Life Hacks -- On Only Doing One Thing Every Two Weeks [Dragosroua Writing Challenge]

I am upping the ante on the proposed "One Main Task Per Day" prompt... lately my approach is to use one main task per every two weeks.

Some people are so eager to get things done that they create to-do lists that will never be finished. This is worse than having no list at all. At least with no list you can be honest with yourself. You know you don't have a plan. The person with an impossible list is lying to themselves.

If one wants to make a big leap forward in life, they have to do the important stuff. That's where having one main task per two weeks can be powerful.

When you fixate on one difficult and productive task that will take two weeks to achieve, you get a satisfying framework for success. It's like the feeling you may have had from school when there were many assignments and schedules for your life.

Two weeks is enough time to think long and careful about the next goal. When the goal changes daily, nothing is a commitment. When the goal changes twice per month, everything is a commitment, and many more things get done. A failure on the only goal of the last two weeks feels much more serious than missing a goal from this morning.

Plus you can estimate how long it'll take to achieve longer goals. Are 5 two-week goals enough to achieve a larger goal? 10?

What would it take to earn more money, to improve at your hobby, to meet new friends, or some other thing?

For me it's the money. My last two weeks I stopped going out to eat and saved a ton of money. The next two weeks I'm getting some new clients for my freelance writing. Each goal is a noticeable improvement towards my end goal of paying off my $12,000 in debt. I think that I can do with about 14 two-week goals. That means each goal is worth about 7% of my end result, or it's like I am completing 14 challenges that each have an implied value of $800.

Of course each goal doesn't literally earn me $800, but as long as each goal is a major step forward, some of them will over-perform and some will underperform.

The two week structure is awesome. Life is simpler, yet more important stuff gets done.

Check out the original post over here.