A Three Week Project

As some of you know, I've been "de-cluttering" (more like excavating) the basement of the house I live in (a.k.a.: "the Rectory"), on and off since last summer. This ongoing basement project has now been subsumed under my 2011 intention to "simplify". The purging, donating and recycling continue. Progress, though slow, is being made.

I am both amazed and almost ashamed at the sheer number of things I have discovered during this process, many of which I had even forgotten were in my possession. Going to the basement has become my own personal archeological dig, but instead of chipping through rocks and brushing away soil, I'm clearing shelves and pawing through storage boxes.

One artifact I discovered yesterday on such an adventure to the bottom of a storage box full of books was entitled, Two Weeks to a Breakthrough: How to Zoom toward your Goal in 14 Days or Less. It's the sort of book one usually finds in the business section of airport bookstores. As I leafed through it, I discovered plenty of underlines, highlights and written notes in the margins. The copyright date on the book is 2007. I'm guessing I read it on a trip that involved at least several hours of flying time.

The book is divided into two sections. The first section outlines the author's philosophy of creating a breakthrough. The second section provides a 14 Day Game Plan outlining, step by step, the actions the reader is to take so "zooming" will occur.

Alas, though, I find no record of experiencing "a breakthrough". In fact, I can see no evidence in the book's margins that I even took the time to identify a zoom-worthy goal. My guess is, I mistakenly substituted reading some advice for actually taking any sort of action. Yesterday I decided, quite on the spur of the moment, to attempt the schedule the author outlines in the text. And, since I have committed to another 21 consecutive days of blogging, I thought I'd post any progress I made toward my goal here.

Granted, this is a self-indulgent use of my time and this space. I promise this little experiment won't be the only subject of my blog posts, but I've been thinking a good bit lately about my fascination with "self-help" and "self-development" literature through the years. I've probably read hundreds of texts like Two Weeks to a Breakthrough. I can also count on one hand the number of times I've actually did any of the "exercises" such books helpfully provide at the end of each chapter. Lots of potential actions left undone and the unremarkable results I've "achieved" speak for themselves.

So, here's my plan. I'm going to spend the next few days re-reading Part One (or in ecclesial lingo, "listening to the sermon") and defining my goal. I'll begin the author's 14 Day Plan next Sunday, February 6, when I begin to try to "live the sermon" in the real world! We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, if you'd like to check out the blog associated with the book I rediscovered in my basement yesterday, you can find it at:

http://managementcraft.typepad.com/2weeks2abreakthrough/

Zoom, zoom, zoom!