every year, somewhere around mid-september, my feed starts to change. suddenly everyone wants to transform their entire life in three months.
train every day, go on a diet, run a marathon, read 10 books before the end of the year, wake up at 5 am, start a business, learn a new language and finally become that girl. the list of goals is long and, somehow, every single one of them promises the same thing: ending the year as a completely different version of the person you were at the start.
i do get the appeal of this kind of challenge. for a lot of people, sticking to a routine gets harder and harder as the months get colder. waking up at 5 am to train in the summer is one thing, but waking up at the same time when it’s 5°C outside, still dark, and your bed feels like the best place in the world is a whole other story. there’s a difference, though, between using autumn and winter as a chance to get yourself organized again and believing you’ll manage to change 15 things in your life at the same time (you won’t, trust me).
if most of the habits you want to build still aren’t part of your routine, a “winter arc challenge” probably isn’t going to fix that by magic. i’m not saying this to discourage you. i love setting new goals, creating little challenges for myself and even gamifying my life a bit, i just try to keep my feet on the ground these days.
a few years ago, i jumped headfirst into pretty much any challenge that came my way. 75 hard, sure. a giant list of daily habits, bring it on. wake up early, train, walk, read, meditate, drink three liters of water, never eat this, never do that... and then day twelve would come around and i’d be tired, frustrated and staring at an endless list of things i hadn’t managed to tick off.
now i prefer a different approach. i don’t want to spend the next months trying to transform my entire life. i want to pick a few small things that would actually make a difference in my routine and make room for them. so this autumn, i’d like to suggest a different kind of challenge.
i spend hours every week turning complex concepts into practical, easy-to-follow advice. if you find my work helpful, consider supporting it by becoming a free or paid subscriber ♡
50 days, 7 small changes
the idea is simple: for 50 days, you choose 7 small changes to bring into different areas of your life. it doesn’t all have to be about fitness. it could be eating a portion of fruit a day, reading for five minutes before bed, leaving your phone outside the bedroom, going for a walk, spending some time on a personal project, tidying the house for 10 minutes or simply going to bed a little earlier.
there’s no universal list and, above all, there’s no checklist built around the routine of an influencer who apparently has the whole day free to film reels, do her skincare and go to the gym. your list has to fit your life.
how it works
you can start whenever you like, but the idea is to finish before the holidays, when routines naturally start getting more chaotic. that time of year is for celebrating, traveling, seeing the people we love and enjoying ourselves, so when the holidays come around, i want to give life a little permission to just happen.
i also don’t want this to be 50 days of following a checklist, only to drop everything on day 51. i’d like these 50 days to be a kind of experiment, a stretch of time to:
take an honest look at the areas of your life you’d like to improve
choose small changes that could help
test those changes in real life
notice what works, what doesn’t, and why
decide what’s worth keeping once the 50 days are over
because at the end of the day, the real goal is to find out which changes actually make sense for you, and the challenge is just a good excuse to do that.
your list is the heart of the challenge
before you start, you’re going to look at your life as it is today. the real one, with work, studies, commitments, tiredness, laziness, last-minute surprises and everything else, rather than the life you’d like to have or the perfect routine you saved on pinterest.
think about the different areas of your life and choose 7 small things that could make it a little better. i’ll share my own 7 habits below for inspiration, but your list will probably look completely different from mine, and that’s exactly how it should be.
one important rule: create a “minimum version”
each change on your list gets two versions. the full version is what you plan to do on a normal day. the minimum version is what you can manage on a bad day, when you’re tired, sick, traveling, overwhelmed or just not in the mood for anything. the minimum version counts, and you log it the same way, without guilt and without needing to “make up for it” the next day.
in my experience, habits rarely die because people don’t know what to do. what usually kills them is a bad day where the only options you can see are doing everything or doing nothing, so i want to offer you a third one.
if your goal is to read 10 pages, maybe the minimum is one page. if you want to train for 45 minutes, maybe the minimum is a 10-minute walk. if you want to journal every day, maybe the minimum is three lines. the minimum version is there to keep the habit alive when life isn’t cooperating.
the rest of this post is for ✨ paid subscribers ✨
here’s what you’ll find inside:
the 20-minute exercise to take an honest look at your life right now and find the smallest changes that would actually make a difference
four checks to run before a habit goes on your list, so you don’t end up with a routine built only on restriction
my own 7 habits, with the full and minimum version of each one and why i chose them
how to make it stick, with the small things that keep a habit alive on a random tuesday in november
what to do when you miss a day, step by step, so one bad day doesn’t turn into a week of guilt
the notion template to plan your 7 changes and track your progress over the 50 days
why become a paid subscriber?
the paid tier is for readers who want to take things a step further and turn what they learn into something they can actually use. alongside the free posts, you’ll get:
2 in-depth guides every month: the tools, frameworks, & resources to help you put what you learn into practice.
the logbook: a monthly training journal where i share the exact program i’m running. it’s a real-time look at how i set goals, adjust my training, and track my progress along the way.
member perks: exclusive offers, ready-to-use workout templates & workbooks.