Trouble Engaging With Your New Goals or Habits? Create a Challenge For Yourself

Do you have a host of new goals you have established for yourself? Maybe you have a list of habits you want to begin. They can seem daunting, time consuming, and just plain not fun to think about. You chose them for a reason, though, so getting them underway is the first big step in accomplishing them. So is there anything you can do to help get this first step underway, and even make these new activities something you can look forward to?

Games are fun. Having a new challenge presented to you can also be a way to get energy around a project or similar activity. These can apply to your goals and habits as well. When I say ‘challenge’ yourself, I don’t mean in the push harder way and make it more difficult. I am thinking in terms of creating more of a game-like challenge where you can build a framework for establishing the needed routines for successfully accomplishing the goals or habits you have established for yourself.

Make it fun

Gamifying your activities is a great way to make a new set of activities something to look forward to. Think about what that might look like for your specific situation. Habits may be a little easier in this regard, as that may be something you are doing more often. If you have a new habit you are trying to build for exercising four days each week for thirty-minutes, then you can set up a tracking board for those days. Keep it visual in some way so that you can see your progress. Think of that as your ‘game board’. There are plenty of apps that can do this on your phone or tablet. I have covered Streaks in the past, and it is a good way to keep a digital game board you can see each day. However, it doesn’t have to be digital. Some of the best and quickest ways to keep it in view and be easy is to set up are a sheet of paper on the wall, or a small dry-erase board you already have.

For your larger goals, setting up milestones that offer rewards may be a great way to make getting started fun, and keep it interesting along the way. What are some little rewards that would be meaningful for you that you can use as prizes for achieving those mile markers? These do not need to be elaborate, and you can make them relative to what you are achieving with each step. Small task, small reward. Bigger achievement, bigger prize.

Write it down

To make your challenge official, write it down. Define the rules, rewards, and timing for your challenge. This allows you to think through all the details you need, without creating a lot of complexity. Making the rules can be a fun element of this as well. Remember, this is purely for you, the parameters are fully within your control. Be whimsical, be different, and have fun with it.

Other forms

A challenge can also be a concentrated event. Perhaps you build a plan to block out an hour each day for three days in a row to brainstorm ideas for thirty minutes. Put it on your calendar and treat it like a critically important meeting. Incorporate this into your game if it makes sense.

Following the theme of successive days, use that concept to do other research. Perhaps you block out one-hour for a week to listen to or read a book that will help you with the goal you have set. Or use the time to read articles on how others have achieved the same habit you are trying to establish.

The idea of an x-day challenge is everywhere. Starbucks offers it as a way to get customers to come in to try new or different drinks and snacks. Fitness clubs, or even apps, have challenges frequently to engage users and urge customers to begin building habits. The Apple Fitness app has a January challenge of achieving a certain number of calories burned for 7-days across the month. You can see your progress at any time. Those are also ideas you can utilize to help you jumpstart your goal achievement activity or new habits.

Goals and habits are not usually all fun and games; thus they can feel harder than you anticipated when you set them. Now that they are on your doorstep to complete, you can build ways to make these a fun activity for you to engage with. This should help to ensure you can get a strong start to accomplishing everything you want in the year ahead.

How could you make your goals or habits more fun for yourself to get started?

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Photo by Daniele Franchi on Unsplash