11 for ’11

In years past, I have tried to do various “every day” types of challenges whether it’s a Flickr 365 challenge or NaNoWriMo or keeping a food diary or riding my bike every day for a week … inevitably I fail.  I find it really difficult to push new things into my routine.

It’s also well documented that I suck at completing things. I have an unbelievable number of “almost finished” projects — just ask Mike. If he’s in a good mood, he’ll sigh and say, “Yup.” Otherwise, you might get an earful.

Right now, I have a few things on the front burner, a few on the back burners, some thoughts in the oven (rising), and a stack of ingredients going stale on the counter. In the new year, I want to finish eleven of those stale, almost-finished projects — that’s not even one a month. I think this is reasonable and achievable, especially when so many of them are just teetering on the cusp…

Front burner stuff has to get done first of course and those will continue to crop up through the year. Right my front burner consists of: finishing the craft fairs for the season (and preparing the remaining stock for Zibbet listings), preparing and practicing our presentation for Wordcamp 2011, and redesigning a friend’s website. Oh, plus Christmas, pfft.

The trick for me will be to suppress my inner magpie and not dart off to the next shiny thing, dropping what’s already in my beak.

I’m going to spend a few hours in 2010 figuring out which 11 projects most need finishing. I will add all 11 to my 43Things list — or possibly just add the 11 for 11 goal — and I will provide updates here and elsewhere (tagged with “11for11”) as I finish things or hit snags. Any tips for how to achieve this goal would be welcome… I’m pretty sure that I will have to self-impose some net-free time (I’m looking at you, Facebook, you hellish timesuck!) for a couple of nights a week but beyond that, I’m all ears.