Ground Rules

So, I’ve been thinking about some ground rules I should set for myself for this project.
• I don’t think I can commit to an exact number of posts each month, so I’m going to allow myself to be flexible there.
• I thought about making it a rule to not give excuses for why I’m not already doing the things on The List, but then I decided that it may actually help me to take a look at possible reasons. I don’t want this to turn into a big psycho-therapy session, but just listing reasons (without getting into detailed excuses) might just help me put them aside forever.
• I’m a thinker. And it would be really easy for me to make this whole project purely cognitive: learning about the words I use, finding synonyms for them, thinking about how to apply them. But never applying them. So, each month, for each trait I will be exploring, I want to DO something. Sometimes, it can be an action I hope to repeat enough to form a habit. These websites say it takes 21 days of repetition to form a habit. This one claims 30. No matter which one is right, I’m feeling pretty confident that I do it in a month, with the right motivation and discipline. Of course, the success of this will be one of the things I’ll record in the blog.
• I’ve decided that I shouldn’t wait till June 1 to start this project, even though that makes the most sense in my nearly-OCD brain. So the 11th of every month will be day 1 of the new topic. If I keep it going for the whole year, I will finish the day before my 31st birthday.

Well, here I go…