Last month, I set a goal for the Christmas holiday (see here). The goal was to write a blog post series on a book I’d read. I’ll get straight to it. I failed. There’s no real excuse. There’s no one to blame. I just didn’t check this box. I view every failure as a learning opportunity, so I looked for the lessons in this one.

I summarize each book by creating a digest, which I use to create a blog post series. I can’t create a quality blog post series without the digest. Creating the digest was the big obstacle to hitting this writing goal. It’s a manual process that requires multiple blocks of concentrated time totaling more than ten hours. I somehow forgot this when I set the goal. Reading is different—I can pick up a book and read a few pages if I have five extra minutes. I can’t do that with writing.

If I want to get back into the habit of creating digests, I need to ensure that I have several blocks of time exceeding ten total hours—or figure out how to use technology for digest creation. I probably won’t consistently have the blocks of time, so I’m aiming for option number two.