30 day Challenges & Streaks

This TED Ed video by Matt Cutts should give you a good idea of what I am talking about.

I’ve tried many 30 day challenges. Some have been successful, like no sugar or 30 day work outs.  Many have been unsuccessful like writing stuff everyday. While the results during the successful 30 day experiments have been truly astounding, the rebound back to the original state of disrepair and inertia post the challenge period has been even more spectacular.

So this is where I’m bringing in a new pivot to the 30 day theme. The ‘Streak’.  The thing about streaks is that the longer they build, the more precious they become. Since achieving and beating it once again becomes more difficult with every successful day, the incentive to keep the streak going keeps increasing with every successful day.

So the hack, or the experiment, is to start extremely tough 30 day challenges and towards the end, convert them to a slightly easier, less stringent streaks.

Take an example of a No Sugar challenge undertaken on Dec 27th. On January 27th, convert it to an ‘only 1 or lesser sugar based item allowed per day’.

First, since you’ve already gone 30 days without sugar, psychologically this will be simpler by a magnitude of 10. Once you do the most difficult thing, doing a slightly simpler thing is exponentially simpler.

Second, you’ll be on a 30 day streak by then and the incentive to turn this into a longer streak will be much higher than the disincentive. Changing the Goal Post is fine. There is never a ‘there’. The ‘there’ always keeps dissolving once you get there.

Third, given that the month end is just 4 days away, you will have that extra drive to continue the streak for 4 more days beyond the 30 day challenge. Timing and markers are very Important. Choose them well.

What say ?