You’ve heard of the 30 Day Challenge, now get ready for the 90 Day Challenge.
The 90 Day Challenge is like the 30 day one on steroids.
I know what you’re thinking: isn’t the 90 Day Challenge simply a 30 day one 3x longer?
At its core, a 90 Day Challenge can be a time extension of a 30 day one. One month of intense lifestyle design gives way to three months of it.
But there are some nuances that the 90 Day Challenge has that go beyond merely extending the timeframe for completion.
How is a 90 Day Challenge significant?
For one, 90 days is a period that corresponds to the average length of time a traveller is allowed to stay in a country on a standard visa in one go. As such, for many a challenger, 90 days or roughly 3 months is the maximum amount of time they can carry out their lifestyle design aims abroad in a row, possibly for that entire year.
Even digital nomads don’t always get long-term visas meaning many nomads stay in a country for a few months at a time too.
Then there’s the ability to concretise mid-to-long term goals.
Research shows that habits take 2 months to form on average (or get rid of for negative habits). This is in contrast to old pop psychology about habits that states that it takes only 21 days.
Whilst there are those who can calcify habits in around 3 weeks (it depends on the person and habit), it’s clear that certain behaviours are best reinforced by doing them for more than 30 days. By the end of a 90 Day Challenge, you would undoubtedly conquer the habits you desire and if these habits pertain to improving your life abroad, all the better.
By definition, 30 day challenges focus more on short-term goals. A 90 Day Challenge builds lasting success for actions you carry out over this longer period again and again.
There are other benefits to the temporal change in doing such challenges. Over three months, you have the chance to tweak and adjust towards a longer-term goal compared to doing it over one month.
This doesn’t mean changing your goal nor the deadline for it—a goal should have a timeframe for completion such that it remains challenging enough to push you.
But it does mean you can observe your process towards the goal better and alter it with more time to spare. Many pursuits involve a lot of trial and error—we calibrate how we perform to specific contexts and iterate accordingly.
For instance, when I was acquiring foreign languages abroad, the way I learned evolved even within the first few months.
Take Japanese. I completed one of the beginner textbooks I studied from faster than expected. This meant that I had to use another, more challenging one within a few months which in turn altered the way I proceeded with my language learning than I’d anticipated from the start. Gaining familiarity with the subject matter which I was able to do better over 2-3 months proved beneficial because I had more time to optimise towards the goal.
The appeal of lifestyle design challenges
What is the appeal of such a challenge? Why bother at all? Let me turn to a section in my ‘30 Day Challenge‘ article that encapsulates why such challenges are worthwhile and transformative:
“When we do extended travel or nomading abroad, it’s very easy to fall into a routine of complacency, going about our daily affairs under the rubric of touring or nomadism. Our holistic lifestyle goals that we were working on pre-travel risk falling by the wayside in place of sightseeing, relaxation or remote working.
A 30 Day Challenge refocuses our attention on maximising our experience in another country by setting aims to pursue in multiple areas of life while abroad. Rather than being a solo traveller that lulls around a few tourist hotspots, you’ll master the knack of experiential travel in all kinds of places in a short period. Rather than being a lonely digital nomad typing from a cafe, you’ll become a social butterfly forming new circles within weeks.
A 30 Day Challenge is a power pairing of personal development + foreign country lifestyle design in one meaningful time frame. It’s a great way to kickstart your time abroad in a manner conducive to getting the lifestyle outcomes that you want.
A 30 Day Challenge can be carried out in any location although much of the thrill derives from seeing how quickly you can have a desirable lifestyle in a new place in the world. For that reason, most challenges are oriented towards slow travellers, digital nomads or newly arriving relocators.”
90 day challenges have the same if not greater appeal. Chances are when you start, you’ll be one of the trailblazers doing them and will benefit enormously in ways others won’t.
How to do a 90 Day Challenge
The process behind planning and executing a 90 Day Challenge is the same for a 30 day one. You want to set your major goals in writing making sure your goals are at least somewhat diversified. This means having goals that cover multiple lifestyle design areas to prevent a lopsided approach to your time in the country.
For example, instead of only having goals that pertain to digital nomadism and entrepreneurship (wealth), you’ll want to have goals for other areas such as health and relationships too. Then you can expand to include further areas beyond those three major ones such as culture, language and personal growth if you feel you have time and capacity.
As with the 30 day version, ensure you have goals that vary in their time for completion. The last thing you want is to have every goal’s deadline be day 90. This will overwhelm you and you’ll likely fail at some of them.
Instead, have goals that you can complete in weeks not months. You may even have ones that you can achieve in days. A language learning goal may take 90 days but a health goal of climbing a particular mountain will probably take only a day.
As discussed above, take time to update your approach to your longer term goals once you learn about how you move towards them in a practical sense.
For instance, if it’s your first time working remotely in a foreign country for three months, your process towards your digital nomad goal will probably need tweaking as you go along. Figuring out how you balance your remote work plus lifestyle in that timezone will need adaptation to your personality, you won’t necessarily know it from the start.
As with any goal, review your progress frequently to keep yourself on track. Doing a 90 Day Challenge simultaneously with someone else can be a great way to keep yourself accountable towards your goals. The other person doesn’t even need to be in the same country, they just need to be someone working towards their own goals in a similar timeframe and who you communicate with to share and find out how each of you are doing.
Summary
A 90 Day Challenge is like a 30 day one on steroids. It packs a lot of lifestyle design goals into a longer timeframe. Doing so can be very rewarding for those who have the means to travel or stay in a country for at least a few months.
A 90 Day Challenge differs from a 30 day one in a few ways.
A few months is often the longest period of time a non-resident can spend in a row in a foreign country making a 90 Day Challenge in maximum alignment with what you want to achieve with your time abroad.
It allows you to better develop strong habits that are conducive to long term success in an area of lifestyle design.
It also allows you more time to tweak and adjust your approach to your goals once you develop a feel for your lived experience in a country.
The process behind doing the challenge is similar to a 30 Day Challenge.
Set your major goals to achieve by the end of the third month.
Spread them out across multiple lifestyle design areas for holism.
Adjust and iterate your process as you go along.
Review your goals often and consider an accountability partner to keep you in check.
So if your someone travelling, nomading or residing abroad for a few months, get started towards your goals! Make your own lifestyle design project a reality with a #90 Day Challenge!
Share this post with other people and get in touch to let me know what you’re up to during your challenge. I’m always thrilled to hear how readers apply themselves and achieve their lifestyle design aims.
Best of luck on your journey!
