One year, I decided to give 75 Hard a try. It was having a moment (maybe it still is), and I was curious enough to test it out. In so many ways, it went against everything I knew about lasting habits, but lived experience is better than no experience, so I dove right in.
At first, it was new and fun. My internal dialogue sounded something like this:
💦 Never have I ever tried to consume a gallon of water a day; maybe now I can use the entirety of my colorful collection of water bottles.
📸 I have to commit to taking a photo of myself daily? Loves it!
💪🏼 Two 45-minute workouts a day is more than double what I currently do, but I’ll probably look like a supermodel by the end of it. So let’s do it!
🍽️ Love following a nutrition plan; hell yeah, that I get to choose which one.
🚫 How hard could 75 days of no alcohol be?
📖 Oh! And reading 10 pages of a non-fiction book every day, I’ll just switch my audible habit to this, voila.
I made myself a fun little tracker in Canva. I filled every colorful waterbottle I had in my possession until I reached a gallon. And I just began.
The thing that I realized very quickly is that even the simplest of new habits (like taking a daily photo) takes time and energy. Adding 7 new habits? The feeling of can’t-keep-up-ness hits you almost immediately. Yes, I know, I get it, I get it. It’s meant to build mental toughness. But your girl wasn’t trying to join the military; she just needed a little habit glow-up.
The Facts of Life (re Time & Energy)
Our time and our energy are finite. I know, little-miss-captain-obvious over here. But there’s good news and bad news to this finite-ness:
🙆🏼♀️Good news: we all get the same 24 hours.
🤷🏼♀️Bad news: anything you want to add or take away is a math equation (which is maybe only bad news if you hate math…but it gets complicated).
Adding one new habit? That’s simple math.
Adding 7 new habits? We’re talking advanced calculus. Can it be done? Absolutely! But in order to add, you have to take away. Because the sum of all the parts is still 24. And we aren’t just talking time, we are also talking energy. So that checklist of all new everything, requires a bit of an overhaul.
Energy is just as finite as time, it’s just less tangible. Not to mention less reliable. For example, if you unexpectedly wake up sick one morning, you still have the same 24 hours as if you woke up healthy and energized. But now, your day is going to look drastically different. Because now you need more time for rest & recovery. Which means less time for getting things done. And when it comes to a habit regimen that is changing everything all at once, even if you find the time, you may not always be able to find the energy.
Put another way, if you want to add 90 minutes of working out to your day, that time and energy has to be borrowed from something else in your day. For 75 days, in this case. And even when you are good at managing your energy to make the most of your time, it becomes a juggling act real quick when it’s compounded by multiple habits all at once.
Is It Complicated, or Unrealistic?
It’s both. And herein lies the problem.
It’s unrealistic because it’s everything all at once, and it represents a significant % of change for how you spend your time and energy each day, that the odds are stacked against you before you even begin. Not to mention that it’s a list of things that may or may not be personally valuable or purposeful to you.
It’s complicated because there is no framework to follow, no proven system for success, no acknowledgement of the ecosystem of your already well-curated life. A checklist and a slogan of “just don’t quit” is not a program. It’s giving survival of the fittest.
At the time, I followed podcasts and blogs of mere mortals (like myself) who were trying the program. They started with enthusiasm. Powered through the hard days. Only to encounter a weekend or event that put the checklist to the test. And BAM: they missed a day.
And just like that, everything they had done up to that point was for nothing. They had to start back at the beginning. But then they never did. Start back at the beginning. Because you’d have to be a glutton for punishment to try again at something that’s going to make you feel even worse than if you never attempted at all.
Been there, done that, learned my lesson.
Energy is Expensive
Before I knew it, and well before the 75 days were up, my time trying 75 Hard was dunzo. I lasted 21 days, because that’s how long I give something to see if it’s right for me.
It touts that it helps people build mental fortitude, break out of a rut, and transform their entire lives. Maybe. For a certain type of person. Who likes someone else’s habits and thrives on an all-or-nothing approach. But that’s not for me.
Did I spend any money on it? No. Did I spend time and energy on habits and an approach that did not serve me? Yes. And energy is expensive. Not just mine, but yours too.
Life is too sweet, our time is too valuable, and our energy is a luxury item. Which is why when it comes to habits, I learned my lesson about following advice from a podcast bro peddling mental fortitude: it’s not for me.
And that is how I found myself in the conundrum of it being the right time for better habits, but just the wrong habits and a nonexistent framework.
There Is a Better Way
This isn’t a slam-piece on 75 Hard (necessarily). I don’t even know if it’s still a thing. And I’m sure it works for the right kind of person. But my lived experience through someone else’s habit program is what motivated me to share a different way of doing habits.
No mental torture. All custom-designed by you, to you, for you. In less than an hour. And then you have 21 days to play in the space of building the habit. It’s the framework I developed over a decade ago that works on every habit imaginable.
Just one habit at a time, so it fits into your already well-curated life. And you can rinse-repeat for every habit that comes next. Realistic. Sustainable. Life-changing.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say. And there has never been a better time of the year for revisiting your routines, shaking up your rituals, and experimenting with fresh habits!
In which case, it’s just a matter of:
🎯choosing your right next habit (ideas in this post)
🗺️designing your 21-day habit project (it starts with how you want to feel)
🏁& beginning
Better habits, faster results, and no impending dread of having to start all over. Because your time and energy are more valuable than that.
