Measuring Success – The Stack 2010
Image courtesy of James Jordan
Success never comes in one fell swoop. It requires sustained and persistent effort over a given period of time. This notion is easy to forget. It’s common to look at success and, unable to work backwards, assume that it somehow happened overnight. Perhaps this is due to lack of imagination, perhaps it’s less taxing on our grey matter to think about it like this. Who knows.
What I do know is that I consistently accomplished more in 2008 than I did in 2009. I have a hunch The Stack is to blame. Rather, the lack of stack.
I made a calendar in 2008, which I called The Stack, the sole purpose of which was to mark of days that I pursued “success”. The definition of success was flexible and included things like half-marathon training, painting, language learning, entrepreneurial activities, etc. Self improvement. I didn’t have to be “successful” in order to mark off a day, I just had to pursue success. Failure counted as well.
I hung the calendar in my room which allowed me to size up my collective efforts with a quick glance. It was great motivation, and also a useful barometer for me. By January 1st, 2009 I had marked off 83% of 2008. That’s over 300 days!
For some reason, I neglected to make a new stack calendar for 2009 and I think I suffered for it. I made my 2010 stack the other day, and thought I’d share it with anyone who’s interested. Feel free to pass it along, change it, make your own, whatever. And make sure to let me know if it was useful to you!
Download the stack!
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January 13, 2010 at 11:50 pm
I have a very similar (yet different) approach too in inspiring myself to get off the couch during the weekends! I call it Five Things.