A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

Day Zero 3

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!