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I was spending some time over the weekend going through my Google reader, catching up on some reading, when I came across a post from a blog called Life Reboot, which really hit a nerve with me. The post itself was titled “Getting Things Done: Screw Perfection, Nix Distractions and Don’t Break The Chain”. Essentially, the article discusses how we all have these great ideas – whether it be for creating niche websites or writing articles or whatever – but that we strive for perfection in everything that we do. Wanting everything to be perfect causes us to waste time getting to the end goal and that in the end, we don’t do anything at all.

This is me in a nutshell. I want my sites to be perfect – have the most awesome website design, the coolest logo, great content, etc. In fact, I can spend days designing the right logo or picking the right colour theme. I enjoy it, I have a very creative mind and designing the site is the best part! BUT like I said, I can spend days doing this. In the past I would do this then weeks would pass and the site just always wasn’t quite finished, there were still some finishing touches I needed to do – I would tell myself – then it’d be done. I would then come across another great website idea and would get started on designing that one, weeks would pass – you get the idea. It was a circle that left me with a bunch of unfinished sites.

The good thing is that I know this about myself and it is something I’m working on. So back to the post, “screw perfection, if you aim for it, you will fail”, it reads. In the pursuit of wanting to do things right, we stall, because there is always something that prevents us from getting it right. We all don’t know everything and the thing that prevents us from getting it right could be not knowing web design, not having the best writing skills, not understanding how to alter the wordpress code to get the site looking exactly right.

The article talks about a Singer/Songwriter called Jonathan Coulton who, in 2005, started a “Thing A Week” series. His goal was to write and record one song per week for the period of a year. Every week he did this, uploaded them to his website for his fans to listen to even when he didn’t think the songs were that good. Of course, not all of the songs were good but he fulfilled his goal and in the process of screwing perfection, actually did something to get himself to the place he wanted to be. Out of the 52 songs he wrote one or two became very popular and he now makes $500,000 per year from his music.

I felt so inspired by this story I have decided to take on my own challenge – The 52 Website Challenge. For the next year I will make one niche website per week (or more if that’s even possible) with the goal of having at least 52 sites by this time next year. They may not all turn out to be winners but I have to come across a couple of goldmines in the process. I actually like deadlines, I work better with a little pressure, so I’m hoping that by giving myself this goal, I can get rid myself of the never ending cycle I have previously found myself in of never finishing a site because it’s just not quite perfect yet. If I can build 52 decent sites with decent content rather than having an almost perfect work in progress, this has to be a step in the right direction. Right?

Of course I will be documenting my progress here, I think it will give me even more motivation if I know that people might see it if I fail. I would love it if anyone else was interested in doing this challenge with me and keep me updated each week. It might not even have to be a website a week challenge, it could be one per month or something else altogether that you want to complete each week.

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