30 Days to Success
April 14th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.
Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.
Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.
But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV.
Could you do it? It still requires a bit of discipline and commitment, but not nearly so much as making a permanent change. Any perceived deprivation is only temporary. You can count down the days to freedom. And for at least 30 days, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s not so bad. You can handle it. It’s only one month out of your life.
Now if you actually complete a 30-day trial, what’s going to happen? First, you’ll go far enough to establish it as a habit, and it will be easier to maintain than it was to begin it. Secondly, you’ll break the addiction of your old habit during this time. Thirdly, you’ll have 30 days of success behind you, which will give you greater confidence that you can continue. And fourthly, you’ll gain 30 days worth of results, which will give you practical feedback on what you can expect if you continue, putting you in a better place to make informed long-term decisions.
Therefore, once you hit the end of the 30-day trial, your ability to make the habit permanent is vastly increased. But even if you aren’t ready to make it permanent, you can opt to extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days. The longer you go with the trial period, the easier it will be to lock in the new habit for life.
Another benefit of this approach is that you can use it to test new habits where you really aren’t sure if you’d even want to continue for life. Maybe you’d like to try a new diet, but you don’t know if you’d find it too restrictive. In that case, do a 30-day trial and then re-evaluate. There’s no shame in stopping if you know the new habit doesn’t suit you. It’s like trying a piece of shareware for 30 days and then uninstalling it if it doesn’t suit your needs. No harm, no foul.
Here are some examples from my own life where I used 30-day trials to establish new habits:
1) In the Summer of 1993, I wanted to try being vegetarian. I had no interest in making this a lifelong change, but I’d read a lot about the health benefits of vegetarianism, so I committed to it for 30 days just for the experience. I was already exercising regularly, seemed in decent health, and was not overweight (6′0″, 155 lbs), but my typical college diet included a lot of In-N-Out burgers. Going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days was a lot easier than I expected — I can’t say it was hard at all, and I never felt deprived. Within a week I noticed an increase in my energy and concentration, and I felt more clear-headed. At the end of the 30 days, it was a no-brainer to stick with it. This change looked a lot harder than it really was.
2) In January 1997, I decided to try going from vegetarian to vegan. While lacto-ovo vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy, vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal. I was developing an interest in going vegan for life, but I didn’t think I could do it. How could I give up veggie-cheese omelettes? The diet seemed too restrictive to me — even fanatically so. But I was intensely curious to know what it was actually like. So once again I did a 30-day trial. At the time I figured I’d make it through the trial, but I honestly didn’t expect to continue beyond that. Well, I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels (now I know why cows need four stomachs to properly digest this stuff). I felt lousy the first couple days but then my energy surged. I also felt more clear-headed than ever, as if a “fog of brain” had been lifted; it felt like my brain had gotten a CPU and a RAM upgrade. However, the biggest change I noticed was in my endurance. I was living in Marina del Rey at the time and used to run along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, and I noticed I wasn’t as tired after my usual 3-mile runs, so I started increasing them to 5 miles, 10 miles, and then eventually a marathon a few years later. In Tae Kwon Do, the extra endurance really gave a boost to my sparring skills as well. The accumulated benefits were so great that the foods I was giving up just didn’t seem so appealing anymore. So once again it was a no-brainer to continue after the first 30 days, and I’m still vegan today. What I didn’t expect was that after so long on this diet, the old animal product foods I used to eat just don’t seem like food anymore, so there’s no feeling of deprivation.
3) Also in 1997, I decided I wanted to exercise every single day for a year. That was my 1997 New Year’s resolution. My criteria was that I would exercise aerobically at least 25 minutes every day, and I wouldn’t count Tae Kwon Do classes which I was taking 2-3 days per week. Coupled with my dietary changes, I wanted to push my fitness to a new level. I didn’t want to miss a single day, not even for sick days. But thinking about exercising 365 days in a row was daunting, so I mentally began with a 30-day trial. That wasn’t so bad. After a while every day that passed set a new record: 8 days in a row… 10 days… 15 days…. It became harder to quit. After 30 days in a row, how could I not do 31 and set a new personal record? And can you imagine giving up after 250 days? No way. After the initial month to establish the habit, the rest of the year took care of itself. I remember going to a seminar that year and getting home well after midnight. I had a cold and was really tired, yet I still went out running at 2am in the rain. Some people might call that foolish, but I was so determined to reach my goal that I wasn’t going to let fatigue or illness stop me. I succeeded and kept it up for the whole year without ever missing a day. In fact, I kept going for a few more weeks into 1998 before I finally opted to stop, which was a tough decision. I wanted to do this for one year, knowing it would become a powerful reference experience, and it certainly became such.
4) More diet stuff…. After being vegan for a number of years, I opted to try other variations of the vegan diet. I did 30-day trials both with the macrobiotic diet and with the raw foods diet. Those were interesting and gave me new insights, but I decided not to continue with either of them. I felt no different eating macrobiotically than I did otherwise. And in the case of the raw diet, while I did notice a significant energy boost, I found the diet too labor intensive — I was spending a lot of time preparing meals and shopping frequently. Sure you can just eat raw fruits and veggies, but to make interesting raw meals, there can be a lot of labor involved. If I had my own chef, I’d probably follow the raw diet though because I think the benefits would be worth it. I did a second trial of the raw diet for 45 days, but again my conclusion was the same. If I was ever diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer, I’d immediately switch to an all raw, living foods diet, since I believe it to be the absolute best diet for optimal health. I’ve never felt more energetic in my life than when I ate a raw diet. But I had a hard time making it practical for me. Even so, I managed to integrate some new macrobiotic foods and raw foods into my diet after these trials. There are two all-raw restaurants here in Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed eating at them because then someone else does all the labor. So these 30-day trials were still successful in that they produced new insights, although in both cases I intentionally declined to continue with the new habit. One of the reasons a full 30-day trial is so important with new diets is that the first week or two will often be spent detoxing and overcoming cravings, so it isn’t until the third or fourth week that you begin to get a clear picture. I feel that if you haven’t tried a diet for at least 30 days, you simply don’t understand it. Every diet feels different on the inside than it appears from the outside.
This 30-day method seems to work best for daily habits. I’ve had no luck using it when trying to start a habit that only occurs 3-4 days per week. However, it can work well if you apply it daily for the first 30 days and then cut back thereafter. This is what I’d do when starting a new exercise program, for example. Daily habits are much easier to establish.
Here are some other ideas for applying 30-day trials:
- Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
- Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
- Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
- Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
- Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
- Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total.
- List something new to sell on ebay every day. Purge some of that clutter.
- Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.
- If you’re already in a relationship, give your partner a massage every day. Or offer to alternate who gives the massage each day, so that’s 15 massages each.
- Give up cigarettes, soda, junk food, coffee, or other unhealthy addictions.
- Become an early riser.
- Write in your journal every day.
- Call a different family member, friend, or business contact every day.
- Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.
- Write a new blog entry every day.
- Read for an hour a day on a subject that interests you.
- Meditate every day.
- Learn a new vocabulary word every day.
- Go for a long walk every day.
Again, don’t think that you need to continue any of these habits beyond 30 days. Think of the benefits you’ll gain from those 30 days alone. You can re-assess after the trial period. You’re certain to grow just from the experience, even if it’s temporary.
The power of this approach lies in its simplicity. Even though doing a certain activity every single day may be less efficient than following a more complicated schedule — weight training is a good example because adequate rest is a key component — you’ll often be more likely to stick with the daily habit. When you commit to doing something every single day without exception, you can’t rationalize or justify missing a day, nor can you promise to make it up later by reshuffling your schedule.
Give trials a try. If you’re ready to commit to one right now, please feel free to post a comment and share your goal for the next 30 days. If there’s enough interest, then perhaps we can do a group postmortem around May 20th to see how it went for everyone. I’ll even do it with you. Mine will be to go running or biking for at least 25 minutes or do a minimum 60-minute hike in the mountains every day for 30 days. The weather here in Vegas has been great lately, so it’s a nice time for me to get back to exercising outdoors.
April 14th, 2005 at 9:09 pm
Hey Steve great topic. I have used the same formula for goal setting but it differed in two ways. First I used the time period of 90 days. The second was I made a game out of it, with rules, players and consequences. This was based on a book by Sarano Kelley called “The Game”. I had met Sarano at our Toastmasters district 12 conference and he gave one of the most powerful speeches on the power of “Today” and setting a 90 day game plan (saranokelley.com).
I initially setup 3 game plans last year. One was a “Body for life” exercise and diet plan. Over 90 days I lost 25 pounds and went from 29% body fat down to 18%. The second was putting together an Area speech contest for Toastmasters using the High Performance Leadership manual. This game really taught me time management and job delegation. The contest was a great success. The third was to redesign my office. Having a 90 day game plan helped me focus on priorities and the office came out great.
I have a new 90 day game plan that I’ve started and it consists of writing a book before my birthday at the end of May. I’ve decided to put out ideas on my blog and compile the book from the ideas and comments over the next 6 weeks. I’m not sure what exact shape it will take yet but I am really excited about this game. Your site is a real inspiration.
April 14th, 2005 at 9:58 pm
Right. Let it be officially known that until May 15th, I will have no coffee or other cafeinated beverages. Repeat: NO coffee.
Sheesh. What am I getting myself into.
April 14th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
This is a great article, Steve! It’s similar (but not the same) with the approach used by Bill Phillips in the Body for Life motivational and exercise book.
I have already decided to do something based on your article.
Once again, congratulations for the good article!
April 14th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
Well, let me be the one to start in on this one:
I will meditate for at least 10 minutes every day, for the next month (I don’t know if this counts, since I used to have a meditation habit, but I allowed myself to get out of it due to various life pressures).
April 15th, 2005 at 5:59 am
Steve
Finally, an article that I found useful. Exellent thoughts — I’m going to give them a try.
AS
April 15th, 2005 at 7:47 am
Great article. I think of these as “experiments” on my life. I was a sugar junkie for the first 20 years of my life, but I took a week off of all sweets, sodas, etc., and crashed, but then felt great. I don’t have nearly as much of a sweet tooth anymore.
April 15th, 2005 at 8:52 am
[...] /04/15/30-days-to-success/” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link: 30 Days to Success”> 30 Days to Success - I don’t know if it works, haven’t got time to read it! :) [...]
April 15th, 2005 at 9:26 am
John, I knew some people who did the 12-week Body for Life program at a gym where I used to train. Some got decent results, but going from 29% to 18% body fat is awesome!
I read the BFL book a while ago, but I lost faith in Bill Phillips when I learned he disqualified a would-be BFL contest winner because the guy didn’t use EAS products. The guy supposedly ate an alkalizing raw foods diet, which is virtually the opposite of the acidic BFL/EAS diet. I guess it would be bad marketing for EAS to allow someone like that to win. Too bad.
April 15th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Your site is great. I’m so happy i found it. Now i read it every day. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. You are a real inspiration and I hope it will make you feel even better about yourself for knowing you are really doing something good for the others.
April 15th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Ok, I accept your challenge
I will not eat any snacks at work for the next 30 days. No doughnuts, bagels, cookies, or pastries. Nothing from the vending machines either. I won’t give up coffee, but I will limit myself to only one sugar packet.
It may be tough, but I believe that I can handle it for a mere 30 days. That’s the excuse right? “I can stop anytime that I want”… well, ok. I’ll stop for 30 days.
Hmm.. having a postmortem adds a nice level of accountability. What were you thinking? Perhaps an IRC-type chat or something in a forum?
April 15th, 2005 at 10:04 am
For the postmortem I was planning to keep it simple — most likely I’ll make another blog post around May 20th to reference the original challenge and then invite everyone to share their results by posting comments. This will give people a few days to decide if they want to do it and get started.
April 15th, 2005 at 11:39 am
I’m in too. I’ll do my pilates every day. Maybe on the May 20th we will all choose another challenge, and see it again in June. wow, i’m so excited
April 15th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
I keep reading mixed opinions on veganism and vegetarianism. It’s something I’ve considered trying before but I don’t know who/what to believe about it. Anyone have any links where I might learn more?
April 15th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
One older book that got me started was Diet for a New America by John Robbins (along with Robbins’ newer books). However, you’ll find plenty of books that convincingly justify any diet you can imagine. So while books can help you in some ways, they tend to be a lousy way to discover the truth. I think the best approach to find the right diet is still personal experimentation. Try a new diet for at least 30 days, evaluate the results, and see if it works for you. If the results are positive, adopt it as your new “control,” and continue experimenting.
Perhaps the best advice I can offer in selecting health books is not to buy one with a fat guy on the cover (Dr. Atkins, Dr. Phil, etc).
April 16th, 2005 at 1:51 am
Going to chew 50 times every mouthful of all I will eat and eat only in concentration, not while watching forex charts
April 16th, 2005 at 10:02 am
I have to agree with you Steve that many diets are just a way to sell magazines, books or power bars. When I did the Body for Life program, I received great results without using EAS products. I also agree with you on “beta testing” a diet or exercise plan. For my body type a 40-30-30 or a 40-40-20 plan works the best. I’ve tried the high carb, low fat diets but they totally mess up my blood sugar and I literally fall asleep mid-day on them. I’ve also tried the real low carb plans. I lose a lot of weight quickly(about 2 pounds per day) but it is almost all water weight. Without some carbs I lose all my energy and I find I can hardly exercise.
So far the best book diets I’ve found for myself are the Southbeach maintenance diet and the newer Abs diet. Both have lots of vegetables, lots of lean protien and limit most processed food.
I am curious what type of protien you use on your vegan diet. I’ve read about the pros and cons of soy and other vegetable based protien products and wondered what your experiences are.
April 17th, 2005 at 7:39 am
Hmm, my physical condition is really bad. I’m not ill, but I don’t do regular exercises — to be honest, for a very long time, about 9 years now
I tried jogging one day per week several times, but after some weeks I always stopped doing it.
Now I will do it for 30 days (30 minutes jogging a day) and never again
Starting today …
PS: Maybe there will be more interest in this, if you make a short blog entry in a few days that there definitely will be a postmortem and that everyone interested can participate in this if they post their goal until an explicit date?
(I mean something like “give postmortem a try”)
April 17th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
You don’t need to worry much about protein on a vegan diet. Even if you eat only veggies, you’ll still get ample protein. For example, iceberg lettuce is 30% protein, and broccoli is around 50% protein as a percentage of calories. As long as you consume adequate calories, any reasonable variety of plant foods will provide abundant protein. In order to have any risk of protein deficiency, you’d either have to starve yourself, or you’d have to intentionally design a skewed diet to be protein deficient (which would mean eating only certain fruits and nothing else).
The known health risk comes from protein overconsumption. Osteoporosis is primarily caused by calcium loss due to excess protein consumption; your body will leech calcium from your bones to metabolize excess protein. So if you drink lots of milk (high in protein), you’ll actually end up with weaker bones. “Milk is good for bones” is nothing but marketing mythology — heavy dairy consumers have been shown to have the weakest bones.
So be careful not to overdo the protein consumption if your skeleton matters to you. Even 10% of calories is plenty of protein.
April 17th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
I did it!
I run yesterday evening! I was only able to run 15 minutes, and even within these I had to make many interruptions. I think the total time was about 10 minutes. I sweated extremly, even 10 minutes after stopping.
But I have begun!!!
After running I took 31 pieces of paper and wrote 30, 29, … down to 0 onto them. Now I have a nice count down, which shows 29 at the moment.
I’m so happy
. Thanks Steve!
I will post another comment in 29 days from now.
April 18th, 2005 at 4:06 am
I’m going to do nothing but reading Steve Pavlina’s blog for a month.
Not even any single bit of work.
Just may be one hour of “play” every day at the most.
Seriously.
April 18th, 2005 at 6:37 am
Congrats, Daniel. 15 minutes is great. One suggestion for building your endurance is to alternate running 1 minute with walking 1 minute, and see how long you can do that. Then move to run 2 walk 1 and then run 3 walk 1, and gradually build up to run 7 walk 1 before switching to a continuous run. Also, try other starting combinations like run 1 walk 2 or run 3 walk 2. See what kinds of walk breaks give you the best experience while still keeping your heart rate up. Many people run whole marathons with a pattern of run 8 walk 1 and finish with better times than if they run continuously. The brief periodic walk breaks give the muscles enough of a rest that they don’t tire as much near the end of the race. Soreness can be lessened with walk breaks too.
April 18th, 2005 at 11:25 am
Thanks for these useful tips, I will start with run 1 walk 2 today.
April 18th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Great post, Steve
count me in, I am a beginner at GO and wanted to become master one day, thus I declare my goal “I study GO atleast one hour each day, for the next 30 days”,
April 18th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Hi Steve,
Great article, I think I might combine it with your one on interval training and try excercising for 30 days in a row.
The trouble is, I liked the suggestion about the web forums as well, as I feel that I lose too much useful time to reading and contributing to forums.
So, starting tomorrow, I am going to excercise once a day, by running, cycling or swimming (I need a bit of variety), cut down my time on web forums to 1 hour once a week, post in my soon to be set up again blog every day, and to stop procrastinating too much!!
I know it is alot to do at once, but I think it is easier to make a larger change and stick with it. It is the same way I stopped eating sugar in tea and food.
So, here goes, and hopefully in 30 days I’ll be a fitter, happier person.
Phil
April 19th, 2005 at 8:05 am
I’m going to do an arm workout once a day. I’ll alternate exercises to give each muscle group time to recover, but 3 sets, 8 reps of something (curl, press or fly) every day.
April 19th, 2005 at 9:32 am
I have tried the 30-day trial before, but I always gave up during the first week. Let’s see if a bit of public shaming helps.
Starting tomorrow, 20th of May, I will stick to my daily routine of getting up at 6.00 AM, starting work/study latest at 8.00 AM, working at least till 16.00 PM (with at most one hour for lunch and at most 5-minute break per work hour). After that time, I will be free to do something relaxing I *really* enjoy. I will also post at least one blog entry a day; if I have nothing to write, I will still write something.
April 19th, 2005 at 9:38 am
Thanks for the idea!
By the way - well-known that it requires 21 day to start a new habit. So 30-day trial is a good way to trick your mind. For 21 day you’ll have to force yourself to stick to the habit, and then 9 days to enjoy it.
April 19th, 2005 at 10:24 am
Giving up online forums is a very good idea. They are becoming quite a big waste of my time, I keep reading and reading all these different opinions, probably expecting to discover something that would make my life easier
So I will not visit any online forums or read any blog or news comment sections, with the exception of this thread and the postmortem of this experiment. I guess I will also remove most if not all RSS feeds from my browser. Let’s see what happens…
Thank you very much, good luck to all and see you later!
April 19th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Okay Steve,
Great idea. For 30 days I will not eat anything that has a face. I mean, I try to ignore meat for a month. Vamos a ver en un mes! :))
Mate
April 19th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
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April 20th, 2005 at 7:58 am
135th Edition of the Carnival of the Vanities
Welcome to the 135th Edition of the Carnival of the Vanities. The COTV is showcase of blog posts which have been submitted by their authors as an example of their best work. Each week a host is selected to compile…
April 20th, 2005 at 9:17 am
30 Days to Success
Steve Pavlina takes the concept of the 30-day trial period from shareware and morphs it into a tool to create new or break old habits. Rather than focusing on behaviour change as a long-term fight, look at making it a “trial” for 30 days.
“Yet we…
April 20th, 2005 at 10:37 am
Pressing the reset button
Steve Pavlina’s challenging people to do something different for 30 days (kind of a “new month resolution” sort of thing)….
April 20th, 2005 at 11:10 am
For 30 days, I will follow the zone diet. Lets see what happens.
April 21st, 2005 at 1:32 am
Great motivational post Steve! I went running this morning for the first time for about a year and it felt good. The idea of running for a set period of time ignoring distance and speed is a great one. I will report back on May 20th on with results.
April 22nd, 2005 at 6:37 pm
Well after having surgery December 16th I have gotten very lazy, but mostly because of recuperation and not feeling well enough to do anything. For 30 days I will use my gazelle for at least 15 minutes a day. I started 4 or 5 days ago and have done 20 to 30 minutes most days, not counting the 5 minutes I do in the morning just to get me and my muscles woken up.
Also, while not completely switching to a vegetarian diet, I am going to eat only vegetarian lunches for 30 days also. At some point in the future I may take the plunge and try a full vegetarian diet for another 30 days but this will be a start for now.
April 24th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
Rough decision, but here we go: effective 4/25/05 I’m going to write for 30 minutes every day.
April 25th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
43things is an interesting site where you can publish your goals and see other people with the same goal . http://www.43things.com/
April 25th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Steve!! I have been taking steps in my life to further myself as a person. Then I found your site and was amazed! I hope to further learn from you.
May 3rd, 2005 at 11:48 am
I was walking down Clanbrassil Street (Dundalk, Ireland) today muttering to myself that something was going to push me in one direction or another. Then I found your website! Another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place. Great suggestions. I will let you know what has resulted from the 30 day trial. Kind regards.
May 6th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
I want to get up at 6:15am from tomorrow and keep it for a month.
I will let you know the result on 8th June:-p
May 9th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
I’m going to go to bed before 10 PM each night, before midnight Thurs-Sat.
I’m going to wake up by 5:30 AM each morning, 7 AM on Saturday.
I’m going to give up e-mail until after 7 PM.
I’m going to give up forums until after 7 PM.
May 25th, 2005 at 9:12 pm
This is a good practice of “Decision Management” which is inevitably more important than good “Decision Making”. Everyone can make a new years resolution, but who is still following up on it 2-weeks after the ball drops? I heard a great talk by John Maxwell on doing just that. He’s a good motivational teacher/speaker - I would recommend listening to him if you get the chance.
May 30th, 2005 at 4:32 am
[...] de junho 30 05 2005 Inspirado por este post, que por sua vez foi inspirado por este outro, vou tentar um esforço especial nos 30 dias do próximo mês para termin [...]
June 7th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
Hey Steve,
GREAT article! (I must admit I enjoy your articles far more than Carnegie/Hill/Nightingale/other self-help stuff)
Anyway, I’ll work everyday (for next 30 days) at least one hour on my master thesis.
Awww … I already see the challenge ahead
June 9th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Why does it take 30 days to change a habit? How has that bee determined?
Thanks
June 12th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
[...] first (Funny, that!). I was inspired to take this challenge by Steve Pavlina’s Entry “30 days to success”. I really like that method, and it has shown posit [...]
June 17th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
i am going to comit to your 30 day challenge
Diet for 30 days + swim 1 hour of every day for 30 days
humph hard work here i come
June 17th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
hi out there , i think me and my husband have such horrible luck finaicially that a curse is on us and when some one wishes us good luck we get the opposite of the effects , we are sooooooooooooooooooo stapped we couldnt buy a get bettter program and if we did it would set us back instead of forward
June 21st, 2005 at 7:04 am
Neat article, Steve. I’ve read a few of your posts since yesterday, in an on-going attempt to seize control of my life. Various financial blogs have helped enormously with the wallet, but yours I think will be of great assistance in handling the rest of my life, with which I’m not very satisfied. Seeing as how I turn 24 and enter my mid twenties in two days, I want to improve whatever I can as expeditiously as possible.
I think I’ll adopt two thirty-day trials: reading in bed for an hour or until I’m too tired to continue (ala your post to that effect), and exercising in the morning. The latter will tack an hour onto my two-hour morning routine, but if I can start waking at 5:00 a.m., it’ll be very worth it.
Thanks, Steve!
June 21st, 2005 at 2:47 pm
[...] the rest of the house. Still a long way to go, but a start! While poking about, found an older post on Steve Pavlina’s site, about forming new habits. Makes sense, an [...]
June 22nd, 2005 at 6:27 am
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June 30th, 2005 at 8:24 am
30 Day Free Trial
Since tomorrow is the first of July, I offer this post from Steve Pavlina’s blog on 30 Days to Success.
July 6th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Hi! I used a similar approach to stop drinking. I used to drink a lot, enough so it was affecting my physical and mental health on a daily basis. I finally decided to at least stop for 31 days and see how good I would feel, because I knew somewhere all the drinking was bad for me. It’s been a month now since I last had a sip of alcohol and even if I still am tired I feel a lot better than before.
August 3rd, 2005 at 4:25 pm
[...] Back in April 2005 Steve posted about 30 Days to Success - where he proposed a link between the 30 Day Trial Period for some Software Products and using this method as a risk free way to develop a new habit. [...]
August 18th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
For the next 30 days, I’m going sweets-free.