Guidelines as Motivation
Sure, I'll join in. I've seen a lot of “100 Days to Offload” posts lately, and I like the idea. I like it right now because I have felt entirely drained lately. For reasons that we all share. Here's why the 100 Days thing resonated with me today: Scrabble
My wife and I played some Scrabble the other day to take our minds off of everything else. In Scrabble the primary goal is simple: make words that connect to the other words on the board. But there's a secondary goal in Scrabble: put good letters on the bonus spaces so you get a better score. And that's where the analogy comes in.
When you're reaching for a triple letter score under a “Q” you're thinking much harder than you are if you're just trying to put any letters on the board. You can play either way, but when you're twisting and turning your words to optimize your score you tend to be more engaged.
So having a simple guideline like “put 100 new thoughts into the world this year” could just be the motivation I need to keep writing even when I don't want to.
So there's my thought for today: playing a game with guidelines—or rules, if you like— is more fun than playing without them. The guidelines give meaning to your successes.
I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting 100 Days To Offload.
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