030: Why Most Productivity Challenges Fail (And What Works Instead)

Last summer, I joined a challenge, finish your book in thirty days.

Now, what you need to know is I've been working on my nonfiction book about reimagining productivity for a few years now.

And if I'm honest, I just haven't allocated the time to get it done.

But that's a whole other episode in itself, not allocating time for the things we actually want to achieve that will make a difference in our lives.

But today, we're staying on the topic of challenges.

So I paid for the program, signed up for the thirty days, and it started strong.

There was some email support behind it and just, uh, a few automated messages.

And at first, I thought, "Oh, this might work really well." And for day one and day two, the ask was reasonable, and I was actually pretty excited about it.

I kept up on top of everything else going on in my life.

I even started my own tracking system on the side, a separate email thread where I logged each day's tasks to make sure I was following through with them.

Then came day seven, day eight, and the ask seemed to get more complicated.

And I found there was just simply not enough hours in my day with working full time and running a household and just keeping up the pace.

I missed a day.

Oh, I know.

[laughs] And although I say it sarcastically, it actually really bothered me.

I pushed the task from that day to the next, and then the following day's challenge landed on top of that one.

And, you know, I'm, I'm sure...

I m- has anyone ever done that before? We push things over to the next day, and then all of a sudden it just starts to become this cumulative, uh, snowball, start rolling down the hill.

Well, I started to feel like I was losing ground in the process, and actually, the writing really stopped being fun.

By day ten or day twelve, I was frustrated.

Now, I'm a really diligent person, and I kept thinking about everyone else in the challenge and wondering, "How are they keeping up with all of this and their regular life?" My own belief in what I could actually achieve started to wear a little bit thin, and the idea of finishing the book in thirty days began to slip away.

Then around day fifteen, the emails changed, and this is where it got even kind of a little bit weird for me.

The challenge creator started sending pitches for other paid programs and services.

Did I sign up for this? [laughs] I don't think so.

And that's when, actually when it just finally did me in.