Personal Challenges as a Means for Self-Improvement
I recently watched the 2009 film Julie and Julia starring Amy Adams (Julie) and Meryl Streep (Julia). Julie is an aspiring writer who challenges herself to blog about cooking 524 recipes in 365 days from Julia Child’s cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
As someone who blogs and loves food, I was inspired by the movie. It got me thinking about the positive impact a personal challenge can have on skill development.
I think people often don’t improve at the things they want to because they seem too daunting. We’d rather get the result and skip the process instead of put in the work.
If you’re serious about getting better at X, you need to have a plan. In its most basic form, that plan should involve practicing X at a certain frequency. The more often you work on X, the better you will get.
When trying to improve at something, don’t worry about becoming word class at it one day. Instead, think about how you can challenge yourself in the short term to help you get a little bit better.
While you certainly can come up with an idea that takes you a year to accomplish like Julie did in the movie, you don’t have to begin so ambitiously. I think doing X once a day for 30 straight days is a much more reasonable starting point.
Here’s a simple framework that can help you design your own personal challenge to get better at X:
1. Brainstorm ideas.
Ask yourself what habits, skills, traits, etc. you want to improve, learn, or do more of. Write down everything that comes to mind. If you’ve been paying attention to your internal dialogue, some of these things should be obvious.
Here’s a sample of my ideas: writing, reading books, cooking, cocktail making, working out, networking, and making hip hop beats. Yes, I get down with rap if you didn’t know that about me
2. Pick at least one thing to improve upon.
Prioritize your list of ideas. I would recommend picking one to ensure that you start small. If you want to do more than that, go for it, but it’s going to be harder.
Since I love writing most, I am going to choose that.
3. Get specific.
Answer the following questions:
- How can I get creative with X? Or do I want to keep X more simple?
For example, I can try writing an e-book about something over the course of 30 days or I can just focus on publishing a piece of writing every day for 30 days.
- Does getting better at X require research before I begin?
- What does success look like each day? At the end of the challenge?
- How many days am I going to do X for?
4. Establish accountability.
The easiest thing to do is ask your best friend or significant other to check in with you every day to see if you’ve done X.
You could also publicly declare something on social media if you’re comfortable with that. If you’re really serious, you can join stickK and put money on the line.
5. Start.
Today is Day 1 of your personal challenge. Go! What are you waiting for?
For the next 30 days, I am going to challenge myself to publish one blog post every day about the topic of my choice.
What is your challenge going to be? Let me know in the comments.
#Day1of30
