From the beginning of 2019, every month I’ve been experimenting with picking up different habits. Some of the easier ones are listening to 10 minutes of Spanish, walking 10000 steps a day, making a note of the day ahead before going to sleep, reflecting on my week, personal vlogs and meditating.

Writing

Picking up writing was challenging. The goal was to create a new article every week. Apart from when I was traveling, I’ve managed to set aside at least 4—6 hours to writing every week. I already feel that writing became part of my weekly routine and it feels great.

In the beginning, I’ve committed to writing for 1.5 hours every morning, Monday to Wednesday, from the coffee shop near our office. I’ve even posted about it on social media to hold myself accountable.

And it worked. Thanks to the clear definition of the when and where the morning writing sessions happened all the time. I’ve started looking forward to the early starts and enjoying the energy I got from engaging in the creative process.

I wanted to avoid committing to it every day, as it seemed impossible to reach that time.

It’s time to code

I always wanted to spend more time on side projects and now it’s the time to make it happen.

This time is going to be different. I’ve already demonstrated to myself, that I am able to pick up a creative habit and committing to it daily will not be a problem.

The goal for the next 30 days is to spend at least 1 hour, outside of work, on coding. This means writing actual code in 90% of the cases, but, there will be time set aside for learning as well. I really want to brush up on my Typescript and testing skills.

I have a couple of project ideas in mind and I will make progress on them in the upcoming 30 days.

The main objective of this challenge is to ingrain working on side projects in my life. Gamefying is my favorite way of getting things done and this time will be no different.

The game

The game will have a couple of parts.

1. A calendar in my room to keep track of my streak.
2. Publishing the start of this challenge on my socials.
3. Holding myself accountable. This will consist of a daily tweet on (obviously) Twitter and commits to my GitHub account.
4. Reflecting on the progress at the end of every week.

I would love to ask you to hold me accountable and ask questions about the projects I am working on. This will help me to get extra motivation on days when I’ll feel like skipping it.

Join me!

I also encourage you to join me in this challenge. Having a group to support each other is the best way for all of us to make significant progress.

If you don’t know to code, no problem. You can choose any activity you want. Acquiring a new skill(to code for example 😉), reading 40 pages, learning a language or writing are just a couple of things you could challenge yourself to pick up.

If you are up for the challenge, let’s connect. Reach out to me on any of the social listed down below and let’s make it happen.

Thanks for reading, and please share this post, so more people can join us 🙏