Structure of 21 Day Challenges:

While each 21 Day Challenge is designed to be difficult, the process shouldn’t be! This page covers the generic structure that each 21 Day Challenge will follow, what you can generally expect, and tips to help you successfully complete the challenge.

The Structure:

  1. Understand the challenge
    • The first step here is simple; make sure that you are clear on what the respective 21 Day Challenge is asking of you. No need to make this overly complicated but it does help to be specific!
    • Suppose we have an example challenge to wash your face every night before bed (not much of a challenge but it’s something I despise doing). While there isn’t much complexity here, it probably would help to be more specific. I could say “For the next 21 Days, I am committing to wash my face immediately before I lay down to sleep at night”.
  2. Clarify your intent
    • Do not skip this step! It is important to be clear on your why – why are you doing this challenge in the first place? Again be specific and write it down.
    • Using the prior example, my why could be surface level – “For the next 21 Days, I am committing to wash my face immediately before I lay down to sleep at night; so that I don’t break out in acne and look like I just hit puberty”.
    • However, I strongly recommend you go beyond the surface level when clarifying your intent. It’s fine to have an intent like “look better” but the more you focus on internal incentives the more likely you will be to complete the challenge. I strongly encourage you to think about what virtue this challenge may enable you to practice and write it down. Given how much I hate washing my face, my example becomes: “For the next 21 Days, I am committing to wash my face immediately before I lay down to sleep at night. Not only am I doing this so that I don’t break out in acne but I am also practicing discipline each time I wash my face”.
  3. Set your personal baseline
    • A baseline is your starting point. It is uniquely personal to you and where you are today. For example if we were doing a pushup challenge, some super jacked person’s baseline may be to do 100 pushups in a single attempt. While another person’s baseline may be to do a single pushup on their knees. Understanding your baseline is the first step in creating a plan that is challenging but achievable; don’t worry about how to do this, I will be suggesting a way to set your baseline as a part of each challenge!
    • My baseline for washing my face is pretty easy. Don’t judge me but nearly half the time (when I’m even washing my face) I just splash some water on my face, no soap or anything! My baseline is as simple as that – understanding where I am at today.
  4. Finalize your plan
    • There are two parts to finalizing your plan.
    • The first is about leveraging your personal baseline to determine a realistic challenge. If I could already do 100 pushups in a single attempt, then it wouldn’t be a challenge if I said I would do 100 pushups a day. To make it a challenge I could add pushups or add more sets. Ultimately the goal is to ensure you have a challenge that is attainable but is still difficult to accomplish. For each challenge we will walk you through how to set a realistic challenge.
      • For my face washing example it shouldn’t be unattainable to use an actual face wash each time I am washing my face. I saw Kiehl’s had a sale recently and I bought some face wash there; I’ll be specific and put it to use: “For the next 21 Days, I am committing to wash my face with Kiehl’s face wash immediately before I lay down to sleep at night. Not only am I doing this so that I don’t break out in acne but I am also practicing discipline each time I wash my face”.
    • The second part of finalizing your plan is scheduling when you will get it done. Whatever you do, do not skip this step! This is perhaps the biggest predictor of whether you will successfully complete the challenge or not. There are a few strategies here. If you are already using a calendar to control your schedule then block some time to complete the challenge each day, if you’re using a task manager then add it as a task, sometimes you just need an alarm on your phone to remind you (on an iPhone you can set a custom label for each alarm). It doesn’t matter how you do it but for the next 21 days go ahead and schedule time for the challenge. Pro tip – make it annoying to avoid completing the challenge.
      • One of the few things I despise more than washing my face is the sound of my alarm (specifically that super annoying submarine sounding alarm). For my face washing challenge, I can set two alarms. The first could be at 10pm with a gentle sound that serves as a reminder to go wash my face; the second could be the dreaded submarine sounding alarm at 10:05pm. If I washed my face within the 5 minutes I allotted, then I can turn off that horrible submarine alarm before it goes off.
  5. Establish accountability
    • To complete the challenge successfully, you need to create some accountability. Eventually you may be able to rely on discipline and take ownership for holding yourself accountable. However, I highly recommend some external accountability (which is almost always a bigger motivator than relying on self-discipline).
    • There are many, many ways to establish accountability and I encourage you to choose one or more of the following:
      • Tell a trusted friend about the challenge and ask them to check in with you (or tell them that you will text them each day after completing the challenge and if they don’t hear from you then they should push you to do the challenge)
      • Post on social media to let others know you are doing the challenge and then post daily as you are doing, or completing, the challenge (ok, this one helps me raise awareness for Life of Challenge but still it’s a great motivator)
      • Put your money where your mouth is (money can be an incredible motivator, particularly the fear of losing it which is commonly called loss aversion). You can do this by sending a trusted friend $100 and telling them to donate it if you don’t complete the challenge; you can also make this fun and create a pool of money with friends. Whoever completes the challenge gets a share of the money and anyone in the group that doesn’t loses the money.
      • Looking for more help with accountability? Use the @ contact page to reach out to me and we can figure something out
  6. Commit to your plan
    • Now is the time to take action. You have a plan, you have it scheduled, you set some accountability, now get after it!
    • Speaking of it’s time for me to go wash my face…
    • Here’s what I would text my mom as I get started:
      • Hey Mom – for the next 21 Days, I am committing to wash my face with Kiehl’s face wash immediately before I lay down to sleep at night. Not only am I doing this so that I don’t break out in acne but I am also practicing discipline each time I wash my face. Do you mind holding me accountable to this challenge? I will text you each day at 10:05pm letting you know that I washed my face but if you don’t hear from me will you call me and make sure I wash my face? I’m also going to Venmo you $100; if I don’t wash my face everyday then you can keep it or donate it to a charity of your choice! Thanks Mom! Love you!

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