There were other candidates for consideration for the top three topics to focus on.

Music is a topic that’s been a huge crutch to me over the years. I’ve got 329 voice recordings and 70 files in Garageband on my phone, all half written projects from the last five years or so. Actually finishing them has a been a dream of mine for a long, long time now, but it missed the cut because of the financial and time investment I’d need to make that just tips it out of reach.

Another one was sports. It’s a thing I don’t often let myself enjoy, mostly because it means taking up the TV when it’s ‘us’ time, and because I end up spending my weekends doing things I wish I’d had the time to do during the week. This one didn’t make the cut because it felt both too passive and too broad, as opposed to snooker/pool. Again, that doesn’t mean not trying to spend more time on it, just that it’s less of a focus for me.

Then there’s the whole raft of things that I’m bundling into Life Skills; non-hobby activities that I need to spend more time on in order to pay for and fuel the hobbies I’m focusing on. Professional skills and qualifications, DIY, cooking, physical fitness, socialising. All still important, all worth taking time on, but they’re already baked into my day-to-day; I don’t need to be spending more time focusing on them, just maybe tweak how and why I do.

So all that said, what’s the plan again?

For each of the key three activities, I’m setting monthly goals in Beeminder. Beeminder gets you to set a goal, whether that’s daily, weekly, or monthly, and starts charging $5 per goal missed, then increases that amount for each additional failure on the goal. I can set an upper limit when that becomes a bit too much for the budget though, so we’ll see how that goes.

Initially, Beeminder allows you to set 3 goals on their free plan, which fits nicely with my 3 activities, so to start with, these will be:

  • Finish one book per month
  • Write four posts here per month covering one of the activities (500 word minimum)
  • Practice pool/snooker 5 times a month

I’m going to stick to this for the first three months, then check quarterly to see if the limits need adjusting in either direction. Maybe I’m through books quicker and can move to two a month, for example, or our budget gets tighter and I need to re-think snooker. Maybe I get with the writing bug more and want to incorporate morning pages as a habit, or want to try the old NaNoWriMo challenge. But I’m going to be honest about my failures, and post a copy of the graph from Beeminder showing where I’ve passed or failed, and how much they charge me.

And I’m going to do this for a minimum of a year. If I still benefit from it, it’ll go on. If not? At least I’ve tried, and can try, try, try again with something else.

So that’s it. Regular posts will start this weekend, and then it’s full steam ahead.