Trying Steve Pavlina's 30 Days Formula

I ran across Steve Pavlina’s blog post titled 30 Days to Success just over a month ago.  In it, he outlines a fairly simple way to make dramatic changes to your life.  First, Steve’s explanation:

A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.

Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.

At the time, I was drinking 3–5 Diet Mountain Dews each day.  I figured I’d take Steve’s advice, and resolve to stop drinking soda for “only” 30 days.  Days 1–3 sucked, but I slowly replaced my morning Dews with one cup of Green Tea and drank water the rest of the day.  Gotta tell you, it worked.  The thirty days was an easy amount of time to measure, and though I fell off the wagon a couple of times, it was pretty easy to get back on.  I don’t miss the soda at all.

Now I’m looking for another 30 day challenge.  For you lawyers out there, how about resolving to return every phone call within 24 hours just for the next 30 days.  I dare you!