February’s Challenge didn’t go so well. I thought after how hard January’s Challenge was, February’s Project would be a breeze. The motivation was entirely there but something else was lacking.That something else was time. With how much I’m running right now for the Marathon training, there just wasn’t a whole lot of time left for working on the guide every day for 2 hours and, well, life.The Mount Benson Guide Beta LaunchThe Beta launch for the Guide went well. I ended up putting it out a day later than I wanted it to but that was mostly to do with getting contact information from the beta testers and not whether the guide was ready. Over the 2 weeks of the beta test, the testers ploughed through the guide and gave me tons of good feedback.There was only one problem when I went to launch the guide to the public, I wasn’t in town. I planned to launch at the end of February. The weekend before I had planned on ticking off the last few things I had to do on the guide and do a bit more testing before the launch. The only problem was that I wasn’t in town that weekend. Friday after work until late Sunday night I would be skiing at a ski hill outside of cell reception. As luck would have it, I had “planned” another ski weekend on the Launch weekend as well. So much for looking ahead!I’m still getting myself organized from those weekends and the payment processor set up for the Guide launch to the public. Once that is set to go we can actually launch this this. It’s been so long in the making, I can’t wait for it to be released.I feel like I didn’t get as much as I had wanted to get done this month but my time was definitely spent elsewhere. I learned a few things along the way.Time ManagementTime management can make or break projects. Any work I was getting done on the guide was crammed in and not very relaxed. I ended up having too many other things on my plate. Saying yes to a Toastmasters speech, a travel article and multiple long runs per week is a large time commitment and fitting in regular blog posts and time to work on a bigger product can push things over the top. I’m going to be very mindful to what I’m committing too over the next few months.My LimitsI came close to what my curent limits are in terms of different things on the go at once. I do like a variety of activities but when there is simply too much going on, I just feel frazzled and nothing gets done. I often resort to reading as a way of doing something but in reality it’s not getting much done. I’m learning new things but it’s not contributing to my weekly articles or the content for the guide I need to finish. Those things need larger blocks of uninterrupted time and those were very hard to find. Many days it felt like marathon training and blog writing were competing for the same blocks of time. Most of the time marathon training would win and I’d end up writing a small amount for the blog or not at all. I still have a month and a half left of marathon training so I have a bit of time left to work on the balance of my time but I will be glad when the training is over.My PrioritiesWhen there was too much going on, the only thing I could do was to try to find out what my most important item was. The only way I could do some work was to nail down a list of prioritized items, number one to number 4, and then start work on number one. By the next day that list would likely change but at least I had got one thing done. My current focus is completing my current task before something else takes my attention away. At the moment it seems like a dozen tasks are half finished and I can’t focus on one long enough to complete it. I’m reducing the number of places I keep lists of tasks and only using ManyMoon for tasks and Google Calendar for scheduling. Nothing else. With everything in one place, either on the todo list or the calendar depending on what it is, things will be simpler.Calendar Your RealityI wanted to put everything I was doing in one place. I tried to put everything I was doing on a calendar but it got too messy and complicated so I gave up and went back to a combination of lists and calendars and other things. I finally realized that the calendar got messy and complicated when I added everything in my life to it because that’s how it was. I was trying to add a lot to the calendar because there was a ton of stuff. Just looking at the calendar of what I was trying to do was leaving me overwhelmed. It was simpler just to do what popped into my head and hope for the best.I’m now working towards scheduling everything into Google Calendar and keeping it nice and clean there with the hope that when my schedule is nice and clean, my reality will reflect some of that!Next Challenge?I was going to try and do another challenge this month and take more photos every day but with how much I’m running for the marathon training, it’s just not going to happen. After the training is over I may take up the challenges again as I liked the format and it was fun trying new things. I will let you know how that goes.