2.5 for 40 concluded

OK, they say the best way to do (or not do) something is to monitor it. See Kelly L. Stone's post on Seekerville. I like to track positive amounts of time I spend doing things (not so interested in tracking the negatives). In fact, I even award myself pittances of spending money for doing tasks! (By pittances I mean at my best, $3/day. And if I go to bed too too late, I could have a negative total!)

So I was already used to tracking my "positives" in 15-minute chunks. My goal was to spend 100 hours in 40 days on going to church, reading the Bible and praying, and writing, which I think God likes me to do. I initially conceived of this as a tithe of sorts, giving 10% of my time to things God likes. How did it go?

Successes:

*I found myself MUCH more eager to get up and even go out of my way once to attend Bible Study in the morning, because that gave me a pretty painless hour a week. (And I enjoyed it too!)

*I was somewhat more open to other church activities. I doubt I would have attended the 'National Day of Prayer' event at my church if it hadn't been for my commitment. And a sweet woman there blessed me and I hope I blessed her back!

*Daily prayer/Bible time. An anemic amount (15 minutes) but better than I had been doing. A couple times I got so caught up in it I doubled that time.

*Editing. The bulk of my time was spent co-editing my co-authored (co-?) novel "The Healer and the Pirate." I love working with Maggie because she sees most of my blind spots, and it's not lonely. And I love editing because I like words. And frankly, it's a pretty exciting story and fun to read! Anyway, we both worked really hard and accomplished a lot!

*Wasn't terribly hard. Sometimes challenging but through God (and with the help of weekends) not impossible.

*Just plain got a lot more done than I used to.

Less-successful points:

*Watching the clock during church (but to my credit I wanted the sermon to go LONGER!)

*Watching the clock during my personal study time. No excuse, really.

*Chosen did not go nearly as well as I'd dreamed. I'll probably blog more about that at a later date.

*Quite a few days I just couldn't make myself work at all, or much.

*Cleaning and exercising fell almost completely by the wayside until the home stretch.

*This really was not a tithe, or even much of an offering, on any level. What kind of offering goes, "Yeah, I will give you what I promised. Just let me check my Facebook games first"? Yet people DO need a certain amount of downtime, IMO. It is just hard to reconcile that to something you're claiming is a tithe, IMO.



Overall the whole thing did wonders for starting me on good habits which, God willing, I will continue (though Tuesday did not look good...distracted by computer issues).

I tried continuing with the 2.5/40 for another round but am not sure I'll keep it up. God wants heart service, not rules. I think now that I have the idea, it might be best to just go with my gut instead of tracking. (That's why I don't budget my money much, by the way. I do OK and if I budget I end up fixating.)

But as a person I need some kind of gauge of my progress! What to do? How do you stay on track?