How Not to Fail a 30-Day Challenge

On the 26th August 2019, I set myself a 30-day travel writing challenge. Here I am, 56 days later, completing it. I don’t consider it a complete fail because I got to the finish line – eventually – despite the three key mistakes that I made along the way.

What is a 30-Day Challenge?

A 30-day challenge is a strategy for developing a new habit. It’s an opportunity to stay motivated through self-discipline. It’s a plan for overcoming fears and developing inner confidence. It’s a short-term experiment that is absolutely doable… unless you’re me, and you fail to think it through properly.

Why I set myself a 30-Day Writing Challenge

Sometimes, you just need to give yourself a kick up the a** to set things in motion or get back on track. We all have our own reasons for setting ourselves a 30-day challenge; here were mine:

• I had been telling myself that I would write about my travels – for years; I had even built this little website for that purpose. But then I avoided it. I let life get in the way and, like many of us, just never got around to doing anything about it.
• I wanted a space to talk about all things travel and express a bit of creativity through photography and words. I knew that sharing it in a public space would help me to evolve and grow because there’s so many things you learn when you challenge yourself.
• To be very honest, I also wanted a quick way to respond to people who were asking for tips for upcoming trips. Copying and pasting a link, rather than trawling back through memories and messages to regurgitate the same info is so much quicker… and a lot easier to digest than my rambling, overly enthusiastic messages (if you’ve been on the receiving end of one of these messages, you know exactly what I mean).

How not to fail a 30-day challenge

My 30-day writing challenge took me 56 days to complete. In short, I went about it all wrong. Here are 3 things you can do to ensure that you successfully complete your 30-day challenge:

1. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. Set a realistic and quantifiable goal. For example, if you’re setting yourself a fitness challenge, the goal is not “to finally get fit”; the goal might be to “go to the park across the road and exercise for 30 minutes every day for 30 days” – increased fitness is the welcomed by-product of the action.
2. Create time. Time can often be hard to find, especially in the chaos of our everyday lives when it constantly seems to be in short supply. If you want to complete a 30-day challenge then you need to make time for it. Be realistic with yourself: how much time are you willing to set aside in order to prioritise your goal? Why not take 30 minutes of the time you spend on social media or in front of the TV and substitute it with 30 minutes of dedication to your challenge? Whether it is 30 minutes or one hour, stick to it.
3. Choose your rhythm. We can all start a day feeling motivated and ready to achieve goals, but life – and the mind – has this ability to throw us off track. If you like to get things out of the way, allocate a morning slot to your challenge before your mind gets side-tracked with everything else you ‘need’ to do that day. It’s always good to feel a sense of achievement at the start of a day because you take the positivity and energy forward with you. Scheduling specific time slots into your day will help you to build consistency and routine; be accountable for ensuring you make your challenge a priority.

So, where did I go wrong? Well, I failed to do all three of the above. I decided to set myself the challenge of writing ‘something’ every day for 30 days. The problem arose from the fact that I had never intended to just “write something“.

Seemingly, what I had meant when I vocalised this challenge was that I wanted to write 30 articles for my website. This meant – to the perfectionist in me – that I would create 30 articles with selected photographs from various destinations that I have travelled to. This also meant – to the storyteller in me – that sometimes these articles would consist of thousands of words, drawing on experiences and articulating my travel musings. You see the problem here, right?

• No quantifiable boundaries in terms of time – or words. When a goal is endless, you’ve already failed.
• The additional (and unnecessary) pressure of trawling through hard-drives of disorganised travel photos… and then editing them.
• Fact-checking the blotchy names of places and companies that I had wanted to mention in the articles.
• Working through unexpected technical glitches because it wasn’t the easy ‘pen and paper’ option that I could have gone for.
• Flying off to visit new places and friends for 3 weeks of the 30 days.

The list goes on. I had, in hindsight, set myself up for nothing but failure. These were mistakes that I actually realised on day two (when I was already off-track), but I was mentally invested at that stage, so I told myself that I would trudge on and embrace the learnings… no matter how long it took.

What I learned from my 30-day challenge

30-day challenges are great for kick-starting progress in any aspect of your life. A 30-day challenge that revolves around writing or self-expression, however, can be tough… especially if you pride yourself on being a creative soul. There’s a lot of overthinking involved and, unlike forcing yourself to the gym for exactly 30 minutes, you can’t always force yourself into a creative mindset. Even if you’re an Editor, writing for yourself rather than a brand, can bring about feelings of vulnerability. Here are my three key takeaways from my 30-day writing challenge:

1. There will always be people who judge you. Just remember that judgment stems from fear itself – from people being uncomfortable with their own being and projecting those insecurities onto you. There will be some friends who will silently watch everything you do, but they’ll never be happy for you… and sometimes, unfortunately, you’ll hear that back through others. Remember that this is a reflection of themselves, not you. Get past it – stop caring.
2. There will always be people who support you, too. For every one person who passes judgement, there will be another 50 kind-hearted souls who support you. You will be pleasantly surprised and encouraged by the people who take time out of their day to read, share, message or pick up the phone to say something positive… some of whom you don’t even know on a personal level. And that’s the kind of kindness we all need to bring to the table of life.
3. The first few days will seem like a chore. Completing 30 days of anything will seem like an uphill struggle, but it gets easier. When you take that first step, you break through a barrier and overcome an obstacle that has been holding you back: that obstacle is often fear or self-criticism. Procrastination can often make your passion seem like a chore, but once you get through the first few days, you will start to feel inspired again. It’s then that you start to look forward to the challenge because you realise that you can’t make progress or evolve if you don’t start something in the first place.

Once you let go of fear, judgement and self-criticisms, you’ll start to focus on your journey of progress and you’ll develop an inner confidence, alongside a new, healthy habit.

Pay it forward: the next time you see or hear of a friend who has set themselves a 30-day challenge, know that they are trying to overcome an obstacle, to better themselves in some way, to build new habits; maybe, they’re simply trying something new. Ping them a quick message, support their journey and wish them well. Be happy for them.