Turbocharging to meet my goal

This blog has always been a work in progress in so very many ways. But one of my greatest personal challenges is also the one that matters the least: Achieving my goal of an annual average of one post per day. Some years it’s easy, others less so, but this year I face the greatest challenge of them all.

Early last month in the midst of our lack of Internet connection, I received an email from Roger Green saying he hoped we’d be reconnected soon “so you can knock off those 175 posts in the next 112 days.” He knows how much the annual goal means to me. He later pointed out that, at that point, I only needed an average of 1.57 posts per day to meet my target.

I joked about realising that eventually, and how I’d probably set up a spreadsheet so I could track my progress to that goal, which is what I did in December of last year so I could stay on target as the year drew to a close. It turns out, I did that spreadsheet almost as soon as I’d clicked “send” on the email to Roger.

The spreadsheet is actually a very useful tool for me because it keeps me on track, yes, but especially because when there’s a day I’m just not feeling it, I can see how skipping a day affects the progress toward my goal. It turns out, it doesn’t affect it very much at all.

Since I began the spreadsheet on September 10, I’ve skipped blogging on three days, published two posts on six days, and three posts and four posts on one day each. And the result? As of this post, I need a daily average of about 1.35 posts per day—a big improvement.

Even so, because I write nearly every post not long before I publish it, and because every month I also write several posts that I decide to abandon, this is an ongoing project with an uncertain outcome. So, right now it’s especially true that this blog is a work in progress.

This coming week will be very busy, so much so that I may not have much time for blogging, and I may slip behind in my targets. But a few multiple-post days in the rest of the month and I might actually catch up. Or, maybe not.

What I’m trying to do by using the spreadsheet and tracking my progress is to catch up enough so that December isn’t the blogging frenzy that it was last year. Right now, I think my annual goal is achievable—it will take several multiple-post days to get there, but it’s doable.

Now, if only I could be as disciplined as Roger and write posts in advance I wouldn’t be having this problem at all, would I? Or, maybe I just like living on the blogging edge.