The World’s Toughest Challenge
One guy’s quest to do everything right, consistently.
It’s no exaggeration to call self-mastery “the world’s toughest challenge.” People have been trying forever, but no one seems able to get it right.
When I say “self-mastery,” I mean it in a very practical sense: the ability to consistently do what we know to be right (and not do what we know to be wrong). There are many other philosophical and spiritual interpretations (which may help with the practical side of things), but this challenge is all about real-world, measurable actions.
Taking super easy actions consistently is super hard
If you think about it, there’s nothing physically stopping us from doing the right things all the time. In fact, most right actions are very easy: Get out of bed, go for a jog, say a kind word. Neither is there anything physically forcing us to do things like buying that chocolate we know we shouldn’t.
But we all know from experience that taking these seemingly very easy actions (and inactions) on a consistent basis is near-impossible. Indeed, if self-mastery was easy, we’d all be rich, fit, and very proud of ourselves.
The problem is that every human comes with a set of millennia-old instincts to chase pleasure and avoid discomfort. These instincts have become badly outdated in today’s high-tech world, but they continue to shape our lives. That’s why we keep making counter-productive choices like browsing social media instead of working on a career-boosting project or vegetating in front of the TV instead of raking in all the proven benefits of exercise.
Challenge accepted
I’ve been on a quest to tame these primitive instincts for over a decade now. It was a bumpy ride, to say the least, but over the years I’ve managed to put together an internal and external environment that makes healthy and productive actions come naturally. And now, I finally feel this environment is strong enough to be tested publically.
That’s why, with the start of 2022, I’m formally embarking on the World’s Toughest Challenge (WTC).
The WTC Scorecard
Every month, I’ll give myself a score out of 10 in each of ten clearly defined metrics. Although the long-term goal is no less than perfection, I’d be very happy with cracking 90% on a regular basis during 2022.
The ten metrics are categorized into three themes: health, happiness, and productivity. Let’s break them down.
Health
Health is the basic enabler of everything I hold dear in life, making it my top priority. There are four fundamental pillars of health that also represent the metrics in this theme.
Diet
I’m more prone to emotional eating than most, so the quality of my diet is very closely linked to the quality of my life. Today, my diet is perfect on most days, although I still stumble on the rare occasion when stress and temptation team up against me.
I’ve been tracking the quality of my diet along with many other metrics for an entire decade. Thus, I can easily access my score out of ten for this metric. Any junk food or excess subtracts points, although there is one exception: I don’t lose points for accepting unhealthy (and delicious) food from a friendly host if I apply moderation and don’t feel stuffed afterward.
Exercise and nature
Thanks to the ideal location of my home, exercise and access to nature are the least of my worries. Both happen spontaneously on a daily basis (unless the weather is truly terrible).
My daily tracking uses an exercise metric linked to the number of steps per day, as recorded by my fitness band. I add 1000 steps for every 2 km of cycling, ice skating, rollerblading, or cross country skiing, and 500 steps for a yoga or weights session.
The window of perfection is a monthly average of 10000–15000 steps per day, earning 10/10. Every deviation of 1000 steps from this range loses one point.
Sleep, naps, bookend routines
It took me far too long to give sleep the priority it deserves. But today, my life is rightfully built around sleep instead of the other way around. I also maintain a daily napping habit that boosts my productivity by exploiting the least productive time of the day for sleep.
Here, I’ll target an ideal 6.5–7.5 hours of actual sleep. The average amount of sleep I get each day accounts for 7 out of the 10 points, with every hour out of the range subtracting one point. Then, there is one point for a daily nap and another point each for consistent morning and evening routines.
I also lose points for inconsistency, measured by the standard deviation in the hours of sleep opportunity I give myself each day. If 1.96x the standard deviation is smaller than 1 hour (which means that I stayed within about an hour from the average on more than 95% of the days), there is no penalty. However, I lose a point for every hour this standard deviation statistic increases beyond 1.
Stress and motivation
Whenever I’m stressed or down on motivation, I get this almost irresistible urge to binge-watch and binge-eat. The upside of this unhealthy tendency is that it makes stress and motivation quite easy to track.
Over the years, I’ve picked up many little techniques to manage stress and maintain high motivation (e.g., these seven healthy pleasures). When applied consistently, they successfully keep self-destructive behavior at bay.
Thus, this metric tracks any days with junk food or junk media. Consuming junk every day in the month would give me zero points whereas no junk days would give me a perfect ten. As with my diet, special occasions like birthday celebrations and Christmas dinners are exempted, as long as I don’t feel uncomfortably stuffed afterward.
Happiness
What is the meaning of life? Well, everyone will have their opinion, but I don’t think it’s any more complicated than doing good and having a good time doing it. Here are the three ways I want to add meaning to my life.
Spontaneity and flow
The basic idea here is to simply get out of my own way. Inhibition has always been an issue for me, mainly due to a stuttering problem. Even though my stutter ended up making major positive contributions to my life, it still sours my experience from time to time.
It’s not that I want to become robotically perfect at everything I do. Instead, I need to master the art of enjoying my imperfect, authentically human creative experience to the point where I lose track of time. Such a spontaneous flow state really is pure happiness.
This metric, which will probably be my toughest test, will be equally split between speaking and other forms of creative expression. A daily rating out of 5 for each category will be added up and averaged to get a score out of 10 for the month.
Relationships
As an introvert, I don’t need many relationships, but I need the few I have to be in a good place. Luckily, this happens pretty easily when I stick to the bucket-filling philosophy.
Thanks to this simple idea, I’m in a good spot in this metric. Relationships are hard to quantify, though, so this will just be a purely subjective metric of how I feel I handled the day’s social interactions.
Mindfulness and equanimity
I’ve struggled for a long time to integrate meditation and mindfulness practices into my life. Luckily, something clicked during 2021, and now I find myself spontaneously returning to meditate day after day.
Another aspect of mindfulness I’ve found very valuable is the concept of equanimity — remaining calm and centered regardless of any turbulence in my outer or inner world. It’s an idea closely aligned to living in a beautiful state (as opposed to a suffering state).
I use the Calm app for meditation, particularly the Daily Calm and Daily Trip sessions by Tamara and Jeff (the latter is especially big on the equanimity idea). Calm tracks my meditation practice automatically, and the fraction of days where I meditate represents half of my score in this category. The other half comes from a subjective daily equanimity score.
Productivity
One of the things I’m most grateful for is the incredibly interesting time we’re living in. And my focus areas in the field of sustainable development contain enough interesting work to fill many lifetimes.
Working hours
I work a lot — about 3500 hours per year. Over time, I’ve learned that working double the normal amount can be sustainable, but only if most of it doesn’t feel like work. After semi-retiring in 2019, this ideal has become increasingly real — hence the high number of working hours.
My experience shows that 10 hours per day (weekends included) is a good target to strive for. I can do a lot more on good days, but this usually ends in a slump soon after, even if the work was fun.
RescueTime tracks my working hours automatically and gives me the possibility to add offline meetings manually, making it easy to keep track of this metric. Each hour of deviation from an average in the range of 9–11 hours per day will subtract one point from this metric.
Deep, strategic work
Clocking many working hours is one thing, but doing something genuinely useful with all these hours is something completely different. Here, I want to avoid three classic traps: 1) getting hooked by urgent instead of important tasks, 2) losing efficiency through frequent distractions, and 3) getting stuck in a loop of reacting to problems instead of proactively executing a strategy.
My score in this category will start with 5 points every day and subtract one point for falling into any of the three traps outlined above. An additional point will be subtracted if I did not manage any truly deep work and if any of the traps I fell in were easily preventable.
Workload and proactiveness
Overwhelm is enemy #1 for any productive individual. The more productive you are, the more work you attract. Initially, it feels great to be valued in this way, but burnout soon follows. It took years of painful experiences, but now I’ve fully accepted that the word “no” is central to my career.
Aside from avoiding overwhelm, the stress from deadlines in collaborative projects is another common problem to be avoided. Routinely delivering well before the deadline avoids stress, ensures high quality, and makes project managers give you free rein to shape the work as you please.
This metric will be a subjective measure split halfway between whether I feel pressure from overwhelm or deadlines at the end of each day.
Closing Thoughts
I firmly believe it’s possible to live a perfect life day after day, month after month, year after year. I doubt that anyone has ever done it — it’s the toughest challenge in the world after all — but it must be possible.
This journey will be very revealing. I’m curious to learn what it will take to reach perfection, whether perfection will feel like it’s worth it, and how this exercise will affect my rate of growth.
Let’s see how it goes!