25 different challenges to improve your personal and professional life
“Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
— Joshua J. Marine
When we get a new job, move to a new city, or do anything else novel, we have a flurry of excitement. There’s so much to do! So much to learn! So many new and interesting ways we can screw things up!
But soon, we achieve competence in our new job. We can find our favorite locations in our new city, and have made some friends. We become complacent.
Can we restore that excitement and productivity, without uprooting ourselves? Is it possible to do more, without taking on too much?
The answer is, “Yes!”
A new job or move to a new city is an externally-imposed challenge. But you can create your own internally-imposed challenges. Those force you to do more than you normally would, or do different things than ordinary.
The trick is not to challenge yourself to do something you’re likely to fail at.
For example, I recently challenged myself to write 30 articles in 30 days. Since I’d been writing 4 or 5 articles a week, it was a bit of a stretch. But it was certainly doable. I wouldn’t have started with that challenge when I was first starting out.
If you’re a couch potato, don’t challenge yourself to run a half-marathon in two weeks. But you could challenge yourself to walk around the block a few times a week. Then challenge yourself to jog, or walk longer distances. Make the challenges progressively harder, and eventually, you’ll be a marathoner.
Personal or business challenges
You can challenge yourself personally. Challenge your eating habits, your exercise habits, your relationships, or your finances.
You can also challenge yourself professionally. Challenge what you do in your career, how you do it, how often you do it, and how you can increase your network.
In this article, I’m going to give you examples of all the different types of challenges. Some will be business examples, and some will be personal examples. But you can use any of the types of challenges for both areas.
The types of challenges
Do a Google search for personal excellence challenges, and you’ll find plenty of lists. I found lists of 5, 7, even 22 different challenges.
But the various challenges all fell into the same basic groups:
- Repetition challenges
- Novelty challenges
- Interaction challenges
- Attitude challenges
- Allocation challenges
In this article, I will cover all 5 types of challenges, with 5 different sample challenges for each. That gives you 25 different ways to challenge yourself. I’ll also explain which types of challenges are best for various outcomes.
Repetition Challenges
This type of challenge asks you to repeat a certain action a certain number of times within a certain time. The 30 articles in 30 days challenge I mentioned earlier is a type of repetition challenge.
Repetition challenges are often used when you want to build a new habit, or break yourself from an old habit.
Common forms of this challenge are:
- Exercise goals (3 gym visits/week)
- Productivity goals (5 sales calls/week)
- Hydration goals (8 glasses of water/day)
- Stress-reduction goals (meditate 3 times/week)
- Diet goals (5 servings of fruits or veggies/day)
Novelty Challenges
This type of challenge stimulates your brain by doing or experiencing something new.
A classic novelty challenge from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way was the artist’s date. Once a week, go someplace where you’d never been and immerse yourself in novel sensation. I still vividly recall the artist’s date where I went to a perfumery and smelled all the fragrances. Suddenly, I had words to describe smells that I’d never had before, and my world grew bigger because of it.
Some interesting versions of the novelty challenge are:
- Learn a new language
- Travel somewhere new (bonus points if you have to learn a new language to do it!)
- Try a new recipe every week
- Read a new book every week
- Talk to one new person every day
Interaction Challenges
These types of challenges aim to get you out of your self-imposed isolation. Often they are also repetition or novelty challenges.
For example, the novelty challenge to talk to new people is also an interaction challenge. Interaction challenges can be especially difficult for introverts. Introverts may prefer more structured challenges, so they’re not as overwhelmed.
Some interaction challenges you can try are:
- Talk to someone you normally wouldn’t
- Reconnect with an old friend
- Reach out to someone you admire
- Volunteer
- Take a class or join a hobby organization (such as a walking club)
Attitude Challenges
Attitude challenges are not so much about what you do, as about how you do it. These challenges are designed to change the way you think about something. They are often repetition challenges, since you are establishing a new thought habit.
A classic attitude challenge is to identify something about your job that scares you. Then you make a point of doing that thing every day until it doesn’t scare you any longer.
Other attitude challenges you may enjoy include:
- Do the thing that scares you
- Writing in a gratitude journal
- Track your wins
- Determine the five most important skills for your job, then give yourself a report card grade
- Revisit your business practices in light of industry trends or global forces
Allocation Challenges
The idea behind an allocation challenge is that you are changing how something is spent. You may be allocating time, money, or resources. The point is that you’re not getting more of whatever it is. You’re just changing where it goes.
A classic allocation challenge is the tithing challenge, of donating 10% to charity.
Here are some other popular allocation challenges:
- Make a budget, and direct more of your money to investments
- Unplug from all devices once a week
- Schedule family time first each week
- Start intermittent fasting, where all your eating happens during an 8-hour block
- Get to bed earlier or wake up earlier or both
Conclusion
By challenging yourself, you push yourself out of your comfort zone. You can learn and do more, and be more excited about your life, without the chaos of a big life change.
All challenges fall into one of five different types. They are:
- Repetition challenges
- Novelty challenges
- Interaction challenges
- Attitude challenges
- Allocation challenges
Pick one of the 25 different challenges listed in this article, and try it yourself. Watch what a difference it makes to your personal and professional growth!
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