A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

day zero

Day Zero Project: Chipping away at goals

I’m slowly trying to chip away at some of my Day Zero goals. I’m finding it’s not too easy as I have a lot of different things. 

What I probably have to do is commit to one or two things at a time, and see if I can just get through a few things at a time, rather than just peeking in sometimes and seeing what I may have already accomplished. 

It’s time to tackle two significant items. 

Under the header Internet Life, I have two items – organizing my personal and professional email. (Professional as in a personal one, but more based on professional/official things. 

That sounds easy enough, right?

Not so fast, grasshopper. 

My personal email, which I use for many different things is overflowing. I don’t tend to archive/delete as much as I should and I let things build and build. 

Please remember, I’ve had my g-mail account for a long time – back when you needed an invite to get in. Gmail launched on April 1, 2004. My professional/official account was created on August 17, 2004. My “everyday” account was created on September 23, 2004. 

So more than 15 years for each. 

Keep in mind, my email accounts are often a mess. But these have gotten so out of hand, organizing each one has a spot on my list. 

My “everyday” account  has 13,993 items in my inbox (5,428 that are “not read”) and most, if not all, of that can be sent to the rubbish bin. Some, I will have to store in different places, but that is easily accomplished with Gmail. 

My professional/official account, which has more junk going to it than most other things, has 29,365 items in it (22,378 not read), most of which I would guarantee is things from mailing lists. 

As you can see, this isn’t going to be an easy project. 

My goal is to tackle is from oldest to newest. It seems easier to do it this way as I can delete and move forward without having to worry about newer ones pushing things backward. 

Items in my professional/official email date back to 2005. In my everyday, it’s 2010. 

Crazy, right?

I have some other crazy things on my DayZero list I need to work on like this – but I need to do it in pieces. The mailboxes are first. I plan, at night, to try and go through several pages of email. Delete, archive etc. And I’ll keep doing it until the inbox is basically empty. Hopefully, once I get there, I can keep it up. 

I can hope, anyway.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” A ‘lil HooHaa on Facebook! You can also follow me on Twitter @softball29!

Day Zero Project: Round 3

It’s time to give this a go again.

For those who have known me for a bit through this blogging world, you may recall my attempts at doing the Day Zero Project. I’ve attempted it twice before, but not since ending the last one in 2017.

If you don’t know what the Day Zero Project is — simply put, it’s accomplishing 101 goals in 1,001 days.

My first attempt went from October 10, 2010-July 8, 2013. Being new with things, I put some crazy things on there as well as easier ones. When all said and done, I finished 38 items on the list, and from looking back — I had 16 I had been working on. A large portion of that timespan had me unemployed, too, so it wasn’t easy to do too many things that cost money.

Great? No. But not a bad first go at it. And I learned a few things.

Round two ran from August 1, 2014-April 28, 2017. I was employed now and I, again, put this list together. Some of the things I didn’t accomplish from the first one were back on this list. This time, I was worse. I only accomplished 22 goals and 22 I was working on.

Fast forward to present day. I’m trying to organize life better. I want to become a better person overall, and that includes personally and professionally. I’d like to accomplish certain things as they help me work toward bigger goals.

So, Day Zero — I’m looking at you again.

I started this current journey on January 1, 2019, and it will run through September 28, 2021.

This time around, I want to make finishing this list achievable. While not all of the goals are easy (visiting Iceland, for example, is a longshot), I believe most are able to be achieved if I plan and plot accordingly.

I also realize that life gives you changes and sometimes you’ll have to plan accordingly. That might mean midway through you have to adjust some things and change or tweak things a little bit. Maybe you have to change some goals or add/subtract things.

And I’m fine with that.

The beauty of challenges like this is that it should be your way. Do it how you see fit. If you need to tweak and such, do it. As I look over my goals, I know I’m going to have to tweak things a bit as I have a few goals that are somewhat the same or pretty close. So I’ll want to make sure I get to where I need to be.

But my goal this time around is to finish.

As I’ve done last time, I’ll be working on things over the time of the challenge and I’ll be attempting to do a better job in pushing myself. A lot of times in the past, I would just forget about things. This time around, I’m going to try and set reminders and such to give me notices so I can remember to work on certain things.

I also took the plunge and became a premium member with the Day Zero Project website. I liked the advantages when it came to that and my hope is that it will keep me a little more in tune to things. With this, I’m able to break off goals into different categories, so I can kind of keep things together.

My current categories are:

  • Baseball
  • Blogging
  • Board games
  • Creativity
  • Entertainment
  • Finance
  • Food
  • Geocaching
  • Health
  • Hobbies
  • Internet life
  • Life
  • Photography/design
  • Professional
  • Travel

Some of these items likely could be grouped with others, but I wanted to break it down for my own way of thinking.

I will also not be showing these to everybody as I work on them. I’m going to blog finished goals (note: blogging about the challenge is one of the goals), though probably not as in-depth as the last time. Instead, I might group things together in one post every 4-5 finished items to make it easier and more simple.

This time around, I’m pretty excited for the challenge. I have a lot of work ahead of me but I think I can handle it and I think it’s something I will be able to accomplish. I also look forward to sharing this challenge on the blog and watching as I cross off items.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” A ‘lil HooHaa on Facebook! You can also follow me on Twitter @softball29!

Day Zero Project: Checking in

I truly love the idea of the Day Zero Project.

You come up with 101 goals and look to complete them in 1,001 days. That comes out to about three months shy of three years, so it’s plenty of time for one to accomplish 101 goals.

Of course, it also depends on what your goals are.

dayzerologo2014_280w

I set out on the latest attempt at this on August 1, 2014 and this challenge runs through April 28, 2017.

To say I won’t complete it would be an understatement.

Here’s the biggest issue I’ve had with the project because, honestly, I’ve probably completed several of these and I just don’t have the dates and details of them all — there’s no true way to keep up with things unless you keep the list with you, set out to do this one or that and then go to the next, or can memorize everything.

It’s all web-based. I don’t see any apps for it (outside of some independent countdown ones), which sometimes makes it hard.

The other aspect of this is all on me — I had several of these that are multi-faceted. That makes it harder because you need to keep track of things. For example, I have one I am not sure I’ll “officially” complete, but know I have — eat 10 things I’ve never tried before. The issue here is I didn’t keep a list of what these items are and where/when I did it. I don’t find that to be good because I’d want to know each part of this challenge was met legitimately.

I have many items like that and that was my fault.

I also put some things on there that I knew would be hard and I likely won’t finish them by April. Several are travel-related, but others are just some things that didn’t work out for me.

Looking over my list, I know there are things I can definitely finish before the deadline. I’m going to set out and cross some of these off and try and make good headway on the list. I know I won’t finish it, but maybe I can get into that 50-70 percent range, which would be a win for me.

There also appears to be a few I have completed that I haven’t blogged about yet, so I should probably do that soon, too. You can see what I have finished/blogged about already by clicking here. https://hoohaa.com/?page_id=7634

The list there is updated with all that I’ve knowingly completed and ones I’ve blogged about are linked up.

So, I’ll see what I can do to get as many of these checked off as possible and also see if there’s anything out there that can help me keeping track of things a little better. In the end, I truly think it’s successful if one has pushed themselves hard enough to get some of it done. Sure, we’d all like to finish 101 of them, but sometimes it’s not realistic.

Going big with this challenge was a plan of mine to see how far I could go. Alas, real life and other interests got in the way of some of the big ones, so I think I have a better grasp on how this challenge can be fully successful.

I will try this again — I assure you of that. But the goals will all be realistic and doable — as well as not multi-faceted. For now, though, it’s time to see how far I can get on this one!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” A ‘lil HooHaa on Facebook! You can also follow me on Twitter @softball29!

Looking at the Day Zero Project

My Day Zero Project is scheduled to end April 28, 2017.

That’s less than a year from now.

As I looked over my list late Tuesday night (as I struggled to find something to blog about), I realized it had been a while since I posted an update.

Looking at the list, I realized a few things:

  • I’m never going to be able to finish this list;
  • There are so many blogging topics/items here that I need to tap into;
  • There are a lot of things I could have easily finished by now, had I been focusing.

I think my biggest problem is I tend to forget about the project. I know in the back of my head, but I don’t sit there and say “let’s cross this goal off the list.”

dayzerologo2014_280w

For example, one of the goals is to go a photo alphabet – basically, take a photo of something that starts with each letter of the alphabet. I know I’ve likely done that since I started this rendition of the project, but I kind of want to do it in an order. Maybe I’m wrong in my thinking there. Maybe I should go through my photos since I started and put them in order.

Or maybe I should just set out one weekend to complete that goal.

Some of the goals likely won’t happen, well, because there just isn’t the time or the ability to finish them. Some are travel, some are things based on geocaching, and some are for interests I no longer have. I expected there would be a few I wouldn’t complete, but I think doing a good bulk is still a pass.

First, for those who don’t know, the Day Zero Project is a goal-setting setup where you give yourself 1,001 days to complete 101 tasks of your choosing. The tasks can be anything.

With mine, I choose to leave them private until I complete the actual task.

At this moment, I have 22 completed – but I have many in progress. I am hoping in the next month or two I can put a dent in a few of these others ones and see where I can go. My goal at this point is to try and get to 50 percent completion by the end of it (I finished 38 the first time I did this), so we’ll see where it goes. I just have to focus and go with it some and see where I land!

When I finish items and blog about them, the list is kept on a different page on the blog. You can see the page by clicking here.

Anybody else do this or something like it? How did you do or how are you doing?

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Listing: 101 happy things

As part of the current Day Zero project I am attempting to do, there are several blogging goals. In some of those goals, it includes a list of 101 items for different subjects.

These, honestly, should have been ones I tackled long ago. After all, I’m always looking for blogging topics, right?

This is one of the lists I wanted to share. It’s 101 things that make me happy. Some of these things could go hand-in-hand with others on the list, but this wasn’t as easy as it seems. The beauty, though, is each of these topics will net me two blog posts as I have to blog about each completed task, too!

Without further ado, here’s my list:

  1. Baseball
  2. Family (generally speaking)
  3. Friends
  4. My nephew/godson
  5. My niece
  6. Board games
  7. Guinness
  8. Good beer
  9. Brewing beer
  10. Traveling
  11. Writing
  12. Blogging
  13. My camera
  14. Softball
  15. Pro wrestling (sometimes)
  16. The Rocky movies
  17. A paycheck
  18. Having insurance
  19. A sunny and cool fall day
  20. A good hamburger
  21. Hot dogs
  22. Cheese steaks at Geno’s
  23. The ocean
  24. Walking on a quiet beach
  25. Clam chowder
  26. Geocaching
  27. Hosting geocaching events
  28. Macarons
  29. Meeting new people
  30. A good book (though usually on my Kindle)
  31. Volkswagens
  32. A cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter day
  33. Christmas
  34. The summer
  35. Spring time
  36. Dreaming
  37. Peanuts
  38. Pizza
  39. Lobster
  40. Maine
  41. Cooperstown
  42. Breakfast
  43. Scrapple
  44. Eggs
  45. Crab cakes
  46. Fish and chips
  47. Ireland
  48. Geocaching mega events
  49. Montreal (hope to be back in 2016!)
  50. A good nap
  51. Sunsets
  52. Covered bridges
  53. Waterfalls
  54. Action photography
  55. The smell of freshly cut grass
  56. The sound of opening a beer
  57. A bike ride
  58. Driving on a sunny day
  59. Music
  60. Podcasts
  61. Sports
  62. Nature photography
  63. Pathtags
  64. A newspaper in the morning
  65. Steak
  66. Ham
  67. Supporting charities as much as I can
  68. Manual transmission (though I no longer have it)
  69. First to finds
  70. Finishing projects
  71. My yearly photo book
  72. Shortstop Café subs
  73. Old minor league ballparks
  74. Creative food offerings at baseball parks
  75. Bacon
  76. Baseball cards
  77. Tootsie Rolls
  78. Peanut butter
  79. Back to the Future movies
  80. Old family photos
  81. Not having to warm my car up in the morning
  82. Strangers smiling as you walk by
  83. 80s music
  84. Diners
  85. Bylines
  86. The Food Network
  87. The Phillies (usually)
  88. Rollercoasters
  89. Cheese
  90. Documentaries
  91. A good comedy show
  92. Musicals
  93. Geocoins
  94. Water
  95. Moleskine notebooks
  96. A good pen
  97. A good pencil
  98. Baseball scorebook
  99. Baseball-reference.com
  100. Ice cream
  101. Fridays

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!