{"id":3056,"date":"2021-04-01T10:58:56","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T14:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/?p=3056"},"modified":"2021-04-13T08:55:44","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T12:55:44","slug":"3056","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/01\/3056\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of 30-Day Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Spending the winter getting in one\u2019s exercise on a treadmill is deadly dull.  I plumbed the depths of the possibilities that is The Good Place.<\/em> I found no other commercially produced television catching my fancy. In despair, I turned to productivity and self-improvement videos on YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These attractive young men with their nice, trim beards pontificating on how they had Solved Life\u2019s Problems both amused and instructed me as I got in the tedium that is the 10,000 step habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of habit<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Oh yeah, habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is me getting in those 10,000 steps every day a habit?  Darn right, it is!  I do make a specific effort to get in a specified amount of walking every day.  That\u2019s very true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, in 2020, I averaged 10,000 steps a day every month for the entire year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
2020-2021 Step Goals<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Garmin won\u2019t let me specify only the year 2020 in displaying the chart. Still, hey\u2026 I\u2019ve been doing it for over twelve months anyway, so this is illustrative enough.  I hit my step counts as averaged over a month for the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do 30 Day Challenges help develop habits?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

I did I start this with a 30-day challenge?  Well\u2026 sorta.  I tried to get in over 10,000 steps a day for an entire month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 30-day challenge is an excellent way to explore a habit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinhard Engels of Everyday Systems talks about this when he talks about Monthly Resolutions<\/a>.  He thinks, correctly, that too large a scale is a bad idea when developing a habit.  A large scale can be daunting.  A large scale can be so daunting it sets you up for failure because it\u2019s overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinhard suggests the Monthly Resolution as a low-investment way to try out a habit. It is easy to see if the habit works for you or if it\u2019s really not addressing the issues you\u2019re working on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where the 30-day challenge comes in.  No sugar for a month.  No alcohol for a month! No Internet for a month!  10,000 steps a day for a month.  Go vegan for a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These things can be worth a try. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a dark side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dark Side of the 30-day Challenge<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

A 30-day challenge, when misapplied, can harm your attempts at goal setting and habit formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most everyday habit formation, any adult can tell themselves that they can tough something out for a month.  You can white-knuckle it and get through to the finish line precisely because you see that finish line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a habit you would like to keep lifelong, a month of extraordinary effort is pointless.  Been sedentary for three or four years?  Getting more fit is a project best measured over decades.  This means that doing something easy consistently is better than doing something difficult you\u2019ll quit. The extremes you can tolerate for a month are unsustainable in the long term. For physical fitness, that two-mile walk you will<\/em> take beats that 5K run you worked up to and then quit because it was unpleasant every time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also the problem of \u201cbreaking the chain\u201d for many habits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, not that breaking a chain is difficult. It\u2019s distressingly easy.  But quitting<\/em> because you broke the chain?  Yeah, I know you\u2019ve done it.  Don\u2019t lie. Lyin\u2019s a sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a 30-Day Challenge does have you in that \u201cdon\u2019t break the chain\u201d mindset.  That\u2019s less than useful for a habit you want to be lifelong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is habit tracking useful?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Which does bring up another point.  Is habit tracking useful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No.  Habit tracking is not useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who has seen my stuff on Bullet Journals or even gives a second\u2019s thought to the 10,000 steps I talk about earlier in this piece is about to accuse me of being a liar.  Bear with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know what I don\u2019t track?  Whether or not I made my bed this morning.  Know why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did.  I do every morning<\/strong>.  I don\u2019t need to track that any more than I need to track whether or not I\u2019m wearing underwear.  I do that every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Habit-tracking is a misleading name for what you\u2019re doing.  You\u2019re tracking the development<\/strong> of a habit.  Once it\u2019s a habit, you offload that mentally.  You just.. do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I made my bed from the time I was out of a crib until I was in my thirties and living in a household that didn\u2019t really value bed-making. When that household broke up, I was right back to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you want to do is get something useful to yourself so ingrained that you don\u2019t give it a lot of thought.  Maybe you want to eat vegetables.  Maybe you want to make your bed.  Maybe you want to avoid too much time on the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve talked before about Tiny Habits<\/em> by BJ Fogg.  He talks about starting very<\/em> small and engineering the environment. Flossing one tooth levels of small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I admit there was a time when I simply would not have believed his assertions.  If you don\u2019t work out hard or clean perfectly, you won\u2019t get to your goal<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, if your goal is to do 100 pushups and get a sixpack by the end of the year, and the first quarter is already over, and you haven\u2019t lifted anything heavier than a soda can in years?  Probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If your goal is to develop a lifelong habit that will show progress over decades?  Those little habits are amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when you see the 30-day challenges, think of them as trying on an outfit in the dressing room.  It\u2019s a good way to experiment, but past that, you need something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spending the winter getting in one\u2019s exercise on a treadmill is deadly dull.  I plumbed the depths of the possibilities that is The Good Place. I found no other commercially produced television catching my fancy. In despair, I turned to productivity and self-improvement videos on YouTube. These attractive young men with their nice, trim beards … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Value of 30-Day Challenges”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-self-improvement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3056"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3059,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions\/3059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}