Results: My 7 Day Self-Discipline Challenge
Glen / 
45 Comments / 
June 3rd, 2009 / 
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Just over a week ago I decided to put myself on a leash. Not literally of course, but figuratively. I decided that I wanted to push my own limits and spend 7 days focusing on only the very important things that matter to me and my business.
I took drastic action and was very critical about the areas of life that waste my time. I cut things out of my schedule that are very habitual and things that sometimes feel like a necessity. The challenge is now over and today I’m sharing the results – if any of you joined me on the day I posted about it, you should also be finished your challenge by now.
The reason I decided to set myself this pure self-discipline challenge is because I realise that I have been slipping in areas of my life. My business and finances are going well but if I’m being totally honest, things could be going a lot better.
A lot has been going on around me recently and quite a few events have really forced me to put life into perspective. Because of this, I want to start taking responsibility for my actions and more specifically, the results. In essence, I don’t want to take my opportunity on earth for granted, and it is only me who can make sure that doesn’t happen.
The challenge was something I decided to do in order to push my limits and definitely think it has been a success. Before I share my overall thoughts and what I’ve realised thanks to it, I want to look at each area I have worked on and how I think I handled the discipline.
Individual Commentary
I eliminated five main things from my life. Some things were a lot harder to remove from my schedule than others, but they each tempted me to slip up during the 7 days. Here is what I stopped and how their absence during my week-long challenge affected me (in the order I originally wrote them).
No Twitter, Facebook or Instant Messaging
Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had to use MSN Messenger every single day to talk to the freelancers I hire in order to track the progress of the projects they were working on. Once their jobs were completed however, I had no need for MSN, yet I would still be using it to chat to friends and ex-colleagues fairly often.
The same goes for Twitter and Facebook. They don’t really have a need or purpose in my life right now but I use them regularly. This won’t make sense for people who don’t use either site but whenever something cool happened in my life (everyday, obviously ;) ) I would instantly think of Tweeting it or updating my status on Facebook.
I honestly think this a bit pathetic and it is certainly not how I want to live my life. As far as cutting these things out goes, I strangely had no problems eliminating them from my daily life. I definitely won’t return to them as often as before. My only concern with this is that some people sent me multiple messages on Facebook because they thought I was ignoring them.
No TV
I spent over a year in South Africa and in that time I watched less than 30 minutes of Television. I also watch no more than an hour of TV per day in the UK, despite the fact that I’m working from home, so I didn’t think this area would pose any problems.
I was so serious about this challenge that I said no to going to the pub and watching my football team (Newcastle United) play their last game of the season. It worked out as a small blessing in disguise – my team lost and they ended up being relegated.
I “slipped up” once on the last day of the challenge because I wanted to watch the finals of Britain’s Got Talent which is a very popular TV show over here. Besides that one incident I managed to stick to this successfully and again, didn’t find it too difficult.
No Waking Up Late or Staying Out Until 2-3 am
The staying out late part of this caused me a bit of a problem. On Friday I went out with my friends to Town for most of the day and then hit up a few nightclubs. In order to really push myself, I ended up leaving them at 12 and took a taxi home. Of course, I just told them I was tired and not on a self-discipline challenge.
I think the latest I woke up was 10:30am and the earliest about 6am. My average was about 9am which is fairly good seeing as I can set my own hours. This part of the challenge also made my days feel much longer and helped me to get a lot more done.
No Sex or Anything Related
This was not as bad as I thought it would be, but definitely the item I found giving me the most temptations. I don’t want to be stereotypical but I also think it is much harder for me as a 20 year old male than any other age or gender combination.
I didn’t tell my female “friends” (I don’t do girlfriends, long story) about this and literally just cut off all communication. I knew if I was in touch with them this would be almost impossible so I disappeared off the radar for a week.
If I was going to fail on any item of my challenge then this definitely would have been it. I did manage to pass this as well and I’m going to spend the next 7 days making up for it.
No Email or Website Stats Checking
I run an internet based business so these are fairly important to my success. That being said, I knew that I could go a week without checking my email and things would not crumble in my absence. On the first day of the challenge, I turned on my PC and just caught myself about to open up my inboxes (I have five) but managed to stop. This was not deliberate and purely habitual.
After that, I decided to remove most of my bookmarks so that I couldn’t accidentally slip-up and ruin my challenge (which, if you can’t tell already, I took very seriously). I didn’t find it difficult not to check my website stats which is quite strange as I usually check them multiple times per day using real-time analytics.
OVERALL
In all honesty, this was a lot easier than I thought it would be. As I expected, the last few days were much harder than the first two or three, probably because my motivation was dying down and I knew the end was in sight.
One of the realisations I am going to share below did help to make this a lot easier. What I’m really happy about is the fact that I have completed more work in these last 7 days than I have in the last 3 weeks. I have finished a new eBook for another audience, written about 10 blog posts, set-up two new websites and finished some tasks that I have been putting off.
It’s great to see how much you can get done when you really put your mind to something.
Two Realisations
When I stated what I hope to get out of this self-discipline challenge, there were three items on my list. The first was that I want to test myself and push my own limits. The second was that I wanted to dedicate more time to productive activities and the third was simply curiosity as to how I would react after the challenge and what I would learn.
I definitely succeeded in the first two items on my list, I pushed myself hard and I had a very productive week. As far as my reaction goes, I think I need a bit more time to see if I slip into old habits. I am happy to say that this challenge led me to two excellent realisations that I would probably never have had otherwise.
They are…
1. It’s Only Hard When You’re Free
I noticed that every time I wanted to check my email, call my friends or do something related to another item on my list, I was free. What I mean by that is that I had nothing else going on, nothing else was taking up my attention.
It was only when I let my mind wander and wonder “what now?” that it was so easy to procrastinate and want to break my own rules. My solution for this was, quite simply, to keep myself busy. When I start writing I literally get so absorbed in it that I forget about anything else and minutes can quickly turn into hours. When I’m writing a blog post I don’t care about the TV, my emails or anything else; I just focus on what I’m doing.
This immersion that I experienced is also one of the reasons that we love TV and Sex so much. We get so absorbed by them and stay so focused in the moment that everything else just fades away. If you can keep yourself busy, with anything, then the likeliness to slip up decreases and you’ll find that procrastination disappears naturally.
2. Focus on the Tasks’ End Result, Not Something Else
When you’re looking to improve your self image using visualization, it’s good to focus on the end result and let your brain worry about the rest. As far as motivation goes, I’ve also realised that focusing on the end result can really spur you into action.
A few weeks ago, when I noticed my productivity was slipping, I created a video for myself. The idea of the video was for it to show all the things I could enjoy after the months of hard work I have in store before I start travelling. It had pictures of my friends, my family, and my dream car which transitioned into each other while the song “High” by the Lighthouse family played in the background.
I watched this video every single day for weeks. It didn’t help, nothing changed.
I used the free time I had gained from waking up earlier in this 7 day challenge to read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. His writing made me realise that everything I have achieved in my life has been because I had a real desire to do so. And, all of the things I’ve quit shortly after starting, didn’t really matter to me that much.
Therefore, I looked at how I could build this burning desire for the projects I’m working on and, although I rarely recommend it, I appealed to my ego. I created a video about the things I was working on and where I want them to go, rather than my life without them in it.
The result? I no longer see procrastination as something I need to work on avoiding. Instead I have a strong focus to make my projects successful and useful. It is this desire I have built to succeed with them which makes me want to spend time on them. Once this was the case, procrastination just seemed to disappear on its own.
I can see that this idea is going to help me massively throughout life.
All in all, this has been a massively successful challenge for me and one I won’t hesitate to do again if I feel it is necessary. I would love to hear from all of you who have followed along on how it went or is going for you. If you are interested in trying it out, make sure you check the original post.
If you enjoyed this post, I would appreciate if you share it on Twitter, Facebook or Delicious!
Glen,
Thanks for the good tips on achieving and maintaining a state of Flow. Love your site!
Hey Liz,
I’m really glad you like the site, thanks for leaving a comment!
I am on day 3 of the challenge. I am successful at other areas but I completely failed at “NO ANGER” thing.
Could you please write an article on how to get rid of anger in future?
Quit an interesting element that you decided to take out of your schedule. If you have anger issues I’m not sure simply saying “I will eliminate them” would have been enough.
I’ll see what I can do
agreed. I decided something like.. no matter how the people mess up, instead of Anger, I will smile instead etc. But when those moments came up, I blew it
. Ofcourse, Anger is a monster and can not go that easily but I thought, 7 day is a small period so I can do that.
Earlier, I succeeded in 21 day challenge. In this 7 day challenge, I am keeping up on.. exercise atleast 10 minutes a day, wake up at 6am, No other emails than business, plan your full day.
Keep up the good work, it inspires
It’s great that you’re adopting some positive habits, keep it up.
I hope the 21 day challenge worked out well for you as well?
Hey Glen, Congratulation with your challenge. You have succeed. It feels good, to know that you are capable of taking charge of your life, doesn’t it?
If you say it was not easy, then it wasn’t that challenging.
Would you be able to challenge yourself to do the same things but for whole month? I think this is serious one… How would you think, act, feel and what kind of results would you be able produce?
I’ve done similar self-discipline. I gave up smoking and started to run 2 miles every day for 2 weeks. Eventually I fell into habit and now I’m smoke free, running and exercising every morning for 2 months now. And you know what? I feel fantastic! I gained confidence in myself and my ability to take control over my thoughts and actions. Progress is a keyword in this process
Hey Andrez, (Some comments get moderated, you don’t have to write it twice, I just have to approve them).
I think doing this for a month or even longer is the next step. I have adopted some great habits since taking on this challenge which I will be writing about next week. There are some things I simply couldn’t skip for 30 days because it wouldn’t make practical sense, but many of these items I can definitely cut down on.
Congratulations on your personal success, that’s very inspiring!
Very nice, Glen… I’m impressed. I wondered how you would handle the issue of the ladies, and I see you decided to avoid them completely. I suppose now you understand why monks isolate themselves in monasteries.
I’ve had the opportunity to go through these times of doing absolutely NONE of my regular things, when I go to Costa Rica. For various reasons it’s just never practical to keep up with anything online. This last time I went, I prescheduled all my posts and logged on once or twice a day to respond to a few comments. I spent a LOT more time in the real world… and it was lovely.
Bottom line is: boredom is definitely a luxury, and it leads to these unproductive habits. As a mom, I don’t have too much of that “free time” so it all takes care of itself.
Great advice Glen. It takes discipline to be successful, but the more that you make it a habit the easier it becomes.
The mental picture is key. If you visualize throughout the day the picture stays fresh and you’ll attract ideas (like your 7 day challenge) which lead you in the direction of your goal. All things are in response to whatever picture you are holding. Our imagination determines our lot in life.
Glen,
A very interesting experiment – thanks for sharing!
“This immersion that I experienced is also one of the reasons that we love TV and Sex so much. We get so absorbed by them and stay so focused in the moment that everything else just fades away. If you can keep yourself busy, with anything, then the likeliness to slip up decreases and you’ll find that procrastination disappears naturally.”
I think sometimes we stay busy to hide from things we don’t want to think about. You can often tell who they are because they have a “fear” of slowing down. I’m not saying that is what’s happening to you, but it does happen to many people.
Very possibly Roger, although in this case it is purely to stop myself wasting time on pursuits that don’t require my attention.
Thanks a lot for your comment.
Cool experiment Glen. I like the focus on the end result portion of your visualization recommendation. I Think often we get caught up in the process which is another visualization mistake people make.
Really interesting feedback on this challenge. I definitely don’t know if I could handle something like that. Interesting how you wrote “I don’t do girlfriends”…now I’m so curious… Though, at 20, you really don’t need to tie yourself down!
I actually did for quite a while, and when my abundance mentality started to kick in (big time) I realised it is not what I want. I prefer just the ‘fun parts’ of each relationship for now
Congrats Glen! I`m so glad you had such great results
As for my challenge, guess what? I`ve been using my time very efficiently and been finishing tasks a loooot faster, and I`ve been writing a lot too.
, which is to start learning html and css (a friend`s helping me). So, I`ll finally be putting my blog really pretty now, hopefully by the end of the week, you`ll see something of that. I`ve realized a couple things too without facebook and twitter but I`ll write about that later on 
THANK YOU SO MUCH
Oh, and I finally did something I`d been postponing for being lazy
You’re welcome Chica, I’m impressed you’re taking action.
What I noticed the most about Twitter / Facebook is that I don’t really care about them. And, if I’m honest, I didn’t *miss* anything and people didn’t really miss me…after all, they aren’t “real.”
¡Voy probablemente a intentar recortar ambos ellos para bueno alguna vez pronto, así que apenas comprobaré su blog para permanecer en tacto!
Wow, I understood that, Im so smart
Yeah, it`s all really superficial. What I realized is that sometimes If I`m distracted in Facebook it`s not because Facebook is distracting me, it`s because I don`t really wanna be doing what I should be doing so I want to be distracted and check facebook, twitter, etc…Because when I`m doing something I`m very passionate about I don`t think of anything else, so it`s really my fault for not doing what I want to do.
jaja, that translator`s not getting any better and btw, I`m the ¨realest¨(is that correct) person you`ll ever meet online
Haha you are smart…kinda.
Yeah I can relate to that, just using them because you don’t want to face the work that is just around the corner.
What translator? That’s from my head
Yeah… I’ve got to protest here. I’ve missed BOTH of you on twitter, AND I’m fairly real (at least I think I’m real).
If you are using facebook and twitter to kill time when you are bored, it can be a HUGE waste of life. But it is possible to make some real, valuable human to human connections there. I have found people I never would’ve connected with otherwise, and I’m so glad I did.
The key, as with everything else, is moderation. Don’t log in there indefinitely… just check in from time to time. Or not… but, for the record, you ARE missed.
Hahaha, Lisissss you`re the best, you know I miss and love you
That`s just Glen being all guy-ish not admitting he misses us. But you know, yo nunca he hecho amigos nuevos por facebook ni mucho menos en twitter, sino a traves de los blogs, leyendo y comentando, la gran mayoria de personas que tengo en facebook son personas que ya conozco. I never thought I`d meet such amazing people online like you and Glen (this is why we HAVE to do that Vegas trip, to make all this ¨real¨)
Bueno, si mantienes los blogs, por lo menos te puedo seguir viendo… eso es lo mas importante!
Lisissss, why do you speak Spanish?
Haha I’m not being all “guyish” – read what I said:
You guys are awesome, and Lisis is like the mom I already have
I’m honored… ’cause your mom sounds SUPER cool.
I speak Spanish because I was born in Honduras (probably under a banana tree) and raised in Costa Rica until I was 12. Mi familia is still there! It’s in my blood… Spanish and Costa Rican coffee. That’s me!
=-)
Enjoyed following your seven day adventure into what is real. I am still not sure why you felt the need to give up sex for a week. Sex is a healthy thing.
Discipline is something not practiced by everyone these days. It requires a certain understanding of our human condition, an open mind and strong spirit. Well done, and thanks for sharing the experience. There is much we can let go of and be even more complete. I enjoy your blog.
I agree, it’s just something I think about a lot, so it takes a strong act of self-discipline / will power to eliminate it from my life, which is what the whole challenge was about.
Thanks for all your comments over the last few months, I’ve enjoyed reading them!
Inspiring challenge Glen! I’m going to have to try a challenge like that. 7 days is a very reasonable length of time to really test out a serious change.
I found your second conclusion about focusing on building a burning desire for the actual project you’re working on, rather than secondary gains. There’s an interesting & provocative book that covers that in depth called “Punished by Rewards” that I recommend checking out.
I also explored this issue more in my recent blog post “How to Love Doing the Things You Hate”.
Hey Robin, thanks for mentioning me in your blog post. Thanks for the book recommendation, I need some more so I’ll probably take a look at it!
Thanks for stopping by
Congrats man! You continue to be an inspiration. You got a TON of work done in a week! Perhaps I will try something similar!
Having moved to Shanghai I rarely, if ever watch T.V, and I surprisingly haven’t missed it all that much.
One thing I struggle with is checking email way too much, it’s something I’m working hard to improve.
“(I don’t do girlfriends, long story)”
Hey Bud. Definitely, the week was hugely successful for me. I’m even considering doing it again regarding Facebook and Twitter.
I have now made it a rule to only check email once per day and it’s a bit difficult, but I’m sticking to it quite well.
Hi Glen,
First of all, thank you for proposing the 7-day challenge. I’ve been struggling to wake up early for the past month or so and was thinking that I should make a serious attempt to overcome this bad habit. I then saw your challenge and thought I’d include that as part of my challenge.
I used to drag myself out of bed kicking and screaming, and I’d always arrive half an hour late to work. Mid-challenge I started waking up at 5:30am feeling energetic and going to work an hour early!
But the thing is, the transformation happened over night. I simply made a mindful decision to wake up early, and that’s what I did.
I think discipline is about treating your decisions AS decisions, and not as suggestions and “wouldn’t it be nice” thoughts.
Not using twitter, email and facebook during work proved to be very easy, and it (again) boiled down to making a mindful decision.
Thanks, once again, for the encouragement and the inspiration. Not only have I managed to kick a few bad habits, I have several blog posts to write!
Hi Glen, just want to say Well Done for meeting the challenge. Watching the finals on TV is forgivable I guess hahaha. Let’s just say there’s a lot of us who can’t do what you did. I for example will find it hard to give up facebook. I’m truly inspired. And I will follow your example.
Thanks for the forgiveness Eduardo
Inspiration is one of my main aims with the site, so I’m glad to hear I’m setting a good example. I look forward to your own results!
What an exciting challenge you put yourself through for 7 days! Yesterday, my electronic saavy family had a power outage for the evening and it was the best! The spend time to myself family of mine actually came together to talk and read a good couple of books. It was so much fun.
I think the hardest one I would have is the internet thing. But, I am pushing myself to limit that time now. I can get so much more done when I am not yapping or messing with my blog layout. Which speaking of…I better stop typing. I am breaking my own limit.
Glad to have found your blog.
Hey MonkeyFunk, thanks for stopping by.
Haha I can relate to that. I remember two years ago when I was super addicted to working on one of my websites (I even skipped college to do it) and one day my internet went down…I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Glad to have you as a reader.
Nice picture from Shanghai by the way!
And I don’t even have to worry about checking Twitter cause China blocked it. =O
Hello. This is the first time I visit your blog (I think; at least it’s the first time that it had an impact on me). I was drawn here by the blog post you wrote for Write to Done. First of all, let me tell you that I really dig your writing style. I’ve been checking out your posts, and I was left with a peaceful encouraging feeling. So, thanks for that. As for this one, I can definitely relate to your challenge. For me, the most destructive of all the things that make me procrastinate has been the TV. I’ve seriously lost years of my life to it. A lot of personal projects have stagnated because of it, so recently I took my TV to my mother’s house and set it up on her guest room, where I stay when I stay there for a visit. I had tried unplugging it and covering it when it was still here, but on days where I was tired and wanted to disconnect, I’d plug it back in. Of course, for the next day, it was already setup. Since it’s at my mother’s, I’ve been able to read more (actual books which I hadn’t done in years) and for the first time, started to get serious about a hobby I been neglecting for the past couple of years.
Oh, and now I have an excuse to visit my mother, heheh. Great job. Have a successful day!
Hey Renato,
Thanks for coming over to the site, and I’m glad you can relate to what I put out there. That is a great idea regarding TV usage, making it much harder for you to give in to your ‘cravings’.
Enjoy your mom’s place
agwgh wrote long comment as i read it but ran outta battery so i’ll just mention the bits that stuck out…
really agree that it’s only hard when you’re free. so true. didn’t think of it like that before but it’s SO on point. good idea to keep yourself busy, to distract yourself because i find that trying to stop that just makes you focus on something else that distracts you. like stop email, you check your phone, stop phone you watch movie, stop movie you stumble etc.
interestingly though i find the opposite is true. it’s hard when you’re super busy too. example: when i’m studying something really hard or i can’t get an example to work, i’ll get up and go make some coffee or something to kinda run away from the problem. solution to that in my experience is just barrel through. catch yourself doing it. aware of it and sit back down.
think number 2 was magic too. good ol “do i really want this” really works. think and grow rich is the golden diamond. rishan’s read it like 6 times – his fb status was something like “hitting the beach to read think and grow rich” lol
awesome stuffs
congrats on hitting 3000 subscribers and on owning the google vip
all the best
ali
I like the way you went about removing obstacles to your goal. Good work!
I tried this kind of method which I have failed 100 times. I always fail when wanted to stop playing video games, Video games to me is a habit and changing habit is not that easy.
Probably I don’t have enough burning desire like you had…
I give you mad props for that challange. have that much self discipline is just out of this world…awesome stuff… I;ve been pondering alot on the though of having the burning desire to leave the rat race. IT almost like something invincible holding me back and IDK what it is. It gets so pent up in frustration that sometimes I litterally just want to walk about of the office and never come back. But if I did that, in this current sitation, id be homeless…. Awesome post
Wow, congratulations! I also have a self-discipline problem, in my case it’s related to money: I spend too easily. I might also go and run such a challenge: don’t buy useless crap for ten days, hm
Congratulations again