In October 2022, I was introduced to Bonnie Christine. She is a surface pattern designer who teaches other designers to become surface pattern designers. Something I love about her story is her commitment to doing one thing a day to learn surface pattern design. This commitment led to her mastering her biggest goal of becoming a surface pattern designer.

When I joined her world, I was looking for another avenue for my art to be profitable. I’ve learned a great deal from her outside of the art arena. 

This concept of hers to do one thing a day is super simple and profound. In May 2023, my family and I were transitioning, having moved and still working to get my husband into his new job so we could all be back together as a family. 

I figured May would be a good month to master some new habits and start my one-thing-a-day journey. My goals were a bit different from Bonnie’s, but I have had substantial results with the concept adding my own little flare.

The first thing I did was pick some personal items for OTD or one-thing-a-day. I wrote those on a log sheet with thirty-one days on it and a place to name my items. Then, I picked two items for the design side of my life and two for the author/business side of my life.

I was committed to doing all six of these items for thirty-one days straight.

I’m going to break each of these down for you and why I picked those items. 

My first personal item was to get up earlier every day, at 5:30. Our bodies enjoy the consistency of getting up at the same time every day. It also helps me be more alert and focused. I also knew this would help me get more stuff done during the day. I’m a big productive person. The more I can get done on any given day, the happier I am. The consistency would also set an example for my kids that getting up at the same time, no matter if it was the weekend or not, is the right thing to do. Plus, making it a habit can set them up to be more disciplined over the time God has blessed them with.

Something that has been weighing heavy on my mind to do for years is to read nonfiction books. This has always been a struggle for me because it wasn’t a story and, most of the time, NOT entertaining. Seeing my husband read book after book of nonfiction and knowing the knowledge contained in the pages would benefit me, I resolved to read nonfiction.

Now for my writing.

There is a quote from Stephen King…

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

I never appreciated this quote until I started listening to audiobooks with my kids. My writing transformed as I listened to these books with my kids. The pictures the stories presented when we listened to them gave me a new understanding of what Stephen King said. Interested in improving my writing, I added reading a fiction book to my OTD tracker. I didn’t have to read the whole book in a day; I just had to read some story every day.

To become a better writer, I would actually have to write every day. My goal was 200 words for the day. I didn’t care if it was for a fiction piece of writing or for business. Two hundred words had to be written for me to mark this off.

For the art side of me, I also added two tasks.

Each day, I would draw something. It didn’t have to be pretty or correct. Using whatever media I wanted, I would pick something to draw and set to create it. Seeing the different shapes in objects as I’ve drawn has been fun.

Now, this last task is something that doesn’t come naturally to me. I am not a big social media fan. I do not post things about my personal life and don’t follow other people’s private lives on social. I enjoy face-to-face conversations with people, so my last thing required a constant reminder. 

As a member of an art community, I made a rule to participate in the group daily. I would read and commit on someone’s post every day. Sometimes, it ended up being one post, and other days it was several. 

A quick recap of my six things: get up every day at 5:30, read a nonfiction and fiction book, write a minimum of 200 words, sketch something, and lastly, take part in the art community I am a part of.

Before I tell you how many days I accomplished these six things, I want to share a few thoughts.

This was by far the best habit challenge I have ever done! I’ve done the same challenge every month since. I get an emotional high from marking the stuff off my habit tracker, which might help with motivation. More than that, it was a very personal journey to prove to myself what I wanted to do was important and worth spending time on. Each item was important to some area of my life and forced me to develop a constant routine, freeing up my mental space to get more done. If you are interested in how I created a daily routine, check out My Normal Day post here.

How did I do? Did I get everything done for thirty-one days?

Looking over my sheet for the month of May, I was excited to see that I stayed committed to everything on my sheet. I had thirty-one boxes marked off for each of my six tasks. One day, I stayed up late to do a special thing with one of my kids, and the following day, I almost missed getting up on time. The next morning, something clicked in my brain as I slept past my alarm, and I bolted out of bed, looking at the clock. I made it by a hair. My heart was racing, thinking I had missed getting to mark off the square for that day. It was too close for comfort.

Another thing I was able to reflect on as I went through the month was times in the past when I would say I was going to do something, and it would last for a few weeks, then I would quit. This time was vastly different. I pondered what made it different. 

I’m not sure why this was different, but I do know that I chose the items on my list for my reasons. I think this was the most significant difference in my success. I also prayed over my list when I was struggling. It wasn’t a prayer to accomplish the items but to stay true to my commitment to complete the items. I was more interested in the desired transformation than in completing the items themselves. Yes, the items were important, but the transformation transferred over into every aspect of my life.

If you are interested in doing your own One Thing A Day challenge, all you need is a sheet of paper. You can write numbers 1 – 31 on it and X off each number as you work through the month. The point isn’t the fancy sheet of paper with Habit Tracker written on it. It is your commitment to follow through on the items daily.

A word of caution against doing more than five tasks on your OTD. If you overwhelm yourself with too many new things to do every day, there is a chance you won’t succeed. The goal is to develop new habits and to stick with them. If you find it hard to do more than one extra thing, only include one item for the month. I did six because one of them was already worked into my day. Simply changing how I did things during the day made it possible for me to mark off all my boxes for this task. 

Drop me a commit below about your successes and even the difficulties you experienced as you worked through your own one-thing-a-day challenge. Know that when the going gets tough, I am cheering you on, and so is your future self.