100 Days of Productivity Update and Blog Launch!!

Way back in November I mentioned the idea of doing a 100 Days of Productivity experiment. Although it took longer than I'd hoped to settle on my plan for the project, I did eventually get started – I'm now 41 days in! Since I've had a couple people ask, here's what it has ended up looking like so far:

1. A Two Pronged Goal
   
   As denoted in a recent post, the first half of the goal was to get a part-time telecommute writing job. The second half was to launch a sustainably structured nutrition/healthy lifestyle blog to replace the long-lapsed Nutritional Mischief site. Together, I determined, these should:
   (a) Establish a flexible, scalable, and portable income stream to improve financial opportunities now and allow for a smooth transition later;
   (b) Resolve the problem of not having content that is legally mine to share with potential employers;
   (c) Document ongoing engagement/competency in the writing and nutrition sectors, demonstrating that my skills/credentials remain current, and keeping the line on future employment opportunities in both areas open; and
   (d) In the case of the nutrition blog, establish a constructive outlet for my nutrition geekery, which is good for my soul.
   
   
2. Simple Structure
   
   Given that there were at lot of variables and some erratic scheduling over the chosen 100 Days, I decided to make things as simple as possible. Anything that got me functionally closer to achieving my stated goals counted, regardless of the time commitment or complexity. Thus, on days when time/energy were at a premium, my 'one thing' was sometimes stupidly simple: searching for/downloading a checklist, reviewing and deleting or properly filling a previously-bookmarked resource I'd thought might help, or searching the job sites and bookmarking anything new that seemed fit to apply for. When I had more time/energy, I tackled bigger things: completing job applications, slogging my way through website formatting challenges, or writing (another) legally acceptable disclaimer. Admittedly, some days it didn't feel like I'd achieved much, but it was amazing at the end of every week to see just how much progress I'd actually made!
   
   (Confession in case anyone else tries this: I also gave myself some grace. If there was a day where I simply couldn't get anything done, I just made it up later and still gave myself credit rather than consider the whole thing blown. So far it's worked out great and kept things positive and effective!)
   
   
3. Learning From Previous Mistakes (aka Start At The Beginning, But Scale Back)
   
   I did a lot of reflecting through this process and realized that one of the reasons Nutritional Mischief failed was that I tried to do too much (often with too fuzzy an idea of the proper scope of things) and got overwhelmed. I also didn't front-load myself with the right systems, so the more content I made the more I felt like I was digging myself into a hole, which only made the anxiety worse and just created a big, nasty feedback loop. I learned from my mistakes: this time, I chose to establish my nutrition blog as only a blog, without any other business components. I also (thanks to this project) gave myself ample time at the get-go to deal with boring, stressful legal crap like proper disclaimers, figuring out the actual Official Rules for things like using images and linking to other people's material, and constructing behind-the-scenes spreadsheets to manage my content and prevent those scattered and digging-a-hole feelings.
   
4. Progress!
   After posting about how I'd gotten a writing job, I heard back from two more places I'd applied. I'm still working through the on-boarding process with the first job, and examining the next steps in the application process for the other two, but I'm hopeful that by the start of February (once they've all gotten back to me again, etc.) I'll have that end of things sorted out and functionally up and running!
   
   The other half of the project, I am delighted to announce, is also finally coming to fruition! 
   
   
   My new site Palimpsest Living is now live!! 
   
   
    Current plan is to post once a week. It's not a lot but, given the new priorities, quality and consistency are FAR more important than quantity. It's also an extremely sustainable posting plan, which is a big deal right now, too.
   
   
5. Going Forward
   
   Crazy as it seems, I'm not quite halfway through this experiment so there's plenty still to come! I expect a bunch of my remaining days will be eaten up by sorting out the new job stuff, but I'm also planning to dedicate time to getting a bunch of drafts written for PL, to prime the pump for the weekly posting schedule. Establishing new habits, tracking systems, etc. to manage the new workload and the chances it makes to how other things run will also play in there somewhere. In the meantime, I'm delighted to have more than I'd expected to show for my experiment at this point and so excited to have PL finally launched!!
   
   As a final note, I am taking 'requests' and suggestions for PL! If there's anything you'd like to see show up on there topic-wise, weird questions or comments you've heard from friends/coworkers, or common misconceptions that drive you nuts, please feel free to send them to me! I'll add them to my 'maybe write about this' list! (I've already got some doozies from work to get me started!!)