30 Day Challenge

Many times, I have found that it is easy to come up with an idea, but a lot harder to put it in practice. Think about the New Year resolutions that have come and gone - we feel guilty, think of a bunch of things to do in the new year, and forget about it in the first or second week. According to Wikipedia, 52% are confident of keeping up their resolutions, but 80% fail.

Obviously there is a disconnect between what we want to do and what we actually end up doing. So, why is there a disconnect? Why are we not able to keep up such commitments? I believe the issue is primarily that of scope - either we make the issue so broad that it is not actionable, and along related lines, we have the duration so long that we lose momentum quickly.

For the first one, there are numerous ideas and concepts such as Getting Things Done model by David Allen that describes how to break down and organize your to-do items so that they can be acted upon.

New Year resolutions fall more into the second category, where 1 year is just too long to keep track of and complete something. In many cases, it is so long that we don't even wait till 6 or 7 months - we give up in a couple of weeks in most cases. So, what can be done to make it stick?

Recently, I came across this video from TED, where Matt Cutts talks about the 30-Day Challenge and I think it addresses both the roadblocks to commitment nicely.



What's nice about the 30-Day Challenge is that it is simple - you just pick ONE single topic and stick to it for 30 days. Picking a single topic makes it easy to remember and the 30-day is a reasonable time frame to make a reasonable attempt (Scrum methodology is based on 30-days sprints for example).

I can think of a number of things - both work and personal - where I can apply this. Here are some examples I could think of:

1. Take a picture each day
2. Listen to a song by a new singer or a new genre that you would otherwise not listen to (to me - listen to one new carnatic raga each day)
3. Write a blog entry each day (although this can go beyond 30 days and hence may not apply)
4. On the more technical side, review one code package each day
5. Complete a certification within 30 days

The list can go on in a variety of ways. In fact, here's a website where a bunch of people have posted different challenges already.

http://30daychallenges.net/challenges

You can also read about Matt's personal 30-day challenges in his blog to get some inspiration.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/30-days/

Something like this also lends itself nicely to an app - you can have a countdown/reminder for your challenge for the month for example.

So, what are you waiting for? What's your 30-day challenge going to be? Give it a shot - I am going to and will update on this blog.