This Day: Sunday October Twenty Eight “Sticky”

This day: Sunday October twenty eight I decided to create an anonymous, free blog that will help me succeed in accomplishing tasks and objectives, some of which have been drowned in the goo of sloth.

I have one month and 4-days to achieve my goals. The targets I make for myself will be public via this blog, but I will not be revealing my true identity or proof of my achievements. Each task will be described and success will be recorded however. The list of tasks will grow as needed or as I remember important things that need fixing.

This is not a moneymaking site, although some of the tasks will be to achieve that end. The tasks will be as mundane as clearing clutter and as complex as learning a foreign language. Wish me luck.

Basic Goals
Blog daily success and failure.
Achieve success in every goal in 34 days.

Goal List
Set up and customize this blog – a work in progress.
Become conversational in a foreign language.
Sell off unwanted junk and clutter.
Reinstate a hacked website – a work in progress.
Set up an online business – work in progress.

Weekend Updates – Successes and Failures

I set myself the following tasks on Monday October 29. Here are the updates and progress reports:

Task: Reduce spending by cancelling unnecessary accounts.
Goal: Do it in two days – partly completed and the goal remains to reduce spending as many ways as possible.

This task is fairly simple call providers of services that I no longer require and cancel the payments. Did I do it? One the accounts is an Internet dongle that costs me around £16 per month. The other a hosting service I thought I no longer need can’t be cancelled immediately after all, but it’s on my radar.

Task: Tidy desk and deal with everything on it; action, file or destroy.
Goal: Do it today – this was completed successfully.

This was also fairly easy and I did complete it plus I did a lot more clearing of clutter as well. Out of clearing up the desk I was able to write a letter to my local authority requesting the information that kept on me. This is called a Subject Access Request.

Task: Continue to work on hacked blog.
Goal: Finish by Thursday – failed and I have now outsourced it.

Monday October 29: The Reasoning Behind This Blog

The initial reason for this blog was to demonstrate to my friend how easy it is to produce a blog. That you can have a blog for free, with reliable hosting, and that it would be an ideal vehicle for a writing project he is working on.

Then as I was setting it up I had a light-bulb moment; a blog could be used to motivate action. List the tasks, set the goals and report the progress; successes and failures. This blog is a sophisticated to-do list – with more power than one written on paper.

For instance one of my first projects was to restore a blog that had been hacked to destruction. Luckily I had it backed up, but it has still been very difficult as I needed to change my web hosting company at the same time. Having a goal helped tremendously. I was determined to complete as much of the project as possible. And, I did even though it remains a work in progress.

Day Two: Monday October 29 Task List

Task: Reduce spending by cancelling unnecessary accounts.
Goal: Do it in two days.
Task: Tidy desk and deal with everything on it; action, file or destroy.
Goal: Do it today.
Task: Continue to work on hacked blog.
Goal: Finish by Thursday.

Sunday October 28: Reinstate Hacked Website

Second Task

Someone has hacked my WordPress website that I had on paid hosting. I’ve had several attacks this year but this was the worst.

I had backed up the whole site and the host offered to restore the backup for me at a price. But it didn’t happen because, they said, a vital file was missing. As there had been several breaches and they failed to reinstate the site I am moving the site.

The tasks this day

Backup the database from my site – DONE.
Point the DNS to my new host – DONE
Create the blog anew* and upload image and text files I have already retrieved – WORK IN PROGRESS.
Reinstate the MySQL database – fingers crossed that works – NOT DONE.

Anew is a real word despite Word saying it is misspelled. It’s an Old English word for “over again; once more; in a different way; afresh.

The goals this day

Completely reinstate my blog and apply security measures that I have learned.
ONLY PARTLY DONE – The Reason: Long delay in “propagation of DNS”. Restoring the blog is going to take several days.

Sunday October 28: First Task

This day: Sunday October 28 I will install and customize the WordPress Twenty Ten theme. The Twenty Ten theme is available free from WordPress here. This task will be largely completed today but may be tweaked anytime during the 34 days.

Theme installation – achieved, easy peasy lemon squeazy!
Customize theme colors – achieved using the free Color Cop color picker.

Install and customize the theme from the WordPress dashboard. Coordinate background and title text by picking a predominant color with Color Cop from the header image. If I change the header image I will redo the colors.