10 things

I've always thought I should do 10 new things every day, 10 things that were worthwhile, fun, educational, or, well, at least marginally worthwhile anyway.  Things like find a new book author, learn something new in a field I know nothing about, listen to a new musician, walk backwards drinking a good merlot, whatever...  turns out you end up in a rut after a few days just trying to think of a different 10 things (to say nothing of being mocked by your family).

I mean, it's easy to do 10 silly new things a day, but that gets a little old after a couple of days.  I'm talking 10 decent, remember them later sort of things, things that you might even mention in a conversation with someone you didn't know very well sort of things.  Things that you could do anywhere.

This qualification puts a bit of a challenge to it, unless, of course, you're easy with saying things like, "No, I didn't know flying quarters could be lethal' to the lady grocery clerk after having just missed catching a new personal record of 24 quarters that I had balanced on my elbow (my son made me do it).

So, I decided I needed a little help and turned to the web, thinking that someone, somewhere must have come up with a list of like a 1,000 new things to do - you know the web, full of 'niche' markets, surely this would be one of them.  After all, there are books like '100 places to see before you die'; someone must have put together a nice long list of cool things that would keep me busy.  It would be great, I'd have this journal in my pocket that I'd carry around, a kind of birder's list that I would keep to record all the new things I was going to do (for you that don't know, avid birding fans keep a lifetime list of all the birds they've seen).

So, off to the web, I typed in "10 new things a day" into Google.  The top search resulted in this list from a fellow in Denver:

1.  Make list of daily tasks and define the Main Project for the day
2.  Check and respond to emails & voice messages
3.  Tidy up my desk and do administrative tasks (invoicing, late payment notifications)
4.  Write a post to my blog
5.  Take a break for 30 minutes, including checking Google Reader, MacNN, and other favorite sites like Woot.com
6.  Check my clients website ranking with my Rank Tracker software
7.  Work on a website design mock in Illustrator for 1 hour
8.  Take a 40-minute lunch break

etc.   

No kidding, this was the top search result, what's that about?

Well, knowing the web, and how important it was to get the search words right I decided to backtrack and simplify.  So, I typed in just the words '10 things'.  

And here's the top results from that search:

1. 10 things you didn't know about Tim Pawlenty
2. Boys' Private Parts: 10 things Every Girl Should Know
3. 10 things I hate about you
4. 10 things you shouldn't buy new
5. 10 things our ticket broker won't tell you
6. Us 10 things girls really do love us some Canadians
7. 10 things I hate about commandments

Now, while some of these are amusing lists, they were hardly going to help me out.  I did, however, take a side road and click on each one just so that I could pass them along to you:

1. Tim Pawlenty is apparently a potential running mate for John McCain.
2. This comes from a site titled 'Acclaimed abstinence-only education program for girls.  Its first listing was: "Unlike your girly privates, which are internal, boy privates are external. God knew that nobody wanted to see all our lady mess, so He pushed everything up inside you"
3. This is a movie (never seen it).
4. First on the list was Books.  Seems a bit odd that something like 'auto' or 'boat' didn't show up first, guess my new BMW is okay.
5. This site never really got around to listing anything.
6. This was a bit more interesting, written by someone named 'Stephanie' it's 10 things to be thankful for, seems to have a large flickr following, lots of photos. Kinda cool, but not what I was looking for..
7. This is a clever video parody on Youtube of old flicks..

Then I had a thought and typed in 'Life Lists' into Google.  Well, that, I'm afraid, ended my search - there were 19,800,000 results, and nearly every one of them had the words 'inspiration, meaningful', or 'objectives' in them.  So, I've decided to go back to the beginning and just see if I can catch those quarters, and leave it at that.