Transferring Skills From One Challenge To Another
A little over two years ago, my family got on the 75 Hard kick. It started with my sister and dad doing it, quickly convincing everyone else in the family to join in. My husband and I completed the challenge during the winter of 2021. It was a great achievement and something we never really considered doing again.
For those unfamiliar with the challenge, it is a program designed by Andy Frisella, who is an entrepreneur and public speaker. While the program is intended to be a difficult health challenge, it is more of a discipline creator than anything else. For 75 days, people doing the challenge must drink a gallon of water, complete two separate 45-minute workouts, one of which must be outside, take a progress photo, read ten pages of a self-help type book, and choose any diet to follow as well as cutting out all alcohol. You must check all those boxes daily for 75 days in a row to declare completing the challenge. If you miss one box, the challenge resets no matter what day you are on. Ideally, the goal is to get through it with no mistakes on the first try, but more importantly, we commit to finishing it regardless of how many tries it takes.
This is a discipline challenge more than anything else. It asks if you can commit to doing something no matter what while taking care of the details. In Frisella's book about the challenge, he shared that the progress photo is often the one that forces most people to start over. We think of it as a simple and easy task, pushing it off throughout the day and then forgetting about it until it is too late. He also states that he considers a "day" to be from wake-up to bed. It doesn't matter if a workout gets done at 2 am the following day as long as we never officially went to bed before then.
I completed the challenge once, and that was really enough for me, but it didn't lead to any fundamental changes in my life. I don't drink water like I should, and I certainly do not work out consistently. I have good days and bad days when it comes to reading, but overall, if you look at my life today, it would be surprising that I could complete the challenge in the first place. And that's the thing: I wasn't looking to get better; I was just looking to check a box.
I'm sure part of it was sibling rivalry, as my sister and brother were doing it, so I also needed to complete it. But more than that, it was because I had a list of things I needed to do on any given day, and I had created enough leverage over myself that I had to do it. There was room to make a mistake or miss a day (which, fortunately, I didn't), but there wasn't any room to quit. Come hell or high water, I was going to be able to say, "I did that."
I need to be doing many things on a routine basis, especially as we near the second week of July when I have a significant business event happening. And I've thought about revisiting the 75 Hard challenge. As much as it did not create lasting change in my life, it showed me that I could make things happen if I committed to them. No matter how late I had to stay up, which is really not my strong suit, I would check those boxes. And no matter the conditions, I got everything done. Even when we were in the middle of an ice storm with below-freezing, sloppy conditions, we still got in our 45-minute outdoor workout. So, the reality is I have time for all the new habits I want to establish and all the work I need to get done; I just need to make myself do it. However, the conditions of 75 hard don't exactly meet what I need to be doing today, and I fear that adding something like that will take priority in my focus.
Maybe I just need a challenge to hold myself up to. I've got 20 days until my event starts, so perhaps I can create a "20 hard" with all the daily tasks I need to do to be ready. I always work better under some sort of deadline pressure. One of the reasons 75 Hard didn't create long-term changes was that I had the mindset that it would be over when the challenge was done. I reached the finish line and then was allowed to take a day off from those activities. That day off quickly turned into only days off, though. However, I want to create lasting change so that even when one task becomes unnecessary, replacing it with an important one is simple.
I think we all have changes we know we need to make to be better, healthier people. Of course, changes like this are easier to make when a community supports us. 75 Hard was much easier because my husband and I tackled it together. For now, I might try a "20 Hard" plan to get me to my big event, but lasting changes come from creating a realistic plan that fits our lives. On Friday, we'll talk more about succeeding at our habit-based dreams, but for now, I would love to hear how you have made some significant changes in your daily routines.