Month #1: Lunching with a different person every day

A Year of Monthly Challenges

Last month, my goal was to share a meal, a drink, a coffee, etc, with a different person every day. Here’s how it went:

Successes

• Became noticeably more comfortable spending time alone with new people. My daily “lunches” became relaxing and pleasurable rather than daunting.
• Realized that it’s usually easy to fill 30–60 minutes with natural conversation, but if it isn’t, that’s fine. Between close friends, conversations aren’t always lively or insightful. When you feel really comfortable with someone, they don’t have to be. I started to view spending time with new friends a little more like I do with old ones.
• Got to know a lot of people around the office. I almost immediately started noticing some cool passive effects of the challenge; I was having more spontaneous conversations in the kitchen and the hallways. I even inspired two co-workers to start scheduling lunches of their own.
• Got better at listening first. I realized that when I was driving conversations, I often tended to talk about the same few things that were occupying my mind. I was having similar conversations with different people. By waiting (you don’t scare me anymore, silence!) for the other person to set the tone and subject, I found myself getting a lot more out of the conversations.

Failures

• Failed to meet my goal of 31 lunches this month. Faced with some last-minute rescheduling and back-to-back meetings, I slipped up and missed three days (all in one week). With better planning or more conviction, I could have made it to 31.
• Didn’t push far enough outside my comfort zone. I didn’t have lunch with anyone substanially more senior than me, anyone who I wasn’t already relatively friendly with, or anyone that I was really especially nervous to talk to.

What’s next?

• I don’t think I’ll be keeping up the daily lunches, but now that I’m in the habit, I’ll definitely continue to reach out and/or catch up more frequently.

Month #2: Design something every day (and stop eating dessert)

Next month’s challenge has two unrelated parts:

1. Design something every day

Each day, I’ll either complete a challenge from dailyui.co, or come up with one of my own. The goal is to improve my visual design skills and create opportunities to experiment with new elements and palettes without systematic constraints.

2. Stop eating dessert (except for Thanksgiving)

Things have gotten bad. My sweet tooth has taken over. I‘m using this month* to break the habit. What counts as a dessert? I know it when I see it, but in my mind there are two main criteria, either of which makes something a dessert:

• It is obviously a dessert (cake, sour patch kids, ice cream)
• It is something that I crave right after eating a meal (kettle corn, peanut butter pretzels)

*I’m giving myself two free passes, November 24th and 25th. Because Thanksgiving.

**One notable exception I’m making is fruit. Shut up. I understand that fruit also has lots of sugar, but I’m really not worried about an apple problem. I’m worried about a dessert problem. One thing at a time (well, two things this month, I guess).

Next blog entry to be posted on December 1st.