30-Day Challenges
The easiest tasks, of course, are the routine ones. Putting on my socks. Brushing my teeth. Making tea. I know the steps involved and I can do them without thinking. Often, we want to make a new behavior a routine, but doing it just once is hard enough as it is. Exercising daily. Avoiding sweets. Spending more time with family and friends. Such routine habits are the substance of most New Year’s resolutions. We wish we had better habits than we do, but we aren’t sure how to make that happen.
If you want to develop a new habit, I strongly recommend you complete a 30-day challenge. Commit yourself to doing this behavior for 30 days. Tell your friends and family you are going to do it. Post your successes and failures where everyone can see them (e.g., Facebook or the refrigerator door). At the end of 30 days, tell everyone how you did.
I recommend you start with something simple. My first 30-day challenge was to pet our cat Loki every day. Before I started, I established the ground rules with my husband. I had to pet him for a full minute. In addition, I had to seek out the cat: it didn’t count if the cat came up to me to be petted.
Even though patting the cat seemed easy – I was already capable of doing this any time I wanted – doing this for 30 days in a row was harder than I thought it would be. For the first few days, I tracked down the cat wherever he was sleeping and petted him for a minute. After about a week, though, Loki sought me out. When I came home from UNLV, he came to greet me. I certainly petted him, but that didn’t count for the 30-day challenge. I had to seek him out later on, when he wasn’t with me. By the end of the month, this 30-day challenge transformed our relationship. Before the challenge, Loki and I mostly ignored each other. After the challenge, we had an affectionate relationship. I strongly recommend this type of challenge for anyone who wants to improve their relationship with their cat!
But 30-day challenges are useful for much more than just improving your relationship with a pet. It takes roughly 30 days to build a habit. Therefore, you can use a 30-day challenge to build any habit you want to do on a daily basis. I have used 30-day challenges to increase my exercise, improve my sleep, and improve my diet. I recommend you start with a very simple challenge (flossing at night, hugging your family, or putting your shoes in the closet when you get home). Build your way up to more difficult challenges over time.
Ideas for 30-day challenges abound. Here’s one list:
http://thoughtbrick.com/lifestyle/hundred-30-day-challenge-ideas/
Pick something that looks both interesting and fun. Soon you’ll find you’ve learned the essential skills needed for a 30-day challenge: keeping track of progress, motivating yourself to get started, and pushing through the tough days. As you complete one challenge after another, think how these challenges can help you transform bad habits into good routines and bring you closer to your ideal life. You can do it, one day at a time, 30 days at a time.
Kimberly A. Barchard is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at UNLV and is the Director of the Interactive Measurement Group. She works to empower lab members to accomplish their personal and professional goals, particularly through the development of leadership, research, and organizational skills.