30 Day Challenge - Failure at the first hurdle!

The 30 day challenge that I set for myself was due to start Friday June 1st. I failed it the very next day! Before starting the challenge I had spent some time figuring out exactly how I was going to achieve it; this was mainly a matter of time management.

Weekends are a danger area because things just happen to crop up. Very often I have good intentions to do something but life gets in the way and those good intentions go flying out of the window. So I figured that in order to meet my challenge on the weekends when I don't have a set routine to guide me, the only way I would be able to do it would be if I were to get everything done first thing.

However I can't do that on Saturdays as I have another commitment - I do my weekly grocery shop on Saturday mornings. I like to do this early to avoid the Saturday crowds. So my compromise for Saturday was to do everything except the reading then go shopping at 9am and read afterwards.

Unfortunately, it all went a bit wonky! In order to do my grocery shop I need my shopping list which is built from a food plan that I build earlier in the week. I was running late, trying to rush it at the last minute and I figured I could just quickly finish it off in the morning. Big Mistake. I won't bore you with the details but I ended up wasting an hour and putting myself way behind. I didn't want to be too late hitting the shops so I figured I'd just get that over with and I'd still have the rest of the day to fit in my development work. Yeah right ;-)

By the time I got back from the shops my partner was up and about and ready to start the weekend and had an agenda for me. Things just kept cropping up, I kept pushing back the development and it simply didn't get done.

This is irritating but its also valuable because I have learned a lesson, well two in fact. They are:

1) Plan ahead, don't leave things to the last minute.
2) Always do the most important things first, don't put them off.

So, what now? My challenge is still very important to me so I am going to start afresh from today. To make it easier to manage the dates, I'm going to rename it to simply a "One Month Challenge" so my new end date will be 2nd July.