Operation Achieve Anything: Day One-Hundred-Two, Dateline 4-12-2018

It is OK to fail, but it is not OK to give up.
— Kate, Age 8

Good afternoon Crickets and welcome to day number one-hundred-two of Operation Achieve Anything. I’m off to a bit of a late start but that’s only because I woke at midnight last night in order to bust out the five hours I was allowed to work on my current side job. I’ve found that, since the company delves out work on a first come first serve basis, it’s easier to max out my allowed hours by starting at midnight. When the work does run dry, doing it this way, I can’t beat myself up for lollygagging through my daily blog obligations or sleeping in too late to fit in all of the work that I can.

Not only that but getting the work done right away allows me to avoid having to hind my broccoli in my mil which transitions perfectly into yesterday’s assignment, where not hiding broccoli in milk was the message of the lesson of the day. For those not playing along at home, the latest theme of the Achieve Anything… book’s assignments is to take a kid’s quote of the day and look at it through the eyes of a grown up.

Though the child from the book see hiding their broccoli in their milk as a bad thing since it made it easy for her to get caught, I now look at it as a positive way to help me look past less pressing issues in order to be able to better focus on the task at hand. In yesterday’s post, I already started to share a little about what this means to me when I used the example of my clogged sink that I really need to snake.

Since the sink does actually drain slowly, the issues is not a top priority but at the same time it sticks in my head and ruins my focus. In order to get my focus back, I opted for a quick fix and dumped some Draino down the sink even though it never helps this particular plumbing problem. At the same time, these quick-fix efforts can really ease my mind and allow me to focus on what’s important while thinking passive progress is taking place even if that doesn’t turn out to be the case.

Issues like these are what makes me see instances where hiding broccoli in milk can be a benefit. This allows me to be able to hide an issue in plain sight so that I don’t end up forgetting it but at the same time it allows me to put something off until it's become the legitimate next item on my to-do list. Don’t get me wrong, I only see hiding broccoli in milk as a positive thing when it comes to sticking to tasks based on priority and not when it gets to the point where the technique becomes a tool for procrastination.

As for today’s assignment, the lesson is pretty much a blatant repeat from just a few weeks ago where the book was focused on the way that you deal with failure is important when it comes to how you will achieve success, with the quote of the day giving permission to fail as long as you never give up. Hell, there were multiple assignments within those eight days of tasks that all said the same thing just a little different.

The actual assignment for this lesson is also a repeat of the one from the other day where the book wants me to find a corner and quietly contemplate the quote while tip-toeing around the idea of getting me to give meditation a shot. Or should I say that the book was hiding some broccoli in some milk by avoiding the term meditation after hinting that the topic would be coming up soon during the lesson that introduced the sit quietly and focus concept?

As always, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow’s update to see how I end up dealing with this meditation repeat. Until then, it’s now time for me to wrap this thing up as usual by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.