Develop a Plan for 75-YOU

Because Self Improvement isn't "One-Size-Fits-All"

I'm a firm believer that everyone should strive to evolve and improve throughout the course of their lives. This includes making changes that you know for a fact are good, as well as trialing new habits or behaviors experimentally. If you are also capable of objectively assessing the changes these trials bring, you'll be able to keep the ones with a net positive impact, and discard the rest.

I've done this for years with a variety of exercises, sleep routines, diets, time management, and productivity tools.

One of the most effective strategies I have found is to commit upfront to maintain the new habit for a certain time period. It needs to be long enough that the initial confusion and lack of familiarity is no longer an excuse to quit. By the end of your trial, you will have either benefitted from integrating a new habit into your life, or you will have learned unequivocally that this particular habit doesn't make a big difference for you.

I have come to the conclusion that 75 days is an ideal timeframe for this kind of trial.

It's long enough that you won't be able to get through the discomfort solely by white-knuckling it. You can make it a few weeks -- probably even a month -- of taking on a new healthy habit or giving up a bad one even if you don't believe in the change you're making. If you're thinking to commit for six months or a year... Honestly, if you're like most people, that timeframe is so long that you might not really believe you are going to succeed, and you'll be incentivized to sabotage yourself early and get the failure over with.

Think "New Years Resolutions." How many are still going by the time Mardi Gras rolls around?

But 75 days is perfect. It's that number dances gracefully on the line between thrillingly plausible and dauntingly difficult. It's a challenge, for sure, but you can convince yourself that you've got this. And therefore, you've overcome your first hurdle.

My belief in the value of 75 days is partially due to the program 75-HARD, developed and championed by Andy Frisella, an internet personality and successful business owner in fitness and supplements. Frisella's core program became an internet sensation a few years ago, resulting in over a million people completing his challenge. Quite a few of the people who failed it followed up with an article about how the program is a dangerous and no one should do it. But for the people who succeed, it is life changing.

Frisella makes a point to define the program as a "mental discipline" program not a fitness program. Admittedly, most people who complete -- or even attempt -- the program end up in very good shape, but that's not actually the point.

The true value 75-HARD is in learning the discipline to do the things you should do at the time you should do them, which -- most of the time -- is immediately. Another lesson that comes from successful completion, or even unsuccessful attempts, is that you are capable of so much more than you believe yourself to be. The program includes features that reinforce ideas such as "start early", "budget your time", and "commit to the task at hand."

The rules of 75 HARD are as follows:

1. Follow a nutrition plan of your choice. It must be a diet that is unarguably healthy, and ideally is more challenging than your normal diet. No alcohol or cheat meals are allowed for the duration of the program.
2. Do two 45-minute workouts without stopping. At least one of them must be outdoors. If you stop, you must start the timer over. The two workouts must be at least 3 hours apart and cannot be done as one 1.5 hour workout. You cannot count chores (such as mowing the lawn) as workouts, even if they are physical.
3. Drink a gallon of plain water. No additives are allowed.
4. Read 10 pages of a self-improvement book each day. It must be a written book, not an audiobook or podcast, and the pages should be normal-sized. It can be improvement related to your job or school, but not a book that you are already required to read.
5. Take a progress picture. The photo should show your body, as in workout clothes, not just be a headshot or in baggy clothing. This one is easy as long as you don't forget.

The rules stipulate that each of these tasks must be completed each and every day for 75 consecutive days. If even one task is missed, you must start over from Day 1. You "day" does not end at midnight, but when you go to bed, so if it's late and you realize you forgot something, you can stay up to complete it.

I started this program on the first day of 2024.

I failed.

I was doing great for most of the program. Killing my workouts every day, enjoying my diet choices as I practiced the Anti-Inflammatory/Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet, and having to pee way too often from the excessive amount of water I was drinking -- but I was doing it!

I failed on Day 56 for one very stupid reason.

I forgot to read 10 pages from my chosen self-improvement book, which was about marketing tactics on social media.

The same day, I had read hundreds of pages of the first draft of my husband's novel, which I was desperately trying to finish so we could discuss his revisions for draft 2 during a 3-hour car ride from Dallas to Austin. I finished the draft, completed two workouts before we started the drive, took my progress selfie early in the morning, and crushed my water quota. All I had left to do was read my marketing book, which normally took me only 10-15 minutes.

We drove, we dined, we caught up with the family.

I stayed up late talking one-on-one with my brother -- each of us occasionally saying, "Oh! Real quick, I just want to ask about one more thing, then I swear we'll go to bed."

Around 11:45pm, finally having escaped from the cycle of one-more-quick-things, I crawled into bed in a dark room. My husband had already gone to sleep, and I left the light off, trying not to disturb him. I didn't see the Kindle that I had placed on the bedside table as a reminder.

It wasn't until the next morning, with my husband listing how many of the tasks he had already checked off even before cooking breakfast, that my heart stopped as I realized that I had never read.

After a moment of panic, and several hours worth of deliberating whether reading my husband's novel could count as "self-improvement", I finally passed both the denial and bargaining stages, mourned my failure briefly, and then decided that day was my new Day 1.

Some quick math told me that starting over immediately would have me finishing the program just before a vacation we had planned for May (which was conveniently last week). I would keep going. My husband would still finish the original program in a few weeks, but he would continue in solidarity until I finished as well on my second attempt, for a total of 131 days.

All this went out the window a week later, when my husband failed as well for another dumb reason. He forgot to take a progress selfie.

With both of us having failed, and with weird dietary or fitness challenges being essentially a non-negotiable when it comes to vacations with my in-laws, we both decided to stop then. We agreed that we would start again the day after we returned from that vacation, which is... checks watch... Today! The day I started writing this, that is. I will be posting it a few days later. Sorry, that's not quite as fun.

Originally, we planned to do the original 75-HARD program again, but as the date approached, we acknowledged that we have actually maintained many of the habits that we picked up from the original program, despite no longer counting days. Outdoor walks or runs of 45-minutes or longer have become commonplace, and it's rare that either of us have a day with no exercise at all. We've continued to eat better, using the knowledge and principles we gained from the nutrition plan we practiced, and we are less inclined to drink out of social norms or peer pressure.

I fully acknowledge that there is more I could learn from 75-HARD, but I am also aware that some of the tasks are specified in a way to deliberately make them more difficult, rather than optimizing for the tasks which will drive me forward toward my goals. I would not change the original program to make it easier, but I think I can make it just as hard, but with different requirements that supercharge my productivity while continuing to support my physical fitness and mental toughness goals.

I spent a long time considering the value of each of the original daily tasks, and how they had contributed to my life during my abbreviated experiment. Based on the purpose and specific benefit of each one, I customized my own version of the program to keep the things that serve me, and changed the ones that didn't. If you try a program like this, I recommend you do the same. My program will include three Core tasks that everyone should keep, as well as several suggestions for Flex tasks, which should be customized based on your unique needs.

In the end, I based my program around the principles of health, fitness, knowledge, discipline, progress, and focus.

So, here we go. These are the rules I have chosen for 75-JENN.

1. Follow a nutrition plan of your choice. It must be something that is unarguably healthy, and ideally is more challenging than your normal diet. No alcohol or cheat meals are allowed for the duration of the program. I consider this to be a Core Task.

This is directly from the original program. It's pretty standard and I can't imagine any person who wouldn't benefit in some way from being more deliberate about their diet or taking a break from drinking, so I left this one as is. I interpret "no alcohol" as no intoxicants of any sort, and would even go so far as to include no cigarettes.

2. Perform two sessions of deep work on your most important project, 45-min each, at least 3 hours apart. No cell phone scrolling, no distractions, no interruptions. If you stop working or are disrupted, the 45-min timer starts over. I consider this to be a Core Task.

This is adapted from the workout portion of 75-HARD. The two workouts create a scheduling challenge, since they must be 3 hours apart. You must be able to set aside time at two points during the day to focus on bodily improvement.

This scheduling challenge, in my opinion, is more important than the physical challenge of the workouts. It forces you to practice deliberate time management, especially if you already have other obligations taking up your time.

The workout part of the challenge likely scares many people away from even attempting it, partly because they might assume the workouts must always be at maximum intensity, and partly because of the raw time commitment.

The most amazing thing about the time commitment is, once you get used to it, the time becomes less of a problem. It's not that it takes up any less time than you expected, but you realize that the days are so much longer than you thought they were, and you are capable of so much more.

My change here was making the two sessions as "deep work" rather than working out, since this is applicable to every person, whether they are writing, coding, or building a business. There will always be something that you can grind on to bring you closer to your goals. I recommend this be deep work that can be done alone, because it's easy to get derailed or off-topic when another person is involved, but use your best judgement, depending what work is important to you.

3. Do one 45-minute workout without stopping. It can be indoors, outdoors, or both. Whatever. Just be active. Get your body moving. I consider this to be a Core Task.

I kept this one because movement is a critical part of living your best life. The 1.5 hours per day isn't necessary long-term for the average person, but feel free to work out more if your goals land in the realm of being a swimsuit model or body-builder.

Also worth noting - this doesn't need to be a super-intense cardio or gym workout. You can power walk, ruck, do yoga, cycle, run, rock climb. As long as you are fully focused and actively doing the workout for 45-minutes, it counts.

4. Drink an appropriate quota of plain water, with no additives. You can estimate your own water target using this calculator, which I chose because it takes into account height, weight, gender, and activity level, which all make a big difference for the appropriate target water consumption. For me, as a small woman, it's 54 oz/day.

The original challenge includes a full gallon, which is not medically beneficial for most people. Then again, if you are a person who sweats a lot, works out intensely, or works outdoors in the sun, a higher target like this might be appropriate.

In most of those cases, however, you're probably already drinking plenty of water without trying. This rule is more for the chronically dehydrated of us, which I definitely am, which is why this if the first one I consider to be a Flex task. It can be replaced with something else of roughly equivalent effort. I'll include my two and then a list of other suggestions to consider.

5. Read or listen actively for 15 minutes per day. This means taking notes, pausing and reversing podcasts or audio books for comprehension, really absorbing and documenting the information to make use of it later.

My final task is a modification of the reading quota from the original program. My task allows either reading or listening to an audiobook/podcast, but exclusively with note-taking intended to store the information for use in other projects. This moves the task from the realm of "reading" more into "research."

I didn't think I had a lot to gain from continuing to just read, as I've already consumed mountains of content in the self-improvement space. I wanted something that was more focused on cultivation of knowledge than just consumption.

I've listened to thousands of hours of podcasts, and I remember a lot from them, but I very frequently share a detail from one of these sources and be unable for the life of me to remember which source the technique, statistic, or strategy came from. Putting in the time to document and structure information will both allow me to retain it more effectively, and provide me with an easily available lookup for all of the sources, experts, articles, podcasts, and books that I might want to recommend.

This last task is also where I struggled most to choose something appropriate. The original program includes two tasks which I have taken out.

• Taking a progress selfie
• Reading 10 pages of a nonfiction, self-improvement book.

The selfie is meant to document progress, but I feel like it's mostly helpful if you have a lot of physical progress to make. If your journey to a better you includes losing some weight or gaining some muscle, this could be something you would want to keep, especially if this will be your first time working out consistently. The results will certainly be showing by the time you hit 75 days!

On the other hand, reading would be valuable for most people, since you can't improve if you don't know what your options are for improvement. If you are relatively early in your journey, just being exposed to the principles and learning about the journeys that others have taken will be invaluable.

Here are a few books that I would recommend for the standard reading task. Remember, it must not be an audio book. Read real words on a page, like the cavemen did!

• Atomic Habits
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• You Are A Badass
• The Power of Habit
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck
• Thinking Fast and Slow
• Real Artists Don't Starve

If my new Flex tasks of the two originals aren't applicable to you, here are a few more to consider:

• Writing for 30 minutes or 1000 words. This would be helpful for creating more long-form content or working on a blog or book. Writing could also be part of your deep work sessions, if it aligns with your overarching goals. Also keep in mind that the word quota worked better for producing, but is difficult to quantify during editing.
• Recording a video daily.  This could be great for boosting a social media presence, or for creating a video diary. It might be really interesting to clip the videos together any watch them all at the end, seeing how both your body, face, and mindset change over time. This was inspired by the selfie, but is a slightly more involved task.
• Practice Language for 15 minutes, or 10 words of vocabulary. This is a bit specific, but the concept could be applied to many different types of skills. Set a small knowledge goal that you can build on daily, and by the end you'll have made incredible progress.
• Perform a number of bodyweight exercises (10 pushups, 10 sit ups, 10 squats, etc) You may want to scale this one up over time, or rotate through exercises, or include multiple exercises every day. This would be in addition to the 45 minute workout, so could complement it if you primarily practice cardio for that one.
• Meditate for 10 minutes, or for one session/lesson on a meditation app. If mindset is one of the things you have to work on, this could be extremely helpful. You could probably apply the same idea to yoga. There are many meditation apps which have daily programs designed for beginners -- Headspace, Serenity, Calm.
• Practice an instrument daily. Again, this could also count as deep work if your goal is to join a professional orchestra, form a band, or synthesize your own music. As a flex task, it can help to challenge you mentally and encourage you to enjoy creative hobbies rather than watching TV or going out to eat or drink.
• Journal for 10 minutes, or write one page. This can be another way to improve mindset. You can even augment with details like including one thing you are grateful for, or decide to specifically write about one good thing that happened during the day. It could also be a creative writing task, if that's a productive hobby that you want to cultivate.
• Write and complete a Power List, the top three most impactful tasks for the day. This might overlap to some extent with the deep work. That's okay! That one is focused on time spent, whereas this task is focused on completion. Just remember, if it takes more than 1.5 hours to complete the Power List tasks, you will have to keep going until you finish them.
• Talk to a Stranger Sometimes talking to people is the biggest obstacle, especially if you are an introvert. Unfortunately, communication and making a good impression are some of the top skills to improve your success in life, love, and business. Have a real conversation with a stranger, not just "I like your shoes," but a reasonable back and forth. Learn something about them. Do it every day, and you'll be amazed how easy and natural it feels by the end.
• Take a cold shower, or end your shower with 30 seconds of cold. I have mixed feelings about this one. I'm not a fan of cold therapy myself, but the evidence is pretty glaring that doing things that are uncomfortable sets us up to better handle stress and hardship. If stress or anxiety is one of the issues you are working to overcome, this might be a good one for you.

You may recognize a few of these from later phases of the LIVE HARD program, the year-long continuation of 75-HARD. What can I say? This Andy guy had good ideas!

For any of these tasks, feel free to scale the quantity or duration up to what will be challenging to you. Remember, the purpose is to improve. If 10 pushups is already easy, maybe you want to start at 20 and add 5 more to the count every week. Unlike 75-HARD, I haven't included anything to be difficult for the sake of difficulty, but you should be aiming to grow and improve! That's kind of the whole point.

One tip, which I learned from my Day 56 failure of 75-HARD, is that you should not just treat these tasks as a checklist, finding some way to arbitrarily squeeze them in every day. Your best bet at both succeeding the program and actually changing your life is to form habits.

How many people do you think have a checklist for brushing their teeth or put on deodorant? Okay, I know some people skip brushing their teeth, and some people don't wear deodorant. My point is, for people who do brush their teeth and deodorize regularly, it's almost automatic. You brush when you get up, or right before you get into bed, or immediately after a meal. You apply deodorant after you shower, or after working out, or before a date. You have cues that already exist in your life so that you don't have to squeeze the new tasks in.

When there is a natural trigger or spot for your task -- when you give it a home -- it has a much better chance of success. Make your 75-YOU tasks a part of your life, and let them become second nature, a comfortable part of your routine. Who knows, maybe you'll keep up with them on Day 76?

So in case you want to try it yourself, here it all is again in one place: 75-JENN.

CORE TASKS:

1. Follow a nutrition plan of your choice. It must be something that is unarguably healthy, and ideally is more challenging than your normal diet. No alcohol or cheat meals are allowed for the duration of the program.
2. Perform two sessions of deep work on your most important project, 45-min each, at least 3 hours apart. No cell phone scrolling, no distractions, no interruptions. If you stop working or are disrupted, the 45-min timer starts over.
3. Do one 45-minute workout without stopping. It can be indoors, outdoors, or both. Whatever. Just be active. Get your body moving.

FLEX TASKS 4. Drink an appropriate quota of plain water, with no additives. You can estimate your own water target using this calculator, which I chose because it takes into account height, weight, gender, and activity level, which all make a big difference for the appropriate target water consumption. For me, as a small woman, it's 54 oz/day. 5. Read or listen actively for 15 minutes per day. This means taking notes, pausing and reversing podcasts or audio books for comprehension, really absorbing and documenting the information to make use of it later.

Remember to replace the Flex tasks with ones that are the most relevant to you. What would really change your life if you did it for 75 days in a row, besides being healthier and more disciplined with your highest priority tasks?

Good luck on your journey! Let me know in the comments if you decide to do it, and what Flex tasks you chose!