30 days of change (52 days to go)
Saturday, August 15th, 2009I’ve just recently completed a 30 day personal development program. The beauty of this 
program is that I designed it myself, and it cost me nothing other than my time, some paper and a desire to stick with it. The rewards have been fantastic!
The purpose of this 30 day program was to challenge myself, take things to another level and give myself a sort of “detox” from the everyday things in life. This was also an experiment - I knew what I wanted to achieve, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to work.
My main focus was to complete the 30 day program. I could then evaluate it, the results I got and then refine the program for the next 30 days and so on. The objective is to improve my life in a holistic way - covering as many aspects of my life as possible. The way I designed it was simple:
“Complete 5 daily tasks, each day, for a period of 30 days. “
It’s pretty basic to setup. I just made a word document, tabled with each day and 5 rows for the 5 tasks for that day. The way I planned it, was by thinking of the goals I wanted to achieve. An example of my plan below 
As I mentioned….pretty simple, yet effective. Now as you can see, I would leave a couple of spaces each day so that I could add some tasks either on the day or at the beginning of the week.
Some tips for making your own 30 day program:
- Once you’ve completed your program, print it out and staple it or get it bound.
- Reward yourself - under the last day, write something you will get if you complete the 30 days, that will motivate you to continue
- Choose tasks that work towards making you feel empowered and achieving your goals
- For extra motivation, encourage your partner (or friends) to do the their own 30 day program & then compare results at the end (and celebrate!)
One of the coolest things for me, was once I completed the first 30 day programme, my wife asked me to set one up for her. She’s been doing really great so far and seems to be achieving more & feeling more empowered!
You may also be pleased to know that I’ve put “update blog” as one of my five to-do’s, every second day, on my current 30 day program - so the drought is over!
