The One Week Challenge Quest
I was around 21 years old, studying in Budapest, Hungary, living quite an active social life. That means I was out and mingle almost every other day with friends, university students, went to home-parties, concerts, pub meetings, boardgames nights, dinner parties and so on.
Hungary with its 22 wine regions, numerous beer factories and locally produced spirits makes up a market where alcohol is dirt cheap and pretty good quality too. (There are exceptions, of course). Having a beer or wine was simply a part of social gatherings for a 21 years old student. It was so much part of everyday life that it struck me one day: Can I go a week without it?
I know many of you would easily go a week without even a sip of booze, but for a 21 years old socially active student living in such environment it needed quote an effort and mental strength to refuse a glass of good wine in a home party or pub night where everyone around me was drinking.
But I made it, and — although being such an insignificant success — it felt really good.
That is how the quest to fulfil One Week Challenges was born.
It took seven years for it to become a regular thing, namely when I started actively meditating and thinking about other tools to flex my mental muscles.
So I started setting up new quests that I will do or not do for 7 consecutive days, usually from Monday to Sunday just to be easier to follow.
You may ask why on earth am I doing this. Here are my observations after attempting to fulfil over 25 weekly challenges:
What are 1 week challenges good for?
To practice dedication and train your mind
I feel like mental exercise is the same to my brain than physical exercise is to my body: It makes it more strong and more fit. After dedicating myself to fulfil a challenge, then another one, then another one then, as months goes by I feel more mental strength and I feel like I’m more capable to do get things done, or beat procrastination for example.
To bring fun to your every day life
Weekly challenges are entertaining the same way as strategic games or logical puzzles are. I really enjoyed learning about a whole bunch of food-stuff while analysing the ingredients of everything I wanted to eat on my vegan week. Trying out 4–5 new alcohol free drinking options on my alcohol free week was also cool. The taste of a Jamón Serrano after a week of eating vegetarian tasted new and totally interesting. I discovered a new face of the city when I woke up every morning an hour earlier heading to the gym around 6:15–6:30 AM.
To show yourself that you can
Small one-week goals are relatively easy to achieve and it gives you motivation and strength to achieve bigger goals. When on the end of the 7th day I sit down and realise that I could do it, it feels great! I feel I can trust myself more that I can do things, that I can be dedicated, that I can handle challenges.
To learn to be more adaptive to change
After 1 week of only cold showers I feel like I would have no real problem to adapt to circumstances where there is no warm water. After a week of no meat, a week of no coffee, a week of no alcohol etc. if I don’t have access to something I just shrug and move on. Compared to the old me who got irritated and made an issue about not having what I imagined that I should have this is already an improvement.
Why not 1 day/21 days/1 month/1 year challenge?
If those work better for you, go for it! Mine is for sure not the one and only good way. I choose one week because these weekly sprints of focusing on 1 thing works great for me. One day was not challenging enough but 21 days or longer was a bit too challenging, thus I set myself for certain failure. One week is a sufficient training field: It has a start and an end that can be easily adjusted to your calendar: Monday to Sunday. Its shortness makes it easy to follow it up. The end of it is at rock throw distance — close enough to stick to it but far enough to motivate you to move.
How to choose a challenge
You can collect challenge-ideas from people around you, but I warmly recommend to set your challenges yourself and create your own journey based on things that are challenging for you, or you are interested in doing but haven’t get around it yet.
You have the feeling that you are drinking too much sugary soda? Make it a challenge to test it out if you can survive one week without it.
You think you are watching too much TV? Make a quest to not watch it for a week.
You think it’s time to improve your ukulele skills? Make a challenge about practicing every day for 20 minutes.
I would recommend setting only 1 challenge per week. Believe me, focusing on 1 thing can be demanding enough. Later on you can experiment with more at the same time, but in the beginning I recommend only one at a time.
Don’t choose something extreme in the beginning. I would say starting off with something light just to get used to it is a good idea— Unless you already have strong mental discipline, but then you don’t really need 1 week challenges.
What to keep in mind
Whatever one-week challenges you make, take it seriously! If you set a goal that involves doing something every day, then it is about practicing your dedication and do it every day, not about doing it all on the weekend, or doing double tomorrow.
If you set a challenge that means the absence of something, then be totally abstinent. A one week challenge of not drinking soda is failed with just one sip of soda.
Once you get started resist the urge to find excuses why not to continue. I’m sure you yourself can name a great deal of excuses why NOT to do things: “I will do it tomorrow” or “I don’t feel like it today” or “I will do it on the weekend”. Drag yourself through these weak moments and do it anyway. You will feel great at the end.
If you fail, accept it, put it in the “failed challenges” envelope (I have one myself) or some place (physical or virtual) where you can keep track of your challenges. Don’t forget to use a bit of time to reflect: How did I fail and why? What does this mean about me?
Don’t be too hard on yourself while answering these questions. Failing is an opportunity to learn, and it shows that you can stretch your limits. However annoying is to realise that you failed, you can always try the same challenge again.
I failed my strictly vegan challenge twice, in most stupid ways:
You don’t have to do one every week. If you are dedicated to set one challenge for every week, then thumbs up for you: You are awesome! I don’t always have an idea about what challenge to take and I don’t want to stress about it. I set challenges as often as I have something interesting in mind.
You can download an A4 sheet of empty ones from here. The 7 squares after each quest represent 7 consecutive days. Tick honestly at the end of the day if you managed to fulfil the quest, and leave it empty if you didn’t. Don’t cheat! In this quest the only one you deceive is you, yourself.
I guess by now you wonder what challenges I did. Here is the full list:
One week challenges I failed:
You will inevitably fail some. Don’t worry, it’s part of the game.
— eating strictly vegan (failed 2x.) Learning: Animal related ingredients are in everything, and in many cases it’s really not obvious that it is animal product. Can you tell if lecithin, gellan gum or ascorbic acid are from animals or plants? I could not. I also learned that I can’t trust people with this and I have to play the thousand-questions-game any time someone serves me something.
— not making judgemental statements (failed on day 2.) Learning: Geez, am I really this judgemental?? I definitely have to pay more attention to my attitude... I will set it up for weekly challenge as many times as it’s necessary. It will be good for me if I get rid of this kind of mindset.
— not saying any version of the word “f*ck” (failed on day 6.) Noticed right after it slipped out of my tongue. Learning: Although English is not my mother tongue I’m using swear words like if it is. And I’m not proud of it. Although I didn’t make it a challenge again, since this I watch my tongue more and use swear words a bit less.
— not eating chocolate. (Failed on day 3.) Learning: I’m seriously addicted to dark chocolate and I’m probably too blinded by the addiction to care about it.
— practicing on the drums minimum 15 minutes every day. Failed twice. Learning: If I can’t set aside a quarter hour every day for a week then probably drumming is not as important for me as I thought it is…
— do 1 physics lesson of a Coursera basic physics course. It was quite a while ago and I must admit I don’t remember how I failed this one.. But I remember the course was super interesting and nothing extraordinary happened in life so I’m sure it was my lack of mental strength. Ehm…
— meditate 15 minutes every day. Failed on day 3. Learning: I must learn better time management. I had lots of things that week but that’s no excuse. Strangely this failure gave enough motivation to later on do 15 minutes meditation 2 weeks in a row, every day.
— practicing dancing with the hulahoop 20 minutes every day. Learning: Same as drumming: I’m really into it but apparently not as much as I thought. (If you wonder what’s dancing with hulahoop is, check this awesome vid. )
— not picking the blackheads on my face. I failed this so many times I don’t event count. I know, it’s grouse, totally unnecessary and harms the skin to do it too often but logic doesn’t work with obsessions. Learning: I think I developed some levels of understanding for people who have obsessions that they are struggling to get rid of..
One week challenges I successfully finished:
— eating only vegetarian. It was easy as I don’t eat much meat anyway.
— eating strictly vegan, because one week vegetarian wasn’t challenging enough. Managed to fulfil for the 3rd try. On the plus side: As a leftover habit I almost entirely quit drinking milk. I started to love vegan substitutes like almond milk, soy milk and coconut milk.
— spending minimum 20 minutes to learn Spanish every day
— meditating at least 15 minutes every day
— not drinking coffee. I love a coffee in the morning but during this week I realised that what I really love is the warm cozy feeling of drinking something good while checking my mails. Tea did the job.
— no alcohol. It was way easier this time than it was at age 21
— not having breakfast and exercising every morning for minimum half hour. Although I exercise already 2–3 times a week, this was a tough one. I booked group classes in the gym for every morning to make it before my work starts. This means waking up 1 hour before usual, which would be fine if I could manage to go to sleep earlier on the evenings. Which I couldn’t. On the weekends I socialised reasonably: minimal drinking and early bed time so I have strength to work out when I wake up.
— not eating chocolate for a week. After failing it multiple times I finally survived 7 days without it, but it was a seriously tough one.
— doing at least 15 minutes yoga every day. It was lovely! I totally recommend this! As help, here is a 14 days yoga challenge with great videos.
— only cold shower. It has many health benefits. Try it out for a week!
— writing down 3 good things at the end of the days. A boost for positive thinking.
— not checking social media news feeds and group posts. I have presence on only 3 social media (Quora, Facebook, Twitter) and after a week I realised I missed Quora the most.
— Learning Italian for at least half hour every day
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So these were my challenges. There are more coming up. I’m looking forward to test my survival skills on the “one week with no money” challenge and already curious how the “practice an act of kindness every day with no expectation” will go.
Now it’s your turn. What is a thing that is challenging for you?
Are you ready to set your first One Week Challenge?
If you do so, don’t forget to tell me how it went :)
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About me: Girl, age 31. Working in an office daytime, drawing webcomics about social and environmental issues nighttime. See them here>>
You can also find me on Twitter>>
