The Incredible Power of the 30 Day Challenge

30 Day Challenges – A Better Way to Do 75 Hard

When I started doing 30 day challenges back in 2017, I thought it would be a cool little practice that I could use to create good habits. Maybe I would pick up some healthy habits like flossing or meditating. I liked how clear-cut and easy to follow it was and thought it could be a small strategy to add to my repertoire of “self help stuff”.

Well, it became so much more than that.

I started doing 30 day challenges and, well, my life almost immediately improved. Things started going really well, like better than they had in years. I started reaching levels of productivity that I didn’t think were possible.

I kept adding more habits/activities/goals into my 30 day challenge world and noticed that I was crushing almost everything I put my mind to. What was going on?

At a certain point I realized two crucial truths about this method:

Note: For more background, read past this section. Hear how I got started with 30 day challenges and the ridiculous benefits of doing them.

Here’s how you can immediately get started with implementing 30 day challenges into your daily life. The steps we will take are:

1. Choosing Your First Challenge
2. Setting Up Your Tracking
3. Joining a Community/Establishing Accountability
4. Beginning!

The best way to follow this list is actually to download our 30 Day Challenge Starter Pack. It will provide all of the documentation and tools you need to follow this list and get started the right way.

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1) Choosing Your First Challenge

The best way to follow this list is actually to download our 30 Day Challenge Starter Pack. It will provide all of the documentation and tools you need to follow this list and get started the right way.

Now, most people would probably tell you to simply go to a list of “30 Day Challenge Ideas” and pick one that looks good. That’s not what we’re going to do.

Instead, I want you to answer this question right now: What change do you want to make in your life?

What came to your mind FIRST? Don’t pick the 2nd or 3rd thing that came into your mind because those are things that are likely too easy or too off-base from the change you really need to make. The first thing that you thought of is likely the most pressing issue that you should address.

I just answered the question as well and came up with a new challenge that I’ll start today: Honoring My Commitment. I have gotten a little wishy-washy when it comes to following through with things I’ve committed to. Often I would rather write for this blog or do something on my computer than go to a meeting or fulfill a duty. And that’s not a great strategy for life. So I’m going to commit to honoring every commitment I have, every day for 30 days. What’s your new habit?

Write it down. Write it somewhere in big, bold print. Not on your computer. On a piece of paper, preferably on the Statement of Intent page of the Starter Pack! But if you don’t want to download that than you can write it somewhere else.

2) Setting Up Tracking

As mentioned earlier, it’s very important to track your habit. You have a few choices here:

• Calendar, which is included in our Starter Pack
• Habit Building App (see Recommended Habit Building Apps post)
• DIY: Piece of Paper with 30 Boxes on It

Do whichever option fits you best, it really doesn’t matter so long as you are tracking in some way. I personally like the habit building app “Done” but have also used calendars in the past!

Put the name of the habit somewhere on your tracker and then set it somewhere in VERY PLAIN VIEW. Somewhere you’ll see it multiple times a day. Somewhere it will stare you in the face intensely. I like to put mine on the wall above my desk so I can always see it.

Alright, tracking all set up? Let’s move on.

3) Community/Accountability

This step is necessary. We haven’t mentioned it before and it could be easy to overlook it, but it’s incredibly important to strengthen the system. You need some form of accountability. Someone needs to know the journey you’re undertaking. They don’t even necessarily have to ask you about it or police you. They just need to know.

Here are some ideas for generating accountability:

• Accountabilibuddy (I think this term is so funny) — Somebody who is also working on a 30 day challenge or some form of self-improvement project
• Facebook Group — Our “30 Day Challengers” FB group is a great community of people all working on 30 day challenges. Post your issues, your successes, your failures, or anything you want. Connect with others who are improving their lives. It’s an incredible resource for maintaining a sense of community and accountability around your new challenge.
• Posting on Social Media — This is an interesting one. When I quit sugar, I posted about it on social media about 9 days into it. It got a ton of likes and comments. There was no way I was going to eat sugar for at least another 21 days. I made that post about 2 years ago and people that I haven’t seen in a while STILL ask me if I am off sugar. It requires a lot of vulnerability but it’s an extremely powerful way to hold yourself accountable.
• Telling Family and Friends — Simply telling 3 or more people in your life about your 30 day challenge is a good way to add some accountability. Tell your mom, your partner and one of your friends. Chances are they will check in and keep you honest. Plus, just knowing that they know what you’re doing will help keep you from slipping.

4) Begin!

This part is simultaneously the easiest and hardest part of the 30 day challenge system. There is nothing complicated about it, it’s just hard to do.

My advice? Begin right now. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Get that first X on your calendar or check-mark on your Habit app today. The only exception is if you are trying to break a habit and have already done it today. Or if it’s like 11:59pm. Otherwise, get it done!! You will start your journey off with a huge amount of momentum and confidence.

 

My 30 Day Challenge Journey

Let me take you back to late 2016. I was 26 at the time, in the midst of a pretty big life transition. I had sold my online business and decided to return to school (I know, this is a little bit backward from the typical entrepreneur journey).

Now that I wasn’t working, my life became a bit of a low-structure free-for-all. In other words, I was a mess. I would wake up anywhere between 10am and 5pm (yes, seriously). I ate horribly shitty food (especially sugar) from the time I woke up to…the time I woke up again. Yes, I would even eat in the middle of the night! I was pretty poor at getting things done. My mind would race whenever I sat down at the computer to do homework or try to build another business. I didn’t read. I watched a ridiculous amount of Netflix. I was addicted to playing NBA 2K on my Playstation. I was, for lack of a better phrase, spinning my tires in the mud.

I simply didn’t know how to live life to my maximum potential. I let impulses, laziness, and the pursuit of instant gratification get in the way of anything goal I wanted to accomplish.

Then, everything changed.

I don’t know where I first heard about the idea of doing a 30 day challenge. It may have been from somebody on Youtube. It may have been from a book. I’m really not sure. But I decided that 30 day challenges seemed like a nice, simple way to try and pull myself out of this rut that I was wasting away in.

 

My First 30 Day Challenge

I remember my first 30 day challenge vividly. I was sitting on a couch in my apartment, scrolling through Instagram. I saw some acquaintances all hanging out together and having a blast. I was, well, sitting at home in my apartment. I got instant FOMO. I was jealous. I immediately nosedived into a terrible mood. Why did this app have such control over the way I felt? Without thinking, I deleted the app. I blocked Facebook on all of my browsers. I was done with social media.

I’d been intrigued for a while by the idea of doing something (or in this case not doing something) every day for 30 days. This was the perfect opportunity to do it.

At this point I didn’t have any plan to track my activity to make sure I got to 30 days. No calendar, no X-chain, no apps, no list to make check marks on. I just had a goal of not doing this for 30 days. And…I did it!

I ultimately had an incredible 30 days. I was more productive because I spent less time on social media. I started to care less about what other people were doing and began to focus inward on what I was doing and how I was feeling. It was an incredible shift.

I realized that committing to something for 30 days is an incredible way to make sure that you follow through on something. I wanted to make this a part of my life. And so I began to do 30 day challenges with more regularity.

The Challenges that Followed

The next challenge that I did was not eating sweets for 30 days. This was even more impactful than swearing off social media! Sugar was something that I simply had zero control over. Ever since I was a kid raiding the candy cupboard, my sweet tooth has been a thorn in my side. But turning one of my biggest weaknesses into a 30 day challenge shifted the entire way that I looked at myself. I started to gain confidence in my ability to accomplish anything.

And thus the 30 day challenge journey really began.

Here are some of the 30 day challenges that I’ve completed since then:

• Quitting Smoking
• Daily Online Dating Effort
• Meditating
• Writing 1 Blog Post Per Day
• Keto Diet
• Calorie Deficit Every Day
• 50 Pull-Ups and 100 Push-Ups
• Working on a Book Every Day (I finished it!)
• Drinking a Gallon of Water a Day
• Journal Every Day
• Cleaning Room Every Day
• Morning Routine
• (Add More)

Here are the 30 day challenges I’m working on now:

• Caloric Deficit (again)
• 3 Hours of Deep Work per day
• Exercising 3 Times Per Week (have to start somewhere)
• 10 Internship Applications Per Week
• Doing Something That Scares Me 5x Per Week
• Flossing Every Night
• Read 30 Books in 2020
• Walk 4x Per Week
• Reading Academic Journals 4 Times Per Week

As you can see, some of these aren’t every single day challenges. There’s no way I could do one thing that scares me every single day. I would be living in a nightmare! I’ve found that these not-every-day challenges require more attention than the every day ones because there’s no flow to them. We’ll talk more about this later!

Why You Should Try It

Alright, I’m going to get right to the point here. You should start integrating 30 day challenges into your life. Whether you are a mess like I was a few years ago or an already put-together person, this way of life can change the way you experience life on a fundamental level.

Let’s delve into the reasons that 30 day challenges are so powerful.

Don’t Break the Chain

There is something so powerful about tangible, visual goals. There is something so powerful about seeing your progress clearly marked out and in plain sight. There is something so satisfying about crossing things out after you do them. The 30 day challenge is powerful because it combines all of these elements.

When you have a visual representation of what you’re trying to accomplish (a calendar, graphic, app or some other way to track your progress), it improves your willingness tremendously. The thought of adding another day to your chain motivates you. The fear of breaking the chain and having to start again motivates you. The constant reminder of your progress motivates you.

The idea of the chain is perhaps the most important thing about the 30 day challenge.

 

Competition Against Yourself

Humans thrive on competition. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself an uncompetitive person or if you fly off the handle while playing Go Fish — if you’re human, competition will pull you higher and push you relentlessly toward your goals.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem that a 30 days challenge involves any real competition. But it does. You’re competing against yourself. Your present self is competing against your past self for control of your future self. Your past self wants to sabotage your journey, to keep you in habits and lifestyle that keep you grounded and complacent. Your current self is battling back, using the confines of the challenge to push boundaries and fight for progress.

Not only that, there is also an element of keeping score within a 30 day challenge. The calendar or app where you mark your progress is the scoreboard. To win is to continue making marks, to stretch the chain to the finish line. To lose is not make your mark for that day and have to start again. Knowing this, your competitive nature will always drive you to finish out the day successfully. You don’t want to lose. No one wants to lose. You’ll experience this when it’s 10pm at night and you haven’t completed some aspect of the challenge. Your brain will drag your tired body through the motions because it does not want to start over. It does not want to miss out on making that X on the calendar. Then you finish it, cross out the day and sleep like a baby. There is nothing more satisfying.

Growth and Self-Esteem

Perhaps the most underestimated benefit of doing the 30 day system is that you gain an incredible sense of “self-efficacy”. Self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to do things. As you make progress on various 30 day challenges, you will notice that you start to have true belief in your own ability. You realize you can grow and that the only limit is the pace that you grow at. You work on new challenges. You make progress daily. You add new habit after new habit. You’re excited for the next 30 days.

It’s this incredible cycle where you grow and improve yourself, which then gives you confidence to grow some more, which then leads to more improvement, which then leads to more confidence. Your confidence and growth feed off of each other and lead to a version of you that you might have never thought was possible.

This is what happened to me. And it will happen to you too if you simply start with 1 30 day challenge!

More Reasons To Try It

I never really intended to start a blog about 30 day challenges. It just sort of…happened. For that reason, I’m not really going to delve into other people’s reasoning for or experience in doing these types of challenges. I’m just going to jump right into why I personally think they are so effective.

Habit Formation

I’ve heard a few different numbers for how many days it takes to establish a new habit or break an existing one. I’ve seen 21, I’ve seen 28, I’ve heard 30, and I recently saw 40. But the thing is, I really can’t buy into the idea that forming a habit takes the same amount of days for every person. We are all so different when it comes to behavior, self-discipline, and motivation that it seems silly to try to assign an arbitrary time-frame to it. Not only that, but maintaining or breaking a habit requires more than just doing it for a set amount of time and then running on autopilot. You still have to put in some effort to keep any habit going. I don’t care if you’ve been smoke-free for 6 years, you are still only one rationalization away from being addicted again.

What I do know is that 30 days is a solid chunk of time that should, at the very least, set anyone up for success in establishing any habit. It’s enough to give you the true experience of what it’s like to practice this habit in your daily life. It’s enough to give you some serious momentum going forward. It’s enough to reveal the true benefits of implementing any habit. Basically…it’s enough.

30 days isn’t the ‘exact right amount of time to cement a habit in your brain’ but it is enough time.

One Day at a Time

This is actually one of the most well-known sayings in 12 step recovery programs, but it also applies perfectly to 30 day challenges. People in recovery use the “one day at a time” philosophy to anchor their perspective to the present moment. They don’t want to think about not being able to indulge in their addiction for the rest of their lives, that would be incredibly overwhelming. Instead, the idea is to focus on not drinking/using/overeating just for today. It essentially breaks an incredibly difficult lifestyle change into manageable chunks until they can start to fathom a life without it.

This is basically one of the main reasons why 30 day challenges are so effective. I’m not quitting sugar forever, I’m quitting it for 30 days. I’m not waking up at the same time for the rest of my life, just for 30 days.

Having an end date in mind may seem counterintuitive – if we are trying to establish healthy habits don’t we want to do them for more than 30 days? Well…yes. But the end date is not so much about the actual end of the challenge, it’s about the beginning. When we’re first implementing a new habit or breaking an old one, it’s challenging. Your conditioned brain is constantly telling you to give up. Depending on the challenge, your physical body may be experiencing difficulties adjusting. You’re simply not comfortable. But having an end date is essentially a release valve for the discomfort you’re experiencing. Knowing that the discomfort will end in a certain amount of days is often all it takes to keep you going through the hard times. And the discomfort will end, but because your body adjusted rather than because you reached the end date. I liken it to the feeling you get toward the end of an intense workout or a very involved project. When the end is in plain sight, it’s much easier to put aside the discomfort and finish strong.

 

Crossing Off Days

There is something supremely satisfying about marking things off. Whether it be to-do lists, countdowns, or 30 day challenge calendars, it’s just an exciting and satisfying action. It’s proof of your progress. It’s validation that you are on the right track. Especially in the beginning of a challenge, the thought of wanting to cross off the next date on your calendar is sometimes the only thing keeping you going.

There is actually an entire sub-culture of people who use “X’s” (crossing off boxes each day) to develop and maintain habits. The phenomenon is called the “X Effect”. There is even an entire subreddit devoted to it, full of people who are using it to implement all manner of habits into their daily lives.

Gamification may sound like some complex process being tested in a radioactive chemistry lab, but it’s actually way more fun than that. Gamification is really just the idea of turning things that aren’t games into games in order to improve them. While traditionally a marketing concept used to increase user engagement on websites and apps, it can be applied to literally anything. FitBit and other wearable devices are so successful because they turn exercise into a fun game. You try to get as many steps as possible, you try to beat your friends, etc. Mint and Personal Capital (personal finance apps) are so successful because they gamify your interaction with your expenses and budget. There are countless examples of using gamification to improve interaction and success of initiatives. If you really want to get inspired, check out this article about 10 inspiring cases of social gamification that helped improve our world.

30 day challenges turn implementing new habits into a game. It may not seem like a game in the traditional sense (who thinks making uncomfortable changes is fun?), but it is a game of sorts. We are on a 30-day level in a video game. We are competing not just against ourselves and our conditioned behaviors, but against those 30 empty boxes on the calendar. Each day, we put a little dent into the calendar. Each day we see improvements in our lives as a result of it. We get stronger, we put more dents into the calendar. Before you know it, you have completed the level. 30 boxes checked off. And you know what? That is a hell of a lot more exciting than beating any other kind of game.

The Ultimate Guide to 30 Day Challenges

30 day challenges are my favorite way to build or break a habit. They’re simple, they promote instant positive action, and they’re not overwhelmingly long. Obviously, as the creator of 30 Day Challenge Dude, I believe in the power of the 30 day challenge, but why should you? How can you leverage the power of the 30 day challenge to promote positive change in your own life? That’s what we’re here to talk about!

I love writing about my own experiences with 30 day challenges, but I believe the main goal of this blog is to spread the message that positive change in your life doesn’t have to be complicated. I want to enable everybody with the simple tools they need to start improving their habits and lifestyle. It’s as simple as setting a goal and taking action.

So let’s do this! Let’s get you started on your first 30 day challenge.

On this page, we’re going to teach you:

Step 1: Why 30 Day Challenges Are the Best Tool for Habit Formation

Step 2: How to Get Started with a 30 Day Challenge Today

Step 3: Rules and Guidelines for 30 Day Challenges

Step 4: Tips, Tricks, and Tools to Help You Be Successful

Are you ready for this?

Step 1: Understanding Why 30 Day Challenges Are So Effective

Before you start, I think it’s important to gain at least a basic understanding of why 30 day challenges are such a powerful tool. I firmly believe that understanding WHY you’re doing something helps keep you motivated and on track.

Instead of saying, “Oh yeah, I’m doing a 30 day challenge because this guy said it was a good idea,” you can say: “Yeah I’m doing a 30 day challenge because they are an effective way to build habits by gamifying the process, allowing me to focus on one day at a time, and tapping into my innate competitiveness.”

With that being said, you can find 6 reasons that 30 day challenges are so effective below. If you want more detailed explanations of each reason, be sure to check out my post on The Simple Power of the 30 Day Challenge.

Simplicity

I personally love 30 day challenges because they are so damn simple. Pick a habit. Set a start date. Set an end date 30 days after the start date. GO! Cross days off the calendar. Enjoy the positive changes.

It’s so simple. It doesn’t require any deep thinking about human behavior and psychology. With the amount of information we have access to today, it’s so easy to become inundated with information about how to improve yourself. You read and read. You take on more and more information. You start to read conflicting ideas and beliefs. You begin to feel a sense of overwhelm. You realize you’ll never be able to consume even 1% of all the information out there. Before you know it, you’re drowning in information. It all just becomes too much. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When I first started this blog, I was completely overwhelmed by all of the information out there. But what I have to keep reminding myself is that I don’t need all of that information. All I need is a plan. My plan is to enact positive change through 30 day challenges. I pick a habit. I do it for 30 days. Boom.

30 day challenges are action-based. What the self-improvement world often lacks is a call to action. We have endless ideas but not enough exercises or practical guides. So let’s keep it simple, yeah?

Habit Formation

Nobody really knows how long it takes to build or break a habit. What we do know is that 30 days is enough to give you massive momentum going forward. Maybe the new habit will be cemented in your brain after 30 days, maybe it will take more time. Regardless, doing it for 30 days is enough to show you the positive benefits of any habit and to give you confidence in your ability to keep doing it.

One Day at a Time

30 day challenges actually tap into one of the main philosophies of 12 step recovery groups. The idea is that, to avoid overwhelming yourself, you simply focus on today. You have to complete or avoid a certain habit today. You don’t have to worry about tomorrow or the next month, just complete the challenge for today and worry about tomorrow when it comes. This allows you to work on the new habit in bite-size chunks. You complete the challenge today, you cross today off your calendar. No need to complicate things!

Gamification

Gamification is the idea of turning everyday processes into games. This is what 30 day challenges do for habit formation. I view each 30 day challenge as a game. I’m trying to make 30 X’s on the calendar. I’m facing off against myself and my impulsivity in a game of self-improvement. Gamifying things is an easy way to shift toward a more positive perspective.

Crossing Off Days

There is something that is so freakin’ satisfying about crossing off days during a 30 day challenge. I currently have 5 challenges going, and every day I look forward to making those big X’s after completing them. If you’ve never done a 30 day challenge, you’re going to love this part.

Tapping Into Our Competitive Fire

I mentioned this a bit in the “gamification” section but 30 day challenges allow us to get competitive with ourselves. I view each challenge as a battle of my will and my desire to change against the part of my mind that wants to continue unhealthy behaviors. I am trying to do 100 push ups and 50 pull-ups per day. A part of my mind is always saying something like: “This is pointless. You don’t have time. You’re going to get sweaty.” But when I ignore those thoughts and just DO IT, I win. After completing all of the pushups and pull-ups, I feel a certain sense of victory. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to tap into your competitive fire and form/break habits.

Step 2: Pick a Habit and Start Your 30 Day Challenge

Alright, now that you understand the “why” of the 30 day challenge, it’s time to take action.

Before we start, I want you to think of what habit or behavior you most want to change in your life. Okay…go!

Have something? Okay, cool.

Now, I want you to think of the absolute first thing that popped into your mind when you read that last part. That should be the premise of your first 30 day challenge.  You may have come up with something else after ruminating on it for a while, but I implore you to do the first thing you thought about it.

Why? Because the first thing that popped into your head was likely the behavior the needs to be changed the most. It will likely be a difficult change. It’s something you probably don’t want to work on. On this flip side, this is likely a change that will bring immense positive change to your life. It’s a hard and fast rule that the difficulty of a 30 day challenge directly correlates to the positive effect it will have on your life.

When I first started this blog, what came to my mind was quitting sugar. I was a sugar maniac at that time. I was eating 40-80 grams of sugar…just when I was supposed to be sleeping! Never mind the pints of Ben and Jerrys, the cookies, and the soda. I was a man on fire for sugar…and it was awful. So my first 30 day challenge was to quit sugar. It sucked. I had really difficult cravings at first. But as the challenge progressed, I started feeling so much better. I was no longer reliant on sugar to make me feel fulfilled. I was no longer a slave to the sugar rush. Had I done a simpler 30 day challenge, like the aforementioned 100 pushups and 50 pull-ups, I don’t think I would have had the same growth that I had through quitting sugar.

The lesson in all this: make or break a habit that is holding you back! Pick the first thing that popped into your mind, I promise you will thank me later.

Let’s Start the Challenge!

Now it’s time to start. Take today’s date and search “30 days from today” on Google. The date that pops up is the end date for your 30 day challenge.

I will go over tips, tricks and tools to help you out in the last section. For now, just commit to making this change in your life for 30 days.

Step 3: Rules and Guidelines

When it comes to 30 day challenges, the rules and guidelines are pretty simple. Do or don’t do something for 30 days straight. However, I want to address what happens when you miss a day.

Missing day(s) of a 30 day challenge can throw off your entire challenge. Yes, it can curb your momentum, but it also gives your perfectionism a chance to kick in and wreak havoc. I personally failed my 2nd and 3rd challenges because I missed too many days and didn’t cut myself any slack.

To account for missed days, I like to separate 30 day challenges into two tiers: standard mode and hard mode.

After picking the habit you want to change in the last section, now you want to choose which mode you want to do. Read on for further explanation!

Standard Mode

Standard mode 30 day challenges allow for some missed days. There are really only 2 rules:

• You can’t miss more than 2 days per week
• You must do 30 days total. So if you miss a day, you tack it onto the end of the challenge

This is a happy medium that allows us some mistakes without letting us completely blow the challenge. I am personally doing “Standard Mode” for all of my current 5 challenges. I am super busy on the weekends and don’t get a chance to complete all challenges. And I’m okay with that! This way I get to have fun and still keep moving in a positive direction.

Hard Mode

Hard mode is pretty simple: If you miss a day, you start the 30 day challenge over. Hard mode will result in much faster change, but obviously it’s much harder to adhere to.

Why would anyone want to do hard mode? The main reason someone would choose hard mode is if the challenge involves addiction. When it comes to physically addictive behaviors, one mistake is a relapse and often negates all progress made so far. If you’re quitting smoking, you want to do hard mode. If you’re quitting caffeine, you want to do hard mode. If you’re trying to stop masturbating, you want to do hard mode. If you’re quitting drinking, you want to do hard mode.

Hard mode is also a great option if you want to truly challenge yourself! I did it for the “No Sugar” challenge and it was a great challenge with great results. I think if I had missed some days, I wouldn’t have felt as good as I did when the challenge was over.

Okay, did you choose a mode? Great!

Step 4: Tips, Tricks, and Tools

When it comes to 30 day challenges, you don’t need a ton of outside help. However, there are a few tips, tricks, and tools that I’ve found useful in my journey. Here they are!

30 Day Calendar (Printable)

The most important tool is a calendar to track your progress. I print out calendars for each and every challenge I’m doing. Proof:

These printable calendars are the best way to track your progress. I also think printing them out and having them in hard copy makes the challenge seem “more real” than just tracking it through an app.

So how do you create these printable calendars? A couple of ways.

If you don’t care about actual dates and just want a 30 day chart to cross off, Detoxinista makes a great one that you can find and print here.

If you want to track actual dates, than you can use a website called TimeandDate.com. I actually saved the settings to make a 30 day calendar. Here are the steps:

1. Go to this link.
2. Click “More Options”, then “Advanced Customization”
3. Go over to the 2nd tab labelled “Period”
4. Enter your Start and End dates
5. Click “Show Calendar”
6. Now you can print from this page, I also recommend that you bookmark this link so that you can create more 30 day calendars in the future.

It’s pretty easy to make these calendars and I believe they make all the difference in tracking and staying motivated.

Social Support

Another tool that I found extremely useful was using my social networks to hold myself accountable. When I quit sugar, I made a post on Medium about it and then posted that on my Facebook. Knowing that everybody I was friends with on Facebook knew about my declaration to not eat sugar for 30 days, I really wanted to succeed. The thought of having to tell people I failed after making such a big to-do about it was honestly a little terrifying.

If you’re comfortable with the idea, post about your 30 day challenge on Facebook. If not, tell a few friends who will help keep you accountable. Social support is a powerful tool when trying to make behavioral changes.

Get Into a Routine

The final tip I want to bring up is to get into a routine. Routine will help establish a time and place where you do this new habit. It can also help establish alternatives to a habit you are trying to quit. For example, I try to do my push-ups and pull-ups during breaks in my work. It gives me something to do to get away from work for 5-10 minutes and it also pumps me up and gets me going.

I would recommend you start to look for ways you can implement this new habit into your daily routine, it’s the easiest way to get a 30 day challenge into autopilot mode.