The Butterfly Effect – Week 2 Challenge

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Today marks the beginning of Week 2 of 13 for my Butterfly Effect Challenge.  If you want to see the plan for Week 1, check out this article. 

In Essence, the Butterfly Effect is about small changes in your life that add up to big successes over time.  I have five areas of my life where I am implementing a new Butterfly strategy each week to reach my goals.  Last week, I set goals to Lose weight, Declutter, Grow the Blog, Improve my Finances, and Write a Book…all over a 13 week period. 

It's a fair few goals, and I may not be able to reach them, but I am testing a theory of whether it is better to work on one goal at a time, or to spread out over a few areas of your life.  My hypothesis is that if the changes are small and simple enough, then it can be done. 

Not every goal will have a new Butterfly Effect principle each week.  I will implement what makes sense, but I won't just make up Butterfly Effect principles for the sake of a nice, balanced blogging experiment.  If I don't think something is going to be effective, I won't try it. 

Also, there were some real failures even in week one.  I did well, tracking my money, except when we went to the county fair yesterday and I forgot to bring a pen and pad (Bad Charley!).  So for this week I will continue to track my spending as the Finance Butterfly principle.  Until I get the first principle down, I don't want to go on to the next.

This week's Butterfly Effect principles

1.  Health Butterfly Effect- Meditate for ten minutes each day.  I have an awesome App for my IPOD Touch called Motivator that helps with this process.  That's what I used to worry about with meditating, that I couldn't keep track of the time.  Now I don't have to.

2.  Declutter Butterfly Effect – Catalog my personal possessions.  It's difficult to know where you want to go when you don't know where you're at.  In retrospect, this would have made a better Week 1 Butterfly Effect principle.

3.  Blogging Butterfly Effect – Respond to every comment received with the purpose of furthering the discussion and building a community.

4.  Writing Butterfly Effect – Write 250 words per day for the first draft of the eBook.   This is something that, for me, I can typically do in ten to fifteen minutes time if my work is uninterrupted.  Small steps to writing a book.

What I Learned Over the Last Week

Keeping track of all of the five Butterfly Effect principles was difficult at times.  I typically carried around an index card as a reminder in my pocket.

The glass of water before eating was helpful, to fill me up a bit, and curiously, I found that I tended to crave the vegetables in my meal more than the starches when I did that.  I think I ate less as a result since I felt slightly fuller, sooner.  The scale says that I've lost four pounds so I think I'm off to a good start.  This principle will be continued through the 13 week experiment.

The Yoga was a nice addition.  I've tried it both in the morning and the evening before bed.  Both have their advantages but I think I prefer night time.  The exercises that I am doing seem to help me wind down for better sleep. 

I missed two days when I threw out my back chasing the cat (not a proud moment).  I think I'm better now and will try it again tonight (the yoga, not the cat-chasing).  This, too, will be a principle that will continue throughout the experiment.

Commenting on other blogs – I've faithfully done this daily, and will continue to.  This is quite enjoyable as I like to participate in communities, and it seems to have the benefit of bringing in some traffic here. 

Tracking my Spending – Did terrific with this, except for the County Fair fiasco.  This drives the point home that if you're not ready to capture it at the moment, or at least get a receipt (they don't do receipts at the Fair) you'll likely lose the momentum. 

As far as the Bonus principle goes, I am definitely keeping notes to see if this is worthy of an eBook. 

I encourage anyone to participate if they would like, and to share your experiences here.  You certainly can start at any week you choose, and my list of Butterfly Effect principles is only a recommendation.  You should pick your own based on the list of goals you have.