I’m coming off of a three day weekend of binge-working on my book, and I noticed an interesting trend. Each day, within a few steps of meeting my daily goal, I started to get tired, less motivated and less productive. Regardless of how much or little I had on my plan, I would hit a wall just before meeting the goal, and it was time to stop.
I thought I would have boundless energy to finish this project, but apparently my energy lasts only so long within a day. And that length of time is correlated to my daily goal. Hmmmm… There must be something psychological in that. Something inside that says, “Close enough, you can stop now.”
While it’s exciting to see the book progress, I’m now in the least favorite zone of completion. It was thrilling to get a first draft done, and fun to choose the best photo examples. I’m past that though… It’s now time for revisions of the manuscript and creating annotated figures from the photos and screen shots. It feels like slogging through mud, and I can only take so much at a time.
Hence, the daily wall.
I know from every other big project I’ve created, this is the part I like least. It’s always fun to outline and plan. It’s exciting to meet those first milestones. It’s the detailed work to push through to the finish, when everything should be downhill, that is the hardest for me. Always.
But I’m on track to my plan to meet the deadline, so guess there is nothing wrong with backing off when the wall looms close each day. Go for a walk, read a book, hang out with my family.
And the next time I start, picking up where I left off, I’ll be fresh. The wall will be nowhere in sight.
Apparently, it doesn’t appear until I near my goal for the day.
That’s a valuable observation. Now that you know that about yourself, you can allow for that when setting those goals. It’s so exciting that you’re working on a book!