I was inspired by this TED video by Matt Cutts to try to do something for 30 days.  It’s an old message of goal setting and self-challenges, but it’s a good message.  I was in a bit of a intellectual rut so I wanted to do something to kick start my motivation.  And so towards the beginning of this month I weighed my options and came up with the following:

A) Couldn’t be some physical challenge since it’s my birthday month which also sits nicely alongside other birthdays and celebrations.  My enthusiastic participation in these events involving eating and drinking with gusto basically ruled this option out.

B) I thought of doing some money saving orientated challenge but given that (A) is directly correlated to (B) ruled out this option as well.

And so I decided to do something related to my PhD and so came up with the following reading challenge: To read something new (a book chapter, an article) everyday for 30 days.  May I might learn something.  Or maybe I may learn that I’ve already learnt that already.  Or maybe I’ll find out just how little I know.

So far, it’s been ok.  I’ve missed 2 days out of the 23 and have a week left to go.   I has been a challenge, at least for me, but it has forced me to really think about what I’ve read and what I’m going to read and the connections that are forged between the concepts presented.  You can follow my journey via the tab “My 30 day challenge…” to see what I’ve been reading.

Sometimes I feel my mind is a sieve, and pretty much doesn’t really keep what I put in it. This reading challenge has allowed me to retain what I want because of the sheer amount of information that I’m exposed to, my brain will only process what’s necessary.  My notes are a testament to that process.  It’s been fascinating and enjoyable (so far).

One week left!