How to succeed in any 30 days challenge
5 tips on how to stay consistent when you decide to challenge yourself to do something new for the next 30 days
Just try typing “30 days challenge” in the Medium home page search box. It may seem to you, that everyone is challenging themself to do (or to quit doing) something. I was scrolling for 7 minutes or so until I gave up :) There’s a bunch of compelling challenges you might want to find out about.
Why is it that popular?
People all over the world are challenging themselves to do something for 30 days in a row. Why? Because it’s the easiest way to try something new and see your progress.
During 30 days, you can observe real progress. You can decide if you want to go on, or maybe change direction. Finally, you discover something new or even get a new skill which will stay with you forever.
Think about something you always wanted to add to your life — and try it for the next 30 days.
I really love taking these short-term challenges to learn some new creative skill — doodling, inking, 3d modeling, pencil drawing, and my latest — comics creation. Since I challenge myself quite often, I know that it only sound easy -
Just go and do something for 30 days.
In fact, it requires a lot of efforts to remain consistent for a whole month, whatever you’re doing.
So I want to share some tips that can make it easier for you. Hope they’ll help you to learn something new in the next 30 days.
1. Set affordable tasks
When you just start learning a new skill, you’ll need a lot of time and efforts to fulfill even the easiest task. But for the first several days you may feel so excited that you’ll be ready to work days and nights.
This is a bad idea.
Do not run too fast.
Remember you have a long journey to go, and you’ll need to keep this excitement till the final destination.
You’d better proceed in small and affordable steps. Devote 20 minute, maximum 1 hour to your daily assignment, then come back to your routine. Smaller steps will help you to avoid burning out. You should stop at the moment when you still want to do more, and stick to that urge until the next day.
2. Just do it for one day
Do not think of a challenge as of 30 day doing the same things.
Just do something today.
Only one day — it’s more than easy.
Then repeat the next day.
And repeat again.
Repeat until you cross all the squares in your challenge calendar.
3. Keep a list of ideas
If you follow some popular challenge, there is often a prompt list which makes it easier to complete daily tasks since you don’t have to think what you will do next time. These prompts are very helpful, but they still only give you a direction.
And if you came up with your own challenge, it might be even more tough for you. You can get lost having no idea what to do next.
So before you start, take your time and try to think of 5–10 ideas of what you can do.
Soon you’ll notice that ideas keep coming across you.
Do not let them go!
Write them down as soon as they sparkle in your brain.
Keep a list of your ideas.
Put them aside. Digest them. Then take a look on your list again. You’ll definitely reject some of them, but you’ll still have a lot to work with.
David Daneman in his podcast about web comic call these ideas seeds.
I like thinking of them this way — some thought is planted in your imagination, and in a while something can grow out of it.
My comics are based on real life situations, so I often fix situations happening to me during the day in the Notes App on my smartphone, and when I sit down to draw a new strip, I just scroll through my list and select the idea that I like the most. It saves me a lot of time and I never have to create comics out of thin air.
4. Stop halfway through
Austin Kleon in his book ‘Still Like an Artist’ mentions that Ernest Hemingway stopped writing every evening in the end of the sentence to know where to start from the next day. He calls this method ‘light one from the other’.
The idea is simple. To know where to start the next day of you challenge, just leave what you’re currently working on unfinished. Then the next day it will be much easier for you to set to work.
Have you ever made a decision to start jogging every morning? When it comes to actually running, you’re very difficult to go out of your house and start. But in fact, getting out of house is the only thing you have to do for start.
Sometimes I draw a comic page and do not color until the next day. So the next day I have to start with coloring yesterday’s page. Coloring is the easiest step in the entire comic creating process, so I do not have much inner resistance. I just sit down and start. And in some time I notice I already cannot stop as I’m already absorbed with the process.
So if you have problems with challenging yourself consistently, leave your today’s work unfinished so that tomorrow you could start at the same point.
5. Give a promise
Success coaches and gurus often recommend to give a public promise to do something if you really want to succeed in consistent doing it for a long time.
You can claim your promise in your Facebook page:
“Dear friends, I’m going to read 30 books in the next 30 days, and I’ll report you my progress daily”.
Or you can tell your nearest friends that you give up smoking and ask them to supervise you for a month.
I didn’t do any of these.
When I decided to take my 30 days comics drawing challenge, I created a Facebook group and invited there both my friend and people I didn’t know. It was like an undeclared promise, as a group was something more than just a personal page, and I felt as if I had some commitments before people who supported me. So I couldn’t even think about quitting.
I believe that external motivation is crucial.
Our brain is a strange thing. It’s always trying to find the way to do less work. But when you feel a pressure of external obligation, you’re more unlikely to give up halfway.
So find what works better for you, and give a promise to finish the challenge.
Of course, there’s no recipe good for all purpose. When you start your challenge, you’ll find your own methods to stay consistent. Or maybe it will worth nothing for you to keep going for just 30 days.
And now just think of a skill you want to have — and take your challenge! Not tomorrow, not Monday — start today.
Today is a perfect day to start.
Here’s a bonus comic strip for you:)
Thanks for reading and I’ll be happy if you join me in this journey. I post comics daily:
- In English — Sasha’s comics on Instagram
- In Ukrainian — Sasha’s comics on Facebook
- and in Russian — Telegram channel for Sasha’s comics
Follow me here on Medium, too. I’ll keep updating my story and share my discoveries and insights.
