31 tasks

An Early Suggestion

The first 8 tasks on the list having been established, I started to discuss the challenge with friends and tentatively encouraged suggestions.  I liked the sound of the Three Peaks Challenge from Cat (more on her later) and have included the task Climb – reach the top of Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon within 24 hours.  I’ve toyed with the idea of splitting this into three tasks, but for now it’s still listed as the original, full-fat Challenge.

Continuing in a distinctly strenuous direction is Cycle.  Somewhat oddly, I never really learned to ride a bike until fairly recently at the age of 28.  Since then I have cycled to work on an almost daily basis and I’ve certainly benefitted from the exercise.  But this has been the extent of my cycling so I thought I’d aim for more of a challenge:  to cover 100 miles in a day, stopping for lunch at the halfway point.  Possibly one for the backburner until Spring.

Cycling: The hardest part for Bill was putting up with the noise from the spokey-dokeys.

Exercise?  Outside the comfort zone?  New experience?  All neatly packaged in Ski – quite simply learn to ski, since my experience of winter sport has never made it beyond sledging.  The point at which I’ve ‘learnt’ will be decided later on.

Coming back down to earth somewhat brings us to Work.  It’s a bit of a tricky one this, which may seem inappropriate to any colleagues that happen to be reading, but bear with me.  The task is to win one of my employer’s staff awards during the year, which are generally handed out when an employee (or small team) goes beyond the call of duty in winning or delivering work.  I’m certainly not simply assuming that this will happen to me, but, given the effort I will be putting into other areas of my life this year, it seems sensible to have an extra incentive to apply the same effort to my career.  This makes it particularly hard to achieve, since it is out of my hands to a certain extent.  But there it is in black and white (or red and italic) and I shall aspire to it.  Quite what happens if it is outstanding in early November 2009 is something to worry about later.

Finally, before taking a look at the progress made on the tasks listed so far, the 13th task: Blog.  This started life as a desire to simply complete the list, but it grew into the personal need to document this challenge and give others the chance to comment on it if they see fit.  In a slight departure from the rules, I’ve decided that this task will be complete when the early sections of the blog are up-to-date at the end of December 2008.  Failure to maintain it, however, will result in the task dropping back to incomplete status.  That’ll keep me on my toes.