We have 96 intervals of 15 minutes every day, meaning you have many opportunities to make a difference.  Each day this month, I’m giving you a 15-minute project idea. Pick your favorites to improve your day, yourself or your world. I promise you have time for this.

I’ve heard it takes 21 days to develop a habit.  I suggest you try to do something for 31 days (the whole month).  You’ll be glad you did.  

The truth of the matter is that my blogs weren’t written in 15 minutes for 31 days.  My 15 minute a day posts for you took me about an hour and sometimes I’d write 2-3 per day and schedule them for the daily publish date.  But, I got through it and I’ve learned something coming out the other side of this great experiment.  You can do anything for 31 days, if you put you mind to it.  By following this simple, targeted solution, you’ll see just what I mean.

You have to make your “Anything” a priority. To get a post done every day, I sat in the car while my family ordered at a restaurant (testing my first ever Siri-dictated post. I also woke up early some days, I went to bed late some days, I wrote ideas down in advance, and I kept myself focused on my goal every day.  It took a lot of work, but I was able to break most of my preparation times into 15 minute increments (picture research, post ideas, post lists).  When you want to do something enough, you find a way to make it happen.

You have to give up other things to keep “Anything” a priority. I have about 12 hours of “alone” free time each week.  5 hours are my lunch breaks at work and I spend those in workout classes.  7 hours are my 1 hour a day where I used to run 4 days a week and blog 3 days a week.  Because of this 31 posts in 31 days goal, I usually need 7 hours a week to blog and had to give up something; it ended up being running.  It’s not gone for good, but when you only have so much time, to make one thing important means to make something else less important–after all, if all things are important, nothing is important (thank you LeaderCast participant live-tweets).

The truth: I’ve been burned out on running for a little while and no amount of workout willpower was fixing it.  I needed the rest mentally.  I was tired of my route (which has been my running buddy for 2000 miles).  So during my break, I’ve picked a new route, gotten new running gear and kept steady with my workout classes.  Just recently, (thank you summer!) I started my running routine again and it’s been great.  Welcome back old friend.

There will be times you want to quit “Anything.” So I gave up running to make this goal happen, seems like the goal should be easy. Nope. Around Day 14: Natural Cleaning Solutions, I started thinking, “Well, maybe I don’t need to post every day.” And around day 21: Ultimate Unclutter Understanding, I was convinced, “I’m done, why did I sign up for this?!” I wanted to quit, because that was certainly easier.  But I always remember, it’s not going to be easy all of the time. If the going was easy, everyone would do it.

You’ll feel better about “Anything” if you stick with it. And now that I’ve reached the end, it’s bittersweet.  I have a million more ideas (well 91 to be exact) of things I’d like to write about and I’m excited to keep going.  I’m glad I stuck with it and plan to do something like this again in the future (the distant future, maybe this will be an annual thing for May: 15 minutes a day for May–catchy!)

What ever you want to do, you can do it. You need to put your mind to the action and make it happen. It may take 15 minutes, 15 days or 15 years–it will be worth it. I promise you have time for this.