Make drastic change in your life by setting 2-4 week challenges
Things can change much faster than we expect. But most of the time, we never stay consistent enough to see the outcome.
Brook Slagle • 2023-12-10
yo brook here.
Things can change much faster than we expect.
But most of the time, we never stay consistent enough to see the outcome.
Let’s take fitness for example.
It takes ~1 month of any type of training to see a difference.
I set myself a challenge to crawl around on all four’s every day for a month straight.
At the end of the 30-day challenge, I had doubled my dip rep person record, increased my handstand hold time, and gained mobility in my lower body. All of which I didn’t directly train more than once a week.
On top of that, you can guarantee that I got better at moving on all four’s.
These changes came much faster than most expect, only 30 days. It just required me to show up every day.
It wouldn’t have happened without the challenge.
I wouldn’t have showed up, every. single. day. without the voice in the back of my head saying “do it, or you fail the challenge”.
I do this constantly.
If there is something in my life that I want to see change in… I set myself a challenge.
Currently, I am doing this with my dental care.
For the longest time, I neglected my dental health, and it has costed me.
I see this as a position for change, and now I am giving myself a challenge: complete a daily dental regimen, morning and night, for two weeks straight.
Without going into specifics, it is much more “strict” than I have ever been before in my life.
There is a caveat to this…
I formed a pact with my partner.
If I FAIL to complete the challenge, I must give them $300.
This is what forces me showing up every day. This is the fire under my ass that will keep me from failing this challenge.
Am I willing to give them the money? Yes. Do I want to? FUCK NO.
Why go through all of this?
To see change.
I believe that 2-3 week challenges are the key to growth.
The benefits/drawbacks of most things become clear after about 2-4 weeks… It puts you in a position to ask yourself:
“Did it work?”
more often then not, it will work if you stuck through to the end
And if it didn’t work, then why?
Were you doing the wrong thing? Maybe. Iterate then.
My goal with this challenge is to improve my dental health. After two weeks I can look at obvious markers of success like:
Do my gums hurt when flossing?
Are my teeth cleaner?
How is my sensitivity to hot/cold things?
And after reconciling with these markers of success, I can determine if I should continue with my regimen or not.
The hard part is choosing the right thing to do for your challenge, and what to do to keep yourself committed.
Here are a couple of my suggestions:
Make it possible to do daily
Habits and challenges are much easier to do when it’s done daily. And make it reasonable.
good examples:
A movement practice.
Daily resistance training
Track calories daily
10 pages of reading every day
30 mins of writing daily
Whole foods daily
bad examples:
heavy as fuck back squats daily
Write 10 blog posts daily
Full carnivore diet when you have limited control over the food in your house
Make it incredibly painful to fail
My method of preventing myself from failing is teaming up with someone to hold me accountable.
And if I fail, I give them a painful amount of money. This leverages our psychology. How we perceive loss.
Humans are immensely risk-adverse. We don’t want to lose what we already have. Money is a fantastic proxy for this, but you can do this with other possessions.
Use your favorite baseball card and say that you will give it to your best friend if you fail your cold plunge challenge.
The thing doesn’t really matter… it only has to be painful to lose.
Raise your personal stakes and make failing it risky.**
Make it more painful to fail than it is to complete the challenge.
Here is the structure
Challenge:
1. <insert thing here> daily for x days.
2. If failed: Do y.
Some ideas for you:
Challenge: 1. Sit in a deep squat for 1 minute daily for 30 days. 2. If failed: give friend $250 dollars
Challenge: 1. Journal 200 words daily for 21 days. 2. If failed: have a friend share their most embarrassing story about you on Twitter.
Challenge: 1. Make bed daily for 14 days. 2. If failed: give bed to friend and sleep on the floor.
Okay, maybe that last one is a bit drastic, but that is the point! It would suck to sleep on the floor. I would rather make my damn bed for 14 days!
Just remember two things:
Do it daily.
and
Make it painful to fail.
At the end of these, you often find yourself in a great position to form these “challenges” as a habit, too.
When implemented correctly, doing 2-4 week challenges can change your life, often faster than you might expect.
And done over a long enough time horizon with enough things, you might just find yourself 10x the person you were before you challenged yourself that initial time.
As always…
KEEP GOING
B.S.