One Month Challenge - Another Failure!

After failing my challenge after only one day I decided to use a nifty web tool called Joe's Goals to keep track of my progress. My challenge was tough but I was able to stick to it for an entire week. Then it all fell apart on Monday...

Monday is one of the toughest days because I have karate in the evening so its very difficult to find the time to squeeze everything in. My plan was to get into work at 8am and doing an hour of development before starting work and to read after karate. I go to the gym at lunch times to do weight training and I did not want to miss out on that.

Over the weekend, I had made a discovery about my running ability which made me want to start it up again to prepare for a 5k Race for Life that I have signed up for in July. Something I desperately wanted to do was to plot out a new running route using another groovy web tool - GMaps Pedometer. I didn't get a chance to do this over the weekend, and I wanted to go for a run on a new route Tuesday morning so I had to do it sometime on Monday.

Here, once again I made exactly the same mistake as I did the first time I failed. I decided to make the route first thing and this took about 20 minutes so I only had around 40 minutes to do my development. Not a big deal you might think but a challenge is a challenge and mine is to do one hour a day so I would have to catch up later. I figured I could squeeze it in after karate.

Unfortunately that plan all went to pot. About half way through the karate class I started feeling ill. I was getting dizzy, shaky and I started to ache in a weird way - not in the way your muscles ache after a workout, but like you have the flu. When I got home I was feeling really bad and it was all I could do to get myself into the shower and into bed. The next day I was feeling just as bad and I phoned in sick to work.

Now you could say that being ill is a valid excuse and perhaps that's true but really I failed the challenge at 8am when I was feeling fine. I should have done the development and left the route planning until later. That wouldn't have got done but it wouldn't have mattered as I was in no condition to go running Tuesday morning anyway.

I'm still sick so I've done no exercise since. I've tried to do development but I really don't feel up to it so the challenge is on hold until I feel better.

Lesson learned: For the second time now, do not put off the important things! Don't assume you can catch up later. All we ever have is right now, this moment. Always do what is most important in that moment.