Skip to main content

Pretty Good Hat

January: a month of tiny challenges

Inspired by Jamiee Newberry, I participated in a month of tiny challenges. The goal I set myself for January was to find and record a “today I learned” item each day for the month. Each of those daily notes is attached as a webmention to this post; another handy use for that comment-like webmentions tool is that it can approximate something akin to tags just by linking. So that’s cool.

I have one final TIL to complete for the month. I’ve enjoyed it and the small and encouraging community that formed around the tiny challenge idea, and while I can’t say that every day was something particularly insightful, I do appreciate looking back on the month to see the way a small amount of effort each day adds up to something real.

So with that in mind I’m going to try another one for February. I’ve been listening with a lot of interest to the tiny challenges podcast; Jaimee and Daniel Steinberg have talked about “three words” that will help act as compass points for them during the year; ways to give themes to their actions and measures against which to set their success. I want to take some time in February to define three words of my own. The tiny part of the challenge will be to make a note to myself each day about my thinking or decisions related to my three words: this could be a single sentence or it could be more, but I’ll complete it each evening. I may or may not make this writing/thinking public, because much of it is really for my own brain, not for feedback of vetting. I’ll share some as I go, to be sure, but want to remove the obligation on myself to do something for an audience each day, as this was one of the things I wrestled with a bit this month.

By the end of the month I will have a fleshed out set of thoughts for each of three words that will help me shape my approach to the rest of 2016. So, bring it on, February!

#tinychallenges