day 30: the logbook

Nothing to do with the 30 day challenge. Just some puppets I made when I was 12.

30 Day Challenge Complete!

My self-appointed challenge to blog everyday for 30 days is done. It flew by! It ended up not being too tough to sit and spend a few minutes posting some photos and links and a bit of rambling text. I maybe had to reach a bit for content, but the habit wasn't hard to set. So what did I learn from this?

1. I don't really have much to say. :) I think it didn't help that nearly everything I was spending my time doing I couldn't post. Plus, I leave all my deep thinking to the TED speakers.

2. Although I did not end up doing any personal projects over the last 30 days, having to think about what to post every day was a helpful break from deadline deadline deadline. Gathering inspiration or putting together a tutorial helped me keep invigorated for the projects I was working on.

3. I learned how to make a screen recording. That was cool.

4. Keeping a logbook is a good idea. One of the suggestions in the Steal Like an Artist book is to keep a logbook and I decided to do this as an offline companion to the daily blog post. Before trying the logbook, I just had a simple calendar to keep track of deadline. But after keeping the logbook for 30 days, I definitely think I've done better with my time management and general awareness of what I do every day.

This was the first logbook. I picked up a day planner from Target and wrote bullet points about the day. The bottom section I used to keep track of exercise and what I ate. I used the top of the page to write down the one best thing about each day.

It became clear pretty quickly that I was writing the same sorts of things every day, and since I love a good checkbox, I decided to make a new logbook that was totally personalized. (Hooray for Kinkos!)

This is what I came up with. I've got sections to keep track of diet, sleep, exercise, how much time spent on project, a place to prioritize my daily To Do list. I kept the idea of writing the Best Thing for each day, plus added a spot to write down what I could have done to improve. The column that has been the biggest eye opener is writing down every penny I spend each day. D'oh.

I wasn't perfect, and didn't fill in every slot every day, but the overall concept has been really informative. It will be interesting to see if there are any trends to analyze once I've done this for a lengthy amount of time. 

5. Ultimately I'd say the 30 day blog post was a success. Nothing massive happened or changed because of it, but it's been good to step outside my little box and share some of what I know and what I enjoy. It probably won't be every day, but I'm planning to keep posting fairly regularly.

Thanks all who have been following me for the past 30 days!