I love 30 day challenges. A 30-day challenge really hits the sweet spot between difficulty and rate of progress. If a challenge becomes too long it starts to feel like a chore. But if it becomes too short the progress can be unimpressive. No matter how good you are at learning things, you do need to “sleep on it” and let the lessons intergrate across time. I am a big fan of 30-day challenges, and even helped to create an entire spiritual obstacle course on this premise called 30 Challenges to Enlightenment. Almost 3,000 people have embarked on this ardous course, which shows the power of a 30-day challenge. But for all the benefits you can get from such a challenge, there are traps. The idea is that while it is good to try new things and challenge ourselves, it is foolish to be doing this all the way to your death. At some point it is wise to go all in with something and commit to a path of mastery or at the very least excellence. This doesn’t mean an lifetime of practice though. John Danaher, the Brazilian Jiujitsu and MMA coach of UFC champion George St-Pierre and ADCC double champion Gordon Ryan believes that it takes around 5 years to become world class at something if you apply yourself optimally. And the Buddha himself said that it would take a maximum of 7 years to achieve Awakening with the right training. If you look at the life of polymath Leonardo da Vinci you’ll see that he went through periods of intense study alternating topics every five years or so. He wasn’t always studying everything all at once and made a great point when he said: “As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.” So often I have seen people mess up their 30-day challenges because their mindset is all wrong. Here are some common pitfalls I’ve noticed: They act as if their 30-day challenge will last forever
They half commit to their 30-day challenge
They do multiple 30-day challenges at the same time
They don’t prepare for the challenge To get the most out of your challenge, you only commit to 30 days and no longer.
Researcher and author Gabriele Oettingen discovered that when people think realistically about the obstacles that prevent them from achieving their goals they are more likely to achieve them. She developed what she calls the "WOOP technique" to systematize her approach to working with a goal. Here's how it works:
W — State your wish O — State your desired outcome O — State the potential obstacles that will prevent you from getting this outcome P — State your plan for attaining your wish based on the prior answers
Jon Brooks