After 31 Days: How to Review Your Challenge and Keep What Works

A month of daily experiments generates a lot of information about what makes your life better. The final step is the one most people skip: deciding what to keep. Without it, the challenge becomes a pleasant memory rather than a lasting change.

This review takes about an hour. Do it within a few days of finishing, while the experiences are fresh.

Step 1: Gather your notes

Collect whatever you recorded: your tracker, printable checklist, journal or phone notes. If you didn't take notes, spend ten minutes jotting down what you remember about each day. The list of all 31 days will jog your memory.

Step 2: Rate each day

For each day you tried, give two quick scores from 1 to 5:

• Impact: how much did it improve your day or your life?
• Ease: how easy would it be to keep doing?

You'll end up with something like this:

Step 3: Find your keepers

Look for days with high impact. Among those, the ones that are also easy are your best candidates for new habits. High-impact, hard-to-keep days might work better in a smaller form, or less often. Low-impact days can simply be let go, however virtuous they sound.

Choose two or three changes to keep. Not ten. Research by Phillippa Lally and colleagues at University College London found that it took participants a median of 66 days for a new daily behaviour to feel automatic, with wide variation between people and habits. That's a lot of attention to spread across many changes at once.

Step 4: Design each habit

For each keeper, write a short plan:

• What exactly will you do? "Walk outside for 20 minutes."
• When and where? "After lunch on weekdays, around the block from the office."
• What's the smallest version for bad days? "Five minutes outside."
• How will you track it? A tick on a calendar, a note in your phone, a habit app.

Linking a new habit to an existing routine, like after coffee, after lunch or before bed, gives it a reliable trigger.

Step 5: Notice what surprised you

Ask yourself a few reflective questions:

• Which day did I expect to dislike but actually enjoyed?
• Which day was harder than I expected, and why?
• What did I learn about my energy, relationships or priorities?
• What do I want more of in my life?

These insights are often more valuable than any single habit.

Step 6: Schedule a check-in

Put a reminder in your calendar for one month from now. When it comes up, ask: am I still doing my keepers? Is anything getting in the way? Do I want to add another, or repeat a few days of the challenge?

Repeat, remix, share

Some people do the challenge once a year, at New Year or on a birthday. Others repeat individual days whenever they need a lift. You might also invite a friend or family member to try it with you next time. Doing it together adds accountability and a lot more conversation.

Celebrate

You've just spent a month trying new things and paying attention to your life. That's worth recognising, even if you skipped days or found some hard. Write down one thing you're proud of from the past month and add it to your list from day 4.

Related: 5 surefire ways to stick to your New Year resolutions and do you recognize yourself in these 6 stages of change?.

Sources and further reading

• Lally et al. (2010), How are habits formed, European Journal of Social Psychology