Checking In
A Year of Monthly Challenges
Since this month’s entry was pretty concise, I wanted to pause and write a little bit about how the monthly challenge thing has been going in general — which habits I’ve been retaining, which I haven’t and how the practice has spilled into other aspects of my life.
The Habits
I’m four months in, and while I haven’t kept up the daily cadence of any of my first three challenges, some of them have left me with new tools and tendencies.
During Month #3, I wrote a journal entry every day about whatever I wanted. A handful of these manifested as what I call “book reports,” or quick personal write-ups of a book or article I’d read. These were great for encouraging me to think critically and retain information. Since that challenge ended, I’ve written two of these, and I’m keeping a list of a few more to write in the coming weeks.
One challenge I never intended to keep up was the daily lunch-dates of Month #1. My hope was to make an ongoing habit of scheduling one or two lunches per week. That hasn’t really happened, partly because I started bringing lunch to work instead of going to the cafeteria or a restaurant. What I have noticed is an increase in my impromptu conversations around the office. I’m finding myself a little more likely to sit down next to someone I don’t really know and strike up a conversation.
The only challenge I really haven’t continued at all is designing for pleasure. I just didn’t really find pleasure in designing without a problem or a goal. But this was also a valuable discovery; I still want to find opportunities to design in new and different ecosystems, but now I know that I’ll do it best through projects that are meaningful to me, like TEDxSoMa or The App Cookbook.
The Ripple
Aside from doing the challenges themselves, the process of identifying an area of improvement, making a plan and sticking with it (at least most of the time) has actually yielded cascading benefits in other areas of my life. I’ve been more aware, more disciplined and more active in working toward non-challenge-goals.
For example, I’d wanted to find a local volunteer-teaching gig for a while. I used to teach SAT classes, and always loved getting to know the students and learning and growing along with them. I found out about MissionBit over a year ago, but never got involved because they didn’t seem to have any teaching opportunities for non-developers. This month, I decided to try it again. It turns out there’s a basic web-programming class where I can help out as a classroom assistant. I might have to brush up on some basic Javascript to keep up with the kids, but hey…that sounds like a fun challenge! I start next week.
I’ve also been reading more. I signed up for Audible, which has made it really easy to get through books while walking, commuting or even working out. Between audiobooks and hard copies, I’m trying to get through two books per month, which is a whole lot more than I’d been doing before.
I’m also cooking for myself on the weekends and eating more deliberately in general!
So, even with time dedicated to the challenges I’m documenting here, I’ve noticed these other areas of my life where I’ve been making unstructured, casual improvements. The overall change in mindset isn’t something I had really considered before starting this year of challenges, but it’s feeling like it might actually be the most valuable takeaway.
