October 2012

Last week I looked at the dashboard for this website and noticed 483 published posts and an astonishingly high number of drafted posts, posts that are in various stages of completion, but have never yet seen the light of day.

148 drafts.

That’s almost 31% of the actual published posts. Just sitting there. Unfinished.

That means that almost a quarter of all the posts started…were never completed.

Yep, I got a calculator to quickly figure that out. It stuck in my head, “Almost a 25% failure rate!” Actually, it’s 23.45%, but what are a few percentage points among friends. I suppose I should round down, not up – when figuring out my failure rate. Does it say something about me that I rounded up? Maybe.

I began to wonder if my WordPress draft folder was an appropriate metaphor for my life.

There have been times when I suspect I’d have celebrated a mere 25% failure rate. Is a 75% still a passing grade in school?

I’m competitive. Always have been. I was almost always ashamed – yes, ashamed – if I didn’t hit in the higher 90% range. I didn’t say I always scored that high! I said when I didn’t, I was always ashamed. Always! My mother was never satisfied with anything less than an A.

But it dawned on me that a draft is a bit like an INCOMPLETE in school. It’s not even a grade really. It’s worse. It’s “you never even did the work.” Well, okay…maybe better said, it’s “you never finished the work.”

What’s unfinished in your life?

What are the things that languish in your drafts’ folder?

Are there things in there that belong in the trash? They just need to be deleted because they have no use or potential?

Are there things in there that deserve to be finished? They need time and attention to be completed or more fully developed because they do have value?

Look closely. GET OFF THE SCHNEID.

Me? Man, I’m covered up. I’ve got 148 posts to go through!

How do you know you’re sucking at something?

Because there’s no progress. You’re not moving forward and you know it. You may not know why, but that’s not important. Not right now.

Right now, you just need to embrace the truth – the honest reality – that you’re not going anywhere with what you’re doing.

This ain’t workin’

Have you said that to yourself? Then what you’re doing sucks. It’s not working and you know it.

Deep down inside. You really know something needs to change.

You just struggle to figure out what it is.

Well, today, the sucking stops.

Today, you embrace the fact that what you’re doing – what you’ve been doing – isn’t working.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been failing for a long time, or just a few days. Today it stops.

Why today?

Why not?