New Journey for a New Year-Part II

In last week’s post I promised to tell you my New Year’s resolution. If you haven’t read Part I, I suggest you begin there. Originally my resolution was to start a mental health blog where I would post new content every Saturday. For several years, I had considered creating mental health content for nonprofessionals. Now that I had a private practice website, the addition of a weekly mental health blog made sense. And what better time to start than the new year!

On the surface that sounded great, but posting every week wouldn't be easy. It would be an obligation, and maybe more of a commitment than I wanted. I needed to answer some questions: (1) Did I want to spend my time writing a blog? (2) Did I have enough ideas for weekly posts? (3) Would it be fun, or would a deadline lead to unwanted stress? Last week’s post listed some challenges of keeping a resolution: magical thinking, perfectionism, and difficulty level. I considered those potential pitfalls to answer my questions.

I tested my plan for magical thinking. The blog would not write itself! I freed up some time when I left my salary position for self-employment. But did I want to spend that precious time writing a blog? I haven't tried it before, so I didn't have experience to learn from. There was also worry about doing a good job with an unfamiliar task. I knew that writing could be like putting together a 1000 -word puzzle, an all-around frustrating experience.

I considered perfectionism which can be a writing trap. It can get in the way of getting things done. Most of us have heard the adages that make this point, “perfect is the enemy of good” and “perfect or “published”. The idea is to know when something is good enough. Writing requires reviewing, rewriting, and passing one's eye of self-criticism. In my case, I imagined a scenario of frustration, perfectionism, procrastination, and mounting anxiety as the Saturday deadline loomed. If I was to avoid that emotional tap dance, I needed to ditch the deadline. If I was honest with myself, the pressure of posting every week would get me bogged down by my blog.

How about the difficulty of my proposal. Posts start with ideas; I didn't anticipate a problem with this since I would be writing on a broad subject. Given enough time I felt confident I could put ideas to paper. One of the biggest difficulties for me would be the strict timeline of publication. Another problem could be the yearlong commitment. If I didn't like writing a blog, then I had to be okay to say that. I had to be okay with making a course correction and putting my energy elsewhere.

I didn't abandon my resolution. However, by probing the initial resolution I found a critical weak spot. The SMART framework highlighted the threat of a strict timeline, and it helped me clarify exactly what I would do to increase the chance of success and decrease the likelihood of self-reproach. The SMART framework below shows how I applied this technique to my New Year's resolution.

Specific: I will add a general mental health blog to my jtpsych.com website.

Measurable: I will assess the interval between posts at the end of each month. I will track the readership analytics that Squarespace provides. I'll use a numeric rating scale to rate the level of satisfaction the blog generates for me.

Achievable: I will start each post at the beginning of the week and write on the days I do not have appointments scheduled. I will add ideas for the blog to the notes section on my iPhone.

Relevant: A mental health blog is important to me because one of my purposes in life is to help others with their emotional well-being.

Time-bound: I will post the first entry to the blog by the end of January and post regularly for the next six months.

My process was to think through potential problems. Once I considered personal goals, commitments, and personality style I saw that modifying the timeline would make success more likely. The SMART framework provided an outline that allowed me to pinpoint the time-bound aspect of my goal as the most problematic area. Originally, I imagined a post every Saturday for 12 months, but that was too ambitious. I'll find out if writing in this format is for me. I'm certain to learn along the way. I hope you will too. After all, it's a journey.