This was written February 23, 2024 as part of the 2024 Learning to Draw People Challenge
So, I’ve tried my challenge, held it for roughly a week, then had to abandon it. Moreover, I took over a month before documenting it and getting back to it. All the same, I don’t think this was a failure, since I believe I’ve learned from this. But now what? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about that first attempt, what caused me to stop, what the main friction points were, and what could be improved. Here are my thoughts:
First of all, not writing the posts right away and lagging behind really dragged me down and caused a lot of stress. I felt like I was lagging behind and couldn’t catch up (Incidentally, this also what happened with my photography challenge). I think this is the first thing I need to address: I need to change my “definition of done” for a day’s work to not only encompass drawing, but also documenting the process through a blog post. I expect this to have two consequences:
- In order to not overwork myself, I’ll have to limit the “reviewing process”. In the past, I would write a post, and review it at a later time before publishing it. I don’t think this will be viable here. I’ll have to review as the final step of my writing session instead.
- Since writing the blog post itself is also time consuming (including not only writing, but also transferring files and sifting through a recording), I may have to shorten length of my drawing sessions.
The second issue I’ve struggled with is the daily and inflexible nature of the challenge, which partially gets in my way and adds some counter-productive stress. The last two days I drew had some motivational issues because I was traveling, and didn’t have any leeway (The consequences are especially apparent with my last day). Similarly, my Chinese classes also have some more intensive periods, such as around exams. For this reason, I thought I could approach this a little more like work. Accordingly, my new goal is to draw from Monday to Friday, instead of every single day. However, I will also allow myself to draw on the weekend in exchange for a “credit”, allowing me on a future date to take a day off. Thus, if I know I have upcoming engagements during the week, I can prepare during the weekend accordingly. Similarly, if I plan to go on a vacation, I could prepare some extra credit days accordingly. The one caveat is that I need to be careful to avoid using those credits when I’m “lazy” and feeling unmotivated. Usually, those feelings clear up when I get started, and I believe pushing through during those days is critical to building habits.
For clarity, here’s how I plan to approach those. I plan to release blog posts in sequential order. I also plan to only release them from Monday to Friday (Unless I know I will be physically unable to handle that, since I currently do all of this manually). Therefore, if during my first week I were to draw on Saturday (but not on Sunday), I would only release the associated post on Monday. Meanwhile, Monday’s drawing post would be shifted to Tuesday and so forth. Friday’s in turn would be shifted to the following week’s Monday. However, the post would still specify on which day I had drawn it, so you would be able to see if something was done during a weekend as opposed to a weekday.
With this, I plan to start the next phase this upcoming Monday, February 26, 2024. Once again, I also plan to evaluate how this went and see whether I should make any adjustments at the end of the first week.
One final note before I leave, which I wasn’t sure where to plug. One thing that’s happened during the first week (and also since then) is that I’ve been watching more (YouTube) videos about drawing. I think it helps me think more about the process, what to try out, and what to consider. Ultimately, it also feels like it helps integrate it as part of my life. While not perfect, I think it could serve as a proxy for being part of a club or enrolling in classes, where you have a lot of peers that share your interests and with whom you can strive towards a common goal, which seems to be a valuable part of building habits, and improving skills.
Thank you for following me, and wish me success with this new attempt!
This post is followed by Learning to Draw People Challenge – Day 08 (2024/02/26) – Time Skip