!

Update Wednesday 9th October: I’ve posted one article so far and two if you include this one. I think I am going to include this post into the challenge because, again it is a post, and I will keep updating it throughout the challenge (it will only be counted once of course). From here on in I need to post two more articles which should in theory be quite easy. Once again though I seem to be having a nightmare at work, and funnily enough we’ve also decided to have a massive clear out of stuff so have inadvertently started the “Minimalist/house-decluttering experiment” I mentioned as a possible future experiment. As this is not really a challenge as such I think I will just try to write up one post on this some time next week to explain what we did and how we* got on. So maybe it’s not as cut and dried again as it seems. I’ve got a couple of posts lined up though, so the quota should be filled. Who thought this would be such hard work eh!

I’ve also added a challenge “hub page” so to speak, which you can now find in the top menu bar. Here I will list all challenges I’ve done, with links to the challenge logs and other various posts that may concern them. Exciting, no!?

Final weekly update: I managed to post 4 articles to get me back on an even keel. I have to say the challenge has really worked on two levels, it has “forced” me to post when I’ve lacked motivation to do so, but also has improved motivation rather dramatically in the first which has made everything else fall into place a lot easier. I feel confident of completing the challenge successfully for the next 3 weeks but we’ll see how it goes obviously.

More updates to come at the end of each week!

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*I keep saying “we” – I am referring to myself and the newly crowned Mrs TFS – we got married about 3 weeks ago. Yay! Also she has been extremely helpful with the decluttering process so far, so I wouldn’t want her to read this and think I’ve made it out like I have done all the hard work and sorting out. Back ↑