Hello and welcome to the seventh day of the June 30 days writing challenge. If you want to know all the details about this specific challenge, have a look at the introductory post. In short, I will be posting every day a short tip, or technique, or opinion, something that you can call a "life hack". Feel free to join the challenge and post your own life hacks. I will do my best to upvote each day at full strength (about $3 at the current STEEM price) 3 posts tagged #challenge30days (leaving a link to your posts in the comments will also help).

Implementing New Habits With A 30 Days Challenge

Way too often, we try to implement new habits abruptly, carried out by enthusiasm or motivation. Alas, more often than not, implementing a habit out of enthusiasm doesn't really work. Motivation dries out and, one or two weeks after we started we simply fell off the wagon.

I did that many times, especially when trying out new fitness patterns. Packing 100 pushups per day seemed really simple in the first 4-5 days, but then boredom creeped in and I simply stopped doing them. Also, when I started to run, I think I started to run 20 times, because 19 times out of these twenty, I simply gave up.

Truth is, implementing a new habit is a difficult task. It requires attention, energy and, above all, discipline. And in a world where instant gratification rules our lives, discipline is a very rare asset.

So, when I realized I'm quite lousy at starting new habits, I slowed down a bit and looked for alternative, less spectacular, but probably more effective ways of doing it.

Introducing 30 days challenges.

I think I started my 30 days challenge more than 10 years ago and it was related to, obviously, fitness. I decided that I will stick with a certain routine for 30 days, no matter what. At the end of this time interval, I was free to stop. But not before. The goal was to actually introduce fitness as a regular activity in my life, to make a habit out of it.

During the challenge I did 2 more things: I made myself accountable and I also monitored progress. The first thing means I actually told to a few people that I'm starting this (at that time, I just published this on my blog). And the second thing means I started to journal about it. Needless to say, I finished the challenge, and, at the end of it, I also made fitness (in various forms) part of my daily routine.

In my experience, these are the 3 fundamental ingredients of every successful 30 days challenge:

• commit for 30 days, not less, but not more either. Leave yourself some room to give up if, after 30 days, you'll realize you're not yet ready for that habit (or it's not as good for you as you hoped)
• make yourself accountable - announce a few people about your plans and expect from them to keep you accountable
• journal your progress - it will make for a nice reading after you finish, and it will also give some sort of a release to your frustrations (because you will have a lot of frustrations).

I used 30 days challenges to implement a lot of constructive habits in my life: from daily writing (for more than 8 years), to running (I'm an ultra-runner now, with a few 100k and 200k races under my belt).

Apart from this 30 days writing challenge I'm doing now on Steemit, I also started another one, in which I'm learning Spanish - using an app called Duolingo. I'm in my third day now and so far, so good.

As you can see, I'm sharing this with you so you can keep me accountable, so please ask me again in 28 days how's my Spanish. I may even start writing in Spanish, if it's going on well. After all, English isn't my first language either, so who knows? :)

I'm really curious to read about your life hack today. Leave a comment with a link to your post, if possible.

Previous Posts In The Challenge

• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Six: Put It In Front Of The Door
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Five: The Pomodoro Technique
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Four: Keep A Clear Mind By Unloading Ideas Immediately
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Three: Intermittent Fasting
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day Two: The "2 Minutes" Time Management Rule
• June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks - Day One: Avoid Fighting With A Simple Visualization Technique
• Announcing The June 30 Days Writing Challenge - Life Hacks

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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