You know, sometimes numbers just stick in your head, not ’cause you’re great at math or anything, but ’cause they mean something. For me, one of those is ‘100 – 19’. Sounds like a simple subtraction problem from school, right? But it was a bit more than that in my little world of doing things.
So, I started this project, a personal goal, really. I had this list, a hundred items. Things I wanted to achieve, little improvements, tasks I’d been putting off. I was all fired up, thought I’d just power through them. You know how it is when you start something new, all that energy.
Then Came the ‘Minus 19’ Part
I was chugging along, ticking things off, feeling pretty good. Then life, as it does, threw a few curveballs. Some things on that list, well, they turned out to be way harder than I thought. Others became irrelevant. And a few, honestly, I just lost the motivation for. So, I had to sit down and be real with myself. I ended up cutting nineteen items. Just like that. Struck them off the list.
It wasn’t easy, felt a bit like admitting defeat at first. My grand plan of a perfect hundred, suddenly looking a bit less grand. Those nineteen items represented things like:
- Tasks that depended on other people who just weren’t reliable.
- Ideas that sounded good on paper but were a nightmare to actually do.
- A couple of things I realized I didn’t actually want to do anymore, my priorities had shifted.
That was the tough bit. Going from that initial burst of “I can do it all!” to “Okay, what’s actually doable and worth my time?” It’s a process, I tell ya. You start with these big ambitions, and then reality kind of sands them down.
What I Got From It
So, 100 minus 19, that leaves 81. And you know what? Those 81 things I did manage, or am still managing, they feel more solid. It wasn’t about hitting the hundred anymore. It became about the actual stuff I was doing, the stuff that mattered. The ’19’ taught me a lot about being realistic, about not clinging to an idea just because it was the original plan. Sometimes, you gotta adjust the sails, right?
It’s funny, I look back at that list now. The original hundred, and then the crossed-out nineteen. It’s a good reminder. Not everything you start needs to be finished in the way you first imagined. Sometimes, knowing what to let go of is just as important as pushing through. That whole ‘100 – 19’ thing, it wasn’t a failure. It was just… learning. And that’s a practice I try to remember every day. It’s not about the perfect score, but about what you make of what’s left and what you learn from what you decide to leave behind.