The 7 craziest challenges I set for myself (and succeeded)

Over the years, I've discovered that to optimize my motivation and stay focused on a goal, I needed to set myself personal challenges, often with a time limit.

This keeps me from scattering my energy, spreading myself too thin, and allows me to achieve results, or at least push past some of my limits while coming out stronger and more skilled.

Today I'm sharing with you the 7 personal challenges I've managed to take on and which I'm quite proud of!

#1 - Writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days

Nanowrimo

This is probably the challenge that tests motivation, energy, and creativity the most. The NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a challenge that thousands of amateur authors take on during the month of November, all over the planet.

The goal is to overcome a mental barrier that arises when writing a novel: rewriting the first pages of your book, endlessly, until you're satisfied. Here, the golden rule is to keep writing forward, and never look back.

I took on this challenge in November 2019, writing 1,667 words every day throughout the month (300 pages in total), and even though the first draft is always very rough, this experience left me with an unforgettable memory!

Note that I had already written and self-published an educational book in one year, which was a very enriching experience!

#2 - Drawing every day in October

Inktober

I love design, but I'm far from being a great artist, and since everyone keeps saying that practice makes perfect, I took on the challenge of participating in Inktober 2018.

My equipment: a mechanical pencil, an eraser, ink pens, white pencils, and cardstock paper. The result: 30 days, 30 drawings with a different theme, and between 2 and 3 hours of drawing each day!

After this experience, I can confirm that drawing regularly will help you improve enormously, even without knowing any theory and without having any "talent."

#3 - Creating a video game in 48 hours

GameJam

I already told you about this one on the blog here and there, but it remains one of my most satisfying experiences as a developer.

Putting together a team, showing imagination, collaboration, and know-how, to end up with a game that works, that makes players think and stirs something in them, all within a single weekend—what a joy!

I can't wait to try this experience again very soon...

I also took part in "lightning" Game Jams where the time allotted was only one hour to create a game... Here's an example of what that can look like.

#4 - Building a business project in 54 hours

Startup Weekend

I don't think I would have included this in this list of challenges if this company hadn't actually come to life, but it did, and it even lasted 3 years.

In the end, our project Peetch, born out of a startup weekend, didn't make us any money, but it made me grow quickly (I was 21 at the time) and allowed me to live unforgettable experiences.

I talk about it in more detail in my article: "The 5 biggest failures that taught me to be a better entrepreneur"

#5 - Reading more than 10 books a year

Reading challenge

For years I felt like I wasn't reading enough, and I had to set up a reading challenge to manage to read 2 or even 3 times more...

Now I get a double satisfaction when I finish a book: discovering a brilliant work, and bumping up my challenge counter! My long-term goal would be to move up to 2 books a month, but my organization isn't quite good enough yet to allow me to do that.

#6 - Publishing one article a day for 1 year

This is probably one of the challenges that has changed my professional life the most over the past two years. Building a community, receiving support, comments, and messages from people, none of that would have happened if I hadn't taken the leap of publishing so much content for free around the developer profession.

Today it brings me so much motivation and opens so many doors that I'm discovering a whole different version of my job, which makes me love it even more!

I documented the first results of this challenge in an article with the statistics, and today the blog is reaching 15K monthly page views!

#7 - Making 20k€ in profit in 4 months

At the end of 2021, my wife, my daughter, and I completely changed our pace of life, and this change required having enough savings set aside to live peacefully in the years to come.

The goal was to generate 20,000€ or more in 4 months for our projects and keep 10K€ in savings. It was the most exhausting period of my life: no evenings out, no weekends, for a little over 16 weeks.

But there's no greater pride than being able to give the best possible life to your loved ones, and I also realized how lucky I was to be self-employed in my profession and to be able to take on such challenges for my family whenever needed.