The 100 Day Plan

Emboldened by recently completing ‘Atomic Habits’ I have embarked on a 100 Day Plan. This is not something the book explicitly recommends, but it is my own spin on how to achieve results in tiny increments. Previously I have proven to myself I can adopt almost any change in behaviour for about a month. This time I want to get a more sustained period of self-improvement completed.

I initially was planning to do a ‘Spring Plan’ for the months of September, October, November, but I was so excited I wanted to start sooner. As fate would have it, all of the days in those three months plus the days in August I started early totalled 100. Surely an Omen…

Image from my room

The Whiteboard

I have drawn boxes for each day on my whiteboard, and next to those boxes is a legend of items, each written in a different colour.

Purple is for “Write Every Day”. By this I mean to contribute to something that will actually be produced, as opposed to simply filling up my computer with words. I’ve been doing that for too long. I am working on one piece of fiction and multiple pieces of non-fiction, mainly blog posts and short articles. Any of these are ok, but the point is to contribute daily writing to these, and not ramble. 

Orange is for “Self Publish Every Week”. This means getting something up on Medium, LinkedIn or this website every single week for fourteen weeks. 

Red is for “Submit”. This is for sending work to publishers. I want to mix things up and split my work into self-published and published channels. This is a huge challenge to my comfort zone. Though I have been involved in selling other people’s things many times, I am yet to crack the confidence to regularly share my work directly with people who might be interested in publishing it. In the next few months this will change.

Green is for “Workout 3 Times A Week”. I have other habits in play to increase my overall physical activity as well, but this one is about carving out time to do structured exercise.

Blue is for “Tracking Food And Money.” Simply, this means writing down what I eat and what I spend. I am using the MyFitnessPal app for food and for expenses I am using a book and a pen.

Each day when I complete any of these things I make a mark in the box. This gives me a visual reference on what has been done. 

Principles

I deliberately have not set any kind of dates around the workouts and publishing dates as my weekly calendar is full enough.

I am going for a low-tech and very simple approach. 

I am focusing on behaviours that are what I consider to be core to my happiness and self-improvement, for at least the next few months.

I am trying to cultivate the mindset of giving myself permission to do as much of these things as I want, instead of considering this a limitation or constraint on my happiness.