What I’ve learned from 30-day challenges

Greetings, Training for Translators readers! I hope that you’re all doing well! Registration for our annual March Marketing Madness challenge group is now open; and I’m excited that so many of you have already joined! The price is the same as last year ($90) and you get 20 motivational videos, 20 marketing challenges, and an optional (but very fun!) Slack group.

Speaking of challenges, this week I wanted to talk about what I’ve learned from giving myself a different 30-day challenge each month (or sometimes even more than one challenge per month!). Here’s how it happened:

In September of last year, I was looking for a new planner calendar. I still use a paper calendar, not because I’m a Luddite, but because I like the visual aspect of being able to flip through the calendar, and I actually find that I make fewer scheduling mistakes (setting something at the wrong time, on the wrong day/week) when I use a paper calendar. I came across the Commit 30 planner (not an affiliate deal), which, as luck would have it, is a woman-owned business right here in Colorado. At that time, they were running a special to get the 2023 planner for free when you ordered the 2024, so I jumped on it.

Here, a digression. Some of you already know that one of my current obsessions is Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies principle. A good friend turned me onto this when she participated in Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project. Basically, the Four Tendencies (please, please take the quiz if you haven’t already) is (are?) about finding out how you respond to both inner and outer expectations: demands you put on yourself, and demands that the outside world puts on you. Cut to the chase, I’m an Upholder in the extreme…the Upholder’s slogan is “Discipline is my freedom,” and (for better and for worse), that’s me, to a T. I love the Todoist app, and every night before I go to bed, I go through my Todoist list and mark every task as complete, or recategorize it to another day. We could spend a lot of time talking about the pluses and minuses of being an Upholder (I’ll tell you the downside: I have a lot of trouble dealing with people who aren’t Upholders, and I have a lot of trouble doing things that have no purpose or goal, even if I enjoy them), but the point being, I respond very well to challenges where you set a goal and tick off your progress, which is exactly what the Commit30 planner is about. It has a spot to write your personal 30-day challenge for every month, it has a list of suggested challenges, and then you get to tick the bubbles for every day that you complete your challenge.

So far, I’ve given myself the following challenges (sometimes I do more than one per month)

• Meditate with the Calm app every day
• Walk for an hour or more per day, at least 20 out of 30 days (this didn’t seem realistic/necessary to do every single day because I often go skiing, hiking, or biking for a full day on the weekends)
• Drink a 20 ounce glass of water with every meal
• Practice music (I play the cello and the Renaissance lute) at least five days a week
• Do a 10/20/30 workout (10 minutes of body-weight strengthening, 20 minutes of deep stretching, 30 minutes of yoga or weightlifting) every weekday

Here’s what I’ve learned, in case you’d like to try this out for yourself:

• I, like most people, waste a lot of time. It really surprised me how many of these activities I could fit into my day without sacrificing other things I needed to do. Basically I think that the “good stuff” crowded out pointless stuff.
• Doing a 30-day challenge is a good way to form a habit that you don’t have to maintain every single day. For example, doing the Calm app every day was so enjoyable that I set a goal (which you can do in the app) of continuing with it four days a week. That seems doable even over the long haul.
• Consistency really does help you improve at things. I’m the one who’s always saying, “You don’t have to stay motivated, you have to stay consistent,” and it’s true. I’m admittedly a pretty mediocre musician, but I have really been amazed at how much my playing improves when I practice every day.
• Doing something every day helps me focus why I’m doing it. One of Gretchen Rubin’s tips for Rebels (people who resist both inner and outer expectations; slogan, “You can’t make me, and neither can I”) is to focus on your Why. If you’re a freelancer because you want to have more time for your triathlon training, focusing on that can help you do what you need to do in order to stay profitable. If you’re working for a particular client because that income is going to help you buy a house, focusing on that can make deadlines more doable. I’m not a Rebel (far from it…haha!), but I found that focusing on something like, I’m practicing cello every day because I need to send my online practice group a video of me playing, or I’m doing this 10/20/30 workout because I sleep so much better and my body feels so much better, really helped me.

If you’d like to try some 30-day challenges of your own, let me know how it goes!!

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!