The day before yesterday I crossed a major milestone in writing my first book. I am now only fifty or sixty pages from the end. I have been at work on this book since more than two years and at last the end is in sight. It was tough in the beginning to write every day and reach specific milestones- 50 pages, 100 pages and so on. Somewhere in the middle of writing the book I hit upon the idea of rewarding myself with some goodies whenever I reach a milestone. For reaching last week's milestone I promised myself to buy a couple of notebooks, a pair of jeans and any two books I happened to fancy.
To buy my rewards, yesterday I dropped in at Odyssey store and found three more varieties of 'rainbow' brand of notebooks called "Book Worm" displayed. One was a real beauty of around three hundred pages but of A5 size. I bought it and another of A6 size, both in plain paper. There were notebooks with color pages but I don't like to write on anything other than white paper. The notebooks were attractive though. I plan to pick up more such notebooks sometime next month. I also have to buy the jeans and the books which I plan to do early next week.
This system of rewarding oneself for minor achievements works because it motivates one to complete the task or goal. The trick is to write down the milestones and also the rewards you will get on reaching them. The only hitch is that you have to pay for the rewards yourself! Now I am looking forward to write the remaining fifty odd pages which now don't seem such a big task because I have no more than fifty pages to write. I have promised to buy an iPod for myself after I finish writing the first draft of my book. It might be mid-April when I reach the last page. Next update on my book will be when I finish it.
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