Today marks the final day of my 1001 Day Challenge and I'm pleased to report all tasks were completed within the allocated time (actually with 10 days to spare!). I'll detail some of the lessons from this below - it's been a particularly busy past few weeks and the sense of accomplishment has brought with it something of a 'what now?' mindset.

The things that worked:

Having a time constraint was essential. For example, one of the most fun tasks I did was to go snorkeling at Goat Island. It took a year from when I bought a snorkel set to when I used it - and even then it was in the last 10 days of the project. The time constraint worked to override my lack of motivation.

Clearly defined outcomes. This is essential - I see a lot of lists out there with vague goals (the most common being 'Lose weight') but no way to determine when the goal is achieved. If you want to learn a language for example, do not say 'Learn to speak Italian' - make your task 'Take a night class in speaking Italian'.

Write down your goals. Everyone working the productivity and motivational fields will tell you that writing down you goals makes them real. Making them public is a good way to add pressure. Adding a time constraint gives you a sense of immediacy.

Keeping things realistic and achievable. Almost all of my tasks (film lists excluded) could, individually, have been completed on any one day. This certainly helped in the last month when I needed to finish the last 25 tasks!


What didn't work:

Motivation breakdown. The biggest problem with this challenge is that there is a large period of time in the middle where it is difficult to find the motivation. Realistically, I could have achieved most of these tasks in half the time so in some respects the 1001 day timeline made it possible to put things off longer than necessary. Perhaps a simple way of dealing with this is to make it part of your challenge to always maintain a percent complete proportionate to the number of tasks you have done. For example when you are 200 days into the project you should have completed 20% of your tasks (500 days - 50% etc).

Changing aspirations. As is to be expected, goals and ambitions change over the 1001 day period. I did change or adjust around a dozen of my challenges at various stages - but would always replace with something equally challenging. You need to use your own judgement on this, but there is no point in having a task on your list that you really don't want to do anymore.


Summary

The project is never intended to be a set plan for the next two years and nine months of your life. Many of the things I am most proud of achieving in the last 1001 days are not items on my list - such as spending four months traveling South America. In that sense the list is really only a snapshot in time of your aspirations - so much can change in a couple of years.

What I learned is that time based goal setting works. You still need to find the discipline within yourself, but you always know what is required and how long you have to complete your goals.

I think it would have been nice to kept statistics on when I completed the tasks so I could look back and quantitatively assess progress. Some participants already do this. I think if it were graphed you would see half the challenges done in the first year, then the remaining half done in the last 100 days. This is not necessarily a failing of the project, but it needs to be taken into account when planning to take on the challenge.


You can start your own 101 Things challenge via the Day Zero Project website, or follow @dayzero on Twitter for some tips and ideas.