Annual Experiments and Daily Challenges
I challenged myself to create a daily piece of content.
Back in 2014 I chose to commit to producing and publishing “something” every single day — no matter what.
To skew things in my favor, I chose the smallest canvas I could think of, figuring it would take me less time to fill it up with content. At first I thought about 3″ x 5″ index cards, but decided I could think even smaller and went with the humble 3″ x 3″ Post-it Note.
Big Yellow Sticky was born
Fast-forward five years later to the beginning of 2019, and I was still at it.
A daily sticky note filled with an illustration or pithy remark (and occasional wisdom) posted rain or shine, good days or bad. The only exception was taking a one month hiatus while caring for my mother during her stay in hospice to battle cancer.
But it started to feel a little too easy.
I could tell I was growing a little complacent in my self-imposed daily content challenge, so I decided I need to up the ante by adding to the risk factor. I chose to introduce another component to my daily routine and that was to write and record a daily podcast to complement my Big Yellow Sticky creations. I used a new website that had just launched called 200 Words A Day to commit to the daily writing component, and then recorded and published my brief story-behind-the-sticky podcast episodes using the Spreaker iPhone app. I even created an Amazon Echo audio Skill so people to get the Big Yellow Sticky podcast as part of their Daily briefing on Alexa.
365 daily podcast episode later, I am happy to report that I met my challenge for the year.
Didn’t miss posting a daily sticky note, nor recording a daily podcast episode.
What did you challenge yourself to do last year?
What will you challenge yourself to do in the coming year?
Choose some minimum daily goal…
- Writing 200 words a day
- Draw a daily doodle
- Take a walk with a minimum number of steps
- Read a book for 15-minutes
- Send a daily postcard to a friend, relative, or customer
It doesn’t matter what it is — you just have to pick something and promise yourself that you’ll do it.
Every. single. day.
No matter what.
