Danny Miranda

for those in pursuit of their highest version

Danny Miranda

Introducing: Streaks

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This website is about you. It’s about optimizing your habits. And you becoming the best version of yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You (and I) have heard everyone say that.

How can I prove it?

Introducing: Streaks

There have been two major themes when I’ve been at my best in life (“firing on all cylinders” as the kids like to say):

  1. I was on a streak — doing the same habit(s) day after day. Building a routine.
  2. I was accountable for my streak — other people were aware I was building this streak. I didn’t want to let myself down (or them!).

So why not use this website as a way to create that process for myself and YOU.

Here’s how it works:

  1. You email danny [at] dannymiranda [dot] com with the streak you want to create. Title: Streak: [Insert Your Habit Here]
  2. Include your social media handle (or your website) and time zone.
  3. Every day, respond to your initial email and say you’ve completed your task. If you fail to respond to the thread each day, your streak will be removed. You have until 11:59pm to report your submission. If you report you’ve completed your streak at midnight, this will NOT count. You can submit a new one any time you’d like.
  4. Streaks will be updated at 3 p.m. EST the following day at dannymiranda.com/streaks – you can track your progress (and others) there!

What streak should you try?

This is about what you’re trying to accomplish right now.

It could be as simple as one minute of meditation. It could be 75HARD. It could be 10 pages of reading. It could be waking up every day at the same time. The possibilities are endless in terms of ways to improve yourself.

Here are a couple of recommendations:

  • Make it something you can control (“10 minutes meditation” > “Feel more peaceful”)
  • Make it something you can measure (“45 minute workout” > “Workout”)
  • Make it an action, not a result (“Clean diet” > “Lose 20 pounds”)

Why Streaks?

If you want to change your life, change your habits.

A lot of people want to change their life. But they fail to change their habits because they don’t (1) build momentum by creating a streak and (2) are not accountable in public if they fail. (I’ve been there too many times.)

Streaks changes that.

You are publicly incentivized to stay on the top of the leaderboard. Every day you continue to build your streak, you will be changing your identity (and changing your life). You will also have an updated spot on the leaderboard.

The more reasons you have to do a habit, the more likely you will be to do it — even when you don’t feel like it (which will create discipline). Soon enough, you’re someone who does what they need to do, even when they don’t feel like doing it.

I’ve experimented with all types of ways to improve. But I’ve found the best way to get better is by building momentum while being accountable to others.

Why am I doing this?

The goal of this website is to build a community of people who are in pursuit of a better version. I am interested in getting to know people who build positive habits. I want to talk to these people. I want to learn from these people. “These people” could be you.

What if you lie?

The only person you’re hurting is yourself.

In Summary

  1. Shoot me an email at danny [at] dannymiranda [dot] com with the habit you want to track.
  2. Title of email: Streak: [Insert Your Habit Here]
  3. Include social media or website.
  4. Send me an email every day by midnight (your time!) saying you completed your task.
  5. Track yours (and others) streaks on this page.

To your success,

Danny

Medium-Term Goals

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Have you ever had a massive goal but then took no action on it?

There is one big reason why I believe people don’t even attempt a goal.

The goal seems too big.

Set Huge Goals?

Common advice:

Set massive goals.

It’s typical to hear someone say… “You can accomplish anything you set your mind to.” And while this is an important mindset to harness – especially when doing difficult things – it can seem almost patronizing if you haven’t even started your journey.

Take an individual who is trying to get into running.

Let’s say it’s difficult to run around the block without getting winded. But you hear people say, “Make your goal huge!”

So, you decide your goal is going to be to run an ultramarathon.

One question you could ask is: “How am I supposed to set a goal of running an ultramarathon if I can’t even do a lap around my block?”

That’s a great question.

And my answer to that is: “You shouldn’t… if the huge goal demotivates you. If it excites you, carry on.”

When you set goals so big, so far away from your current reality, it’s easy to look at that reality as impossibility. Because it is impossible. Right now.

The truth is setting a goal of running an ultramarathon might push you in the opposite direction. It might paralyze you from taking action in the day to day.

This is the same for any type of massive goal.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set it.

So, change your focus.

Notre Dame PLAY LIKE A CHAMPION TODAY sign

Should I Focus on the Day-to-Day?

One way to do that is to just think about that day or that week.

Notre Dame football is known for a phrase:

“Play Like A Champion Today”

Today.

There’s no reason to worry about if you didn’t go running yesterday.

Instead of thinking about the mountain you’re going to climb, think about the next step. If you can take a single step, you can keep going.

The reason this works is because it is inherently practical.

Your goal is to win the moment. You can’t win that moment by focusing on yesterday or tomorrow. In order to get better, to get to where you want to go… you need to lock in on that single day.

Although this is good advice, I believe it’s incomplete.

The Notre Dame football team can play like a champion today because they have the long-term goal of winning the College Football Playoff. They already put the practice on a daily basis.

The reason “Play Like A Champion Today” works is because it narrows their focus to what they can control – that day.

But if you haven’t started your journey, or you’re just getting started…

There’s something missing from the equation that most people don’t talk about.

That is…

Medium-Term Goals

Everyone talks about short-term goals (daily or weekly). Everyone talks about long term-goals (the big win).

These are both important.

But from my experience, when you’re just getting started, “medium-term goals” are the best way to get from where you are to where you want to be.

What do I mean by “medium term goals”?

These are goals that help you connect the day and years. They are the goals in between the short and long term. Hence the name. Medium.

For example, let’s go back to the running example. You know on the day-to-day, you want to run. You know in the long term, you wanted to be an ultramarathoner.

But what’s something that helps connect the short-term goal with the long-term goal?

It just so happens there’s a 5K Run in your area in 12 weeks.

That’s your medium-term goal.

“I will run a 5K race in 12 weeks” would be a perfect medium-term goal.

It helps give you a vision for where you want to be. You can see how your daily actions will lead you to where you want to go. And it helps connect your aspirations of long-distance running to the day-to-day.

The medium-term goal makes sense because it is practical. You can wrap your head around it.

Eventually, you’re going to complete your medium-term goal though.

What Should You Do After the Medium-Term Goal Is Complete?

Set a new medium-term goal.

In the above example, it could be as simple as running a 10K in a few months away. Take the next step up. Or it could be a half-marathon.

The medium-term goal (5K in 12 weeks) is NOT the long-term goal. That’s where it’s easy to make the mistake – and not follow through with your plan of becoming an ultramarathoner.

Feel good about accomplishing your goal. Be happy and proud of yourself. Then go to the next step.

Short, Medium, and Long-Term Are All Necessary

If you don’t have short, medium, and long-term goals, it’s much more difficult to stay with a habit.

If you only focused on the day-to-day, you’d start running one day.

“Wow, this is fun!”

You’d get excited because it was a new activity. Then, you might quit after it got difficult because you had nothing to look forward to.

If you only focused on the long term, you’d start running because you had this big goal.

“Wow, I’m going to be an ultramarathoner one day!”

You’d be excited to take some steps to achieve it initially. And then you’d stop once you realized how hard it actually was.

Let’s imagine you had the short and medium goals but didn’t have the long-term goals. You’d run daily, complete your 5K and stop running. You would need a longer-term goal to keep pushing you forward.

If you had a medium-term and long-term goal but had no short-term actions, you’d never actually get your butt off the couch.

When Your Reward Is the Action (When You Don’t Need Medium Term Goals)

Are medium term goals always necessary? Are goals always necessary at all?

Here’s my theory: when you’ve been doing an activity for a while, medium-term and long-term goals will still help motivate your behavior, but you’ll find the process of doing the activity turns out to be the reward.

When you can find joy in doing the activity, you find less need for goals.

And that should be the level we all strive for, right?

To get to a point where doing the activity itself is the reward.

Summary

  1. Setting huge goals can lead you to paralysis by analysis. They can demotivate you and eventually hurt you when you’re first starting out.
  2. Daily goals, focusing on what you can control, are good but insufficient.
  3. Long term goals are beneficial as well but setting them without medium term goals can be costly.
  4. Medium-term goals are goals that connect your short term and long term. They are neither daily actions nor are they the “end state” you’re hoping to achieve.
  5. If you’ve completed your first medium-term goal, you should set another one to build momentum.
  6. Eventually, you get to the point where the action becomes the reward.

How To Build Your Morning Routine & Control Your Life Using Linking

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I sat down for my daily meditation.

After my mind settled into nothing, I quickly thought of Naval.

I thought about Naval talking to Joe Rogan about meditation. I thought about Naval not doing any speaking engagements, wondering if that gave him more time to focus on his thoughts. I thought about Naval’s 60-day meditation challenge. I thought about what Naval would think about me doing a 10-minute meditation instead of his typical 60-minute session.

As I was watching myself think, I laughed.

It was clear I linked Naval to meditation.

Woah.

This was an interesting insight.

Because if I linked Naval to meditation, what else am I linking together? And how I can purposely link things together for my own benefit to produce greater habits and a stronger life?

What Is Linking?

On the Internet, links are used to connect one site to the next. Most webpages link to others, which can create an endless “rabbit hole” for you to explore on the Internet.

Weirdly enough, our mind does this too.

Our mind has one thought (one webpage) which takes us to another thought (another webpage). This leads us to think about something new (a separate webpage). All of a sudden, we’ve played telephone to the point where we’re thinking of something completely unrelated to that first thought.

We are linking all the time.

Constantly.

In action, it might look like this:

*Checks phone* Wow, nobody texted me. I guess nobody is thinking of me. I guess nobody likes me. I guess I’m lonely. I guess I’m going to die alone.

Yes, it sounds crazy, when it’s written out.

But this is what our mind does. Sometimes you’re in a loop you didn’t start and can’t control.

It’s because our mind is always looking for links.

Morning Routine

If you can link positive habits together in the morning, you can start your day on the right foot. Then, after your Morning Routine is over, you can start linking positive thoughts together instead of negative ones. This creates a chain that could lead you down a completely different day which can lead you to a different week, to a month, to a different year, to a different life.

I could get lost in social media all day.

I was conditioned to was check my notifications and text messages first thing in the morning. I’ve since learned this puts me in a reactive state to start the day.

My mind is ready to attach to any thought loop and go down that rabbit hole in the morning. So why not make those thoughts positive and empowering?

Here’s another reason for a Morning Routine: We have been least influenced by the world around us when we wake up. You haven’t spent any time on social media, listening to your friends, or watching the news. This means you can effectively brainwash yourself. And it’s important to do so by linking the morning together.

Linking the Morning Together

Professional athletes warm-up for games. If your life is a game, why wouldn’t you want to prime yourself for it?

Not only does a Morning Routine help us link together positive day, it also helps us complete the Morning Routine itself.

I’ve created some useful links that help me create the type of day I want to create. Feel free to use these, disregard them, or enjoy them:

Waking up in the morning to drinking water.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I often realize is… “Damn, I’m thirsty.” My phone is in a different room (if it was available for me to grab, I would). That water brings some life back into me. It wakes me up a little bit. But, I’m still not fully there.

That first sip to Wim Hof breathing.

Wim Hof breathing is awesome. It takes about 10-15 minutes and it really wakes me up. After I’ve completed my Wim Hof breathing, I’ve convinced myself the only appropriate task to do is meditate.

Wim Hof breathing to meditation

Meditation stills the mind (similar to Wim Hof breathing) and allows me to watch my brain work for 10-20 minutes. Tapping into nothingness is key to create anything.

Meditation to visualization

Visualization primes your mind to experience the world you would like to see. There’s a reason why visualization is so common amongst the world’s most successful people. It’s because it works.

*

These all take about 30-45 minutes. I only need to wake up and drink water to set this whole process in motion, because I’ve linked one routine to the next. The less thinking, the better.

Links To Create

Linking is an excellent way to control your morning, but it’s not the only time you can use it to your advantage. You can use it throughout the day to maximize your enjoyment from life.

Walking through doors to high energy – I got this one from Tej Dosa. Think about how many doors you walk through throughout the day – whether it be your bedroom, bathroom, or front door. If you linked “high energy” to walking through these doors, how much brighter would your life experience be? It’s simple and effective.

Brushing your teeth to a personal affirmation – Post a personal affirmation on the mirror to your bathroom, that way you’re guaranteed to see it at least twice daily.

Hot beverage to writing – I’m currently working on my writing habit. So, it’s helpful to have a trigger. I’ve settled with a coffee or tea. If I have one of these in my hand, it reminds me that it’s time to write.

Links to Destroy

Waking up to checking my phone – As previously discussed, this link was a potent one because it set me up to experience the day someone else wanted me to have. Now I use my phone as a tool to reward myself after having completed what I was supposed to for the day.

Checking my phone within an hour of bed – For years, I’ve had trouble with my sleep. One of the reasons why, is my mind goes seemingly endless thought loops. This is likely because I’ve put so much stuff into my brain.

Opening web browser to social media – One of my least helpful habits I have is immediately typing in “tw” for twitter.com or “fa” for facebook.com or “gm” for gmail.com. These have happened over time. In order to help myself with these links, I’m currently playing around with the app called Freedom. Freedom can block websites and apps you don’t want to use for set amounts of time. I have blocked a bunch of sites I use to procrastinate. Occasionally, it blocks a useful research link I might want to check out, but so far it’s saved me far more often than it hurt me.

The point is to notice if you do anything often, you can use that opportunity to improve your life in some way by linking.

*

We have so many links throughout the day. If you practice the art of watching your mind think (meditation), you can potentially pick up on these and make the necessary adjustments.

A good clue is when you ask yourself: “Wow, where did all that time go?”

As algorithms have gotten stronger to keep you on platforms, it’s important – more than ever – to use your own links to create the day you want to create.

This is about recapturing your life to make sure you’re living the way you want to be living.

If you don’t control your life, someone else will.

P.S. If you have any useful links to share, drop them down below!

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport Notes & Summary

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Amazon.com: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy ...

Amazon (Link)

An interesting perspective on how to live a focused life in a world full of noise. Beneficial for anyone who thinks they’re addicted to their phone/social media and wants to make a change.

  • “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity… You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?” Marcus Aurelius
  • The core mission of the iPhone was to play music and make phone calls… not all the other stuff. Steve Jobs was initially dismissive of the idea the iPhone would become a general computer (5)
  • The iPhone today does much more than play music and make phone calls. These changes were massive but unplanned (6)
  • “People don’t succumb to screens because they’re lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable.” (9)
  • “Checking your likes is the new smoking” + “Philip Morris just wanted your lungs, the App Store wants your soul” – Bill Maher (9)
  • Rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern
  • When confronted with quitting social media, most people believe “I wish I could do that, but I just can’t” (31)

Principles of Digital Minimalism:

  1. Clutter is costly
  2. Optimization is important
  3. Intentionality is satisfying
  • “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau (37)
  • Thoreau believed clutter was costly: “I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.” (40)
  • Common optimization among digital minimalists was to remove social media apps from their phone (47)
  • “For many people, their compulsive phone use papers over a void created by a lack of a well-developed leisure life” (71)
  • How many “small” moments do you miss out on because you were looking at your phone? (73)
  • Newport suggests going on a 30-day detox. (80)
  • Solitude is the subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds (93)
  • “I’ve always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings you need X number of hours alone. Now what that X represents, I really don’t know… but it’s a substantial ratio.” – Glenn Gould, pianist (111)
  • “Only thoughts reached by walking have value” – Nietzsche (117) …Nietzsche walked 8 hours per day one summer
  • Researchers found the more someone used social media, the more likely they were to be lonely (139)
  • If you increase the amount of likes or links clicked by a standard deviation, mental health decreased by 5-8% of a standard deviation. (140)
  • Value generated by a Facebook comment or Instagram like, although real, is minor compared to the value generated by an analog conversation or real-world activity (142)
  • Anything textual or non-interactive: basically all social media, email, text, and instant messaging doesn’t count as conversation and should instead be categorized as connection (147)
  • The more you text, the less necessary you’ll deem real conversation. In addition, when you do interact face-to-face, you’ll be checking your phone nonstop (157)
  • Don’t treat texts as ongoing conversations you must tend to, it will make concentration easier (158)
  • “A life well lived requires activities that serve no purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates” (166)
  • Leisure philosophy from Mr. Money Mustache: “Carpentry, weight training, writing, playing around with instruments in the music studio, making lists and executing tasks from them” (172)
  • Expending more energy in your leisure can end up energizing us more (176)
  • You’re living truer to your primal potential when you’re interacting with the world with physical tasks (179)
  • “Leave good evidence of yourself. Do good work.” – Gary Rogowski (182)
  • Some new skills you can learn on YouTube: changing your own car oil, installing a new ceiling-mounted light fixture, learn a new instrument, start a garden plot (197)
  • Newport believes you can receive the vast majority of the benefit of social media in as little as 20-40 minutes per week. (202)
  • Join groups: it’s easy to get caught up in the annoyances or difficulties inherent in any gathering of individuals struggling to work toward a common goal, but it’s worth it (205)
  • Doing nothing is overrated… investing energy into something hard but worthwhile almost always returns much richer rewards (212)
  • The app Freedom allows you to block websites for set amounts of time. Freedom’s internal research states users gain 2.5 hours of productive time per day from using their app (226)
  • Turn your devices into single-purpose computers – meaning they only help you do one thing at a time. Much more compatible with human attention span. (229)

Further Reading

25 Hours A Day by Nick Bare Notes & Summary

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Link (Amazon)

A quick and fun read. You’ll get a look into what Ranger School and starting his business were actually like.

  • People are wired in one of two ways: either your body controls your mind (“that’s painful, I’m going to stop”) or your mind controls your body (“I can keep pushing through a momentary feeling of discomfort”). This is a mindset Nick believes you can change.
  • Is it hurt or injured?
  • “I had this surreal feeling, an out-of-body experience where I was watching myself walk from outside of myself. And then, in the midst of the most bone-deep misery and exhaustion I’d ever had, things suddenly became very clear to me. I became super aware of what I was doing and how I felt. I’d reached a point of no return with my body, but my mind took over and gave me some control over the situation.” This sounds like meditation/Awareness
  • Keep your sights set on YOUR goals.
  • People will have more credentials than you in a competitive environment. You can get around this by doing more shitty things to make yourself a stronger person. AKA embrace the suck.
  • Struggle adds depth to your story and also creates strength
  • Never let yourself think you’ve made it. You’re never really there
  • Nick’s company’s competitive advantage is they are transparent about everything – from how the product gets made to filming behind the scenes on YouTube
  • No Plan B
  • “I’m going to make this work no matter what”
  • Discipline takes over when you start to feel sorry for yourself.
  • Be proactive rather than reactive, you’ll never make it to number one if you’re constantly following the footsteps of first, second, and third place
  • Natural gifts can be a curse because it can mean not working as hard as someone who doesn’t have as much natural talent to begin with.
  • Whenever you feel like you didn’t get something you thought you deserved, remember all the people who have it way worse than you
  • When things are running smoothly, it worries Nick… it means they’re not pushing the envelope enough
  • He aims to be the guy that stays calm when everyone loses their mind
  • “I’m going all-in on this shit. I’m making this work, whether I die with it or whatever.”
  • “When I go a long period of where nothing hurts, where there’s no stress – whether physical or mental – I start to go a little nuts”
  • “The only hell I’m afraid of is, when I die, the man I ended up as… meets the man I could have been” – Tucker Max
  • TACTIC: Spends a part of each day planning out how the next 12 weeks will go (practice instilled through the army)
  • If you’re not learning one new thing a day, you’re not growing/getting better
  • “Remember, problems are good” (Post: Why A Holocaust Survivor & Navy SEAL Share The Same Mindset)
  • Tiny heart moments à the moment you start making excuses for yourself, that’s when you need to make the conscious decision to not only do what you said you were going to do, but go one more
  • “If you can go external and pull yourself away from that inner struggle, you’ll find yourself achieving things you never thought possible” Sounds spiritual
  • We’re trained as children to crave comfort and to avoid pain. Which means we’re never working at capacity.
  • If it were easy, anyone could do it. The difficulties of a journey mean you’ve chosen something special, something worth the time and effort.

The Psychology of Challenges: Why Do Challenges Work?

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Everywhere you look, you’ll find a challenge.

Pushup challenge. Mental toughness challenge. Digital declutter challenge. Meditation challenge. And on and on and on.

So, I was curious…

Do these challenges actually work? Why do so many exist? Are they an effective way to change behavior? And, if so, how can we continue to implement the desired behavior even when the challenge is over?

How do these challenges work?

Typically, a challenge is associated with a timeframe.

75HARD (75 days), Whole30 (30 days).

You engage in the behavior(s) you want to change for a set amount of time. You are making no commitments about what you’ll do after the time period is up.

These challenges are typically associated with behavior that has long term benefits but might be more difficult to do in the short term. (For example, I have yet to hear of a “30-Day Check Social Media Challenge” or a “30-Day Smoking Challenge.”)

Seems simple enough, right?

How long does it take to form a habit?

To understand these challenges, it might first make sense to explore habits.

Because the purpose of a challenge, after all, is to change your habits.

Sometimes, it’s to change your habits for a specific time period but, most likely, it’s to change your habits for the long term.

You are doing X but doing Y might prove more beneficial.

So, the question becomes, how many days does it take for you to build a habit?

Many people believe it is 21 days.

The “21 days” myth comes from Maxwell Maltz – a plastic surgeon in the 1950s – who wrote a best-selling book called Psycho-Cybernetics.

In the book, he suggested it took a minimum of 21 days for his patients to notice the physical changes that were made. Along with his own observations about himself, he stated:

“These, and many other commonly observed phenomena tend to show that it requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell.”

It wasn’t 21 days. It was a minimum of 21 days.

It turns out the research backs this up.

A 2009 study on habit formation might be the best indicator Maltz was onto something.

It took individuals anywhere from 18 to 254 days for the behavior in the study to be considered a habit. On average, it took participants 66 days for the habit to form.

Perhaps the most interesting part about this study was that missing one opportunity to perform a behavior did not affect the habit formation process.

Meaning, if you goal is to go to the gym three times per week, and you only go twice, there’s no reason to beat yourself up. From a practical perspective (there’s nothing you can do about it now, just focus on the next action). But, also from a scientific one as well (it will have no impact on your long-term goal of going three times per week).

Why do these challenges exist in the first place?

1.  It’s good marketing.

The reason it’s popular is because it’s easy to market.

10 days. 21 days. 30 days.

These are all figures we can wrap our heads around.

Have you heard of a 66-day challenge though?

Of course not.

Even though the study quoted above found this is the amount of time, on average, it takes to form a habit… it doesn’t sound as good.

2. The frog in boiling water.

There was once a popular notion that if you stuck a frog in a pot of boiling water, it would jump out. But if you put a frog in medium temperature water and slowly increased the temperature to boiling hot, it would stay in the pot and boil to death. (Although modern science has disproved this fable, it is this same principle that is at work when you are trying to change your habits.)

If someone wants you to engage in a different behavior, it’d be hard for them to say…

“Do this forever!”

That would be the equivalent of sticking you in boiling hot water. You’d never want to do it. It seems hard.

Instead, they change their approach…

“Try this for 30 days.”

This is the implicit agreement you are making when you decide to do the challenge is that it won’t be forever.

It seems easy. It seems doable.

But perhaps by the time the 30 days is complete, you could actually see yourself doing the challenge “forever.”

3. It helps those around us understand.

Jordan Syatt is a personal trainer.

In 2019, he made the decision not to drink alcohol. It’s not that he was addicted to alcohol. He simply found the behavior unnecessary and expensive. He wanted to change it.

His anecdotal evidence about his own experience is certainly interesting…

When he was at the bar, he would tell the people he was with he wasn’t drinking.

But it was hard for them to accept…

They tried to pressure him into having a drink: “C’mon man! Have a drink. It won’t kill you!”

However, when he told people it was a “challenge,” they understood and didn’t question it.

Now, of course, Jordan is a sample size of one.

But it does help explain the psychology of challenges, why they work, and why they are so popular.

They are not just for us, but to help explain in a succinct way to other people why we’re not acting like them in that particular moment.

What are the downsides to challenges?

1. Psychologically, it creates a light switch in your head.

There is the time you are “on the challenge” and time you are “off the challenge.”

This is potentially troubling.

Yo-yo dieting is a cycle in which something triggers you to lose weight, which causes you to start an exercise/diet plan, you lose some weight, then life gets in the way and your old eating habits return.

The problem with yo-yo dieting is you only introduce healthy eating habits and exercise when you have a problem. This means constantly experiencing drastic fluctuations in weight, going up and down – like a yo-yo.

When you are “off the diet,” you feel free reign to eat anything you want and stop exercising. When you are “on the diet,” you strictly adhere to everything.

Challenges may work in similar ways. Instead of adapting the habits for a better life indefinitely, we assign days to be “on” or “off”. Then, when the day the challenge is over, it gives us the “out” to go back to our normal habits.

2. Habit change may not have occurred by the time you are done with the challenge.

As we know, it might take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a habit to form, depending on the individual and the habit.

Many challenges you’ll find are on the shorter timeframe – 10 days, 28 days, 30 days. As previously discussed though, there are few people who are marketing a 66-day challenge. This is, on average, how long it takes for habits to form. But it’s not catchy though.

3. A challenge might give you a “quick fix,” but will it create sustainable progress?

Take a 10-Day Juice Fast, for example.

Although you will certainly lose weight if you follow this protocol, will it make you more likely to binge on Day 11?

Our society often rewards short-term fixes as opposed to slower and more sustainable.

How can we continue to implement the desired behavior after the challenge is over?

The intent of challenges is to change behavior.

If we accept the purpose of a challenge is not to only do the activity while doing the challenge, but also when you’re off the challenge – then we must consider how to optimize for when you’re off it.

1. Associate triggers for certain activities.

Before we do certain activities, we are triggered to do them. Sometimes, these triggers are conscious. Other times, we are completely unaware of them.

For example, some people take pre-workout powder before they go to the gym. This is their cue that they are about to exercise.

How you can apply it: Let’s say your challenge is a 30-day workout challenge. Consciously make your cue something easy. Something as simple as putting on your gym clothes or listening to a song. Then, immediately after you do this, go to the gym or start your exercise. This way, you will associate putting on your workout clothes or listening to a specific song (something that takes little effort) with doing the workout (something that may seem hard). Once you’ve made this mental connection, you will associate your trigger with the actual task you want to accomplish even when your challenge is complete.

2. Use the Paperclip Strategy (via James Clear).

Trent Dyrsmid was a rookie stockbroker, so nobody expected much out of him in Canada. But he quickly closed big deals, rising through the ranks of his company.

So, what was his strategy?

Here’s what he did:

He would begin each morning with 120 paper clips in one jar. Then, as he made sales calls, he would move the 120 paper clips from one jar to the other.

This visual cue was enough to make a massive difference.

How you can apply it: If you are doing a 30-day challenge, have a paperclip for each day. Then, add some more paperclips. The key is to add more than the number of days the challenge is for. After the 30 days are complete, you will be inclined to keep putting paperclips from one jar to the other.

3. The “10 Minute Rule.”

This rule takes advantage of Newton’s first law of motion:

Object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion.

If you don’t feel like doing an activity, try doing it for only 10 minutes. Give yourself absolute permission to stop.

The reason why challenges often exist is because they make us do hard things we otherwise wouldn’t want to do.

But if you only have to do an activity for 10 minutes…

Often, you’ll want to keep going.

I shamelessly stole this from Josiah Novak (who first tweeted about it on April 22, 2019):

How you can apply it: Let’s say your challenge is reading 10 pages per day for 28 days. After the month is complete, try getting yourself to read for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, you can stop.

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If you used this post to help you make a decision on whether or not you should pursue a challenge, drop a comment down below.