Tired of failing year after year at New Year’s resolutions? Tired of seeing them and hearing about them? Tired of the month your normally empty gym is packed full of people?  I offer a small spin on the typical resolution: the 52 week challenge.

The 52 Week Book Challenge is the one that got my attention and the one that I am committed to following.  Easy, read one book a week for 52 weeks. There are lots of lists of recommended books on the site. I’m starting the Around the World Challenge with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami of Japan. I’m pretty certain I will sway from this list as the year goes on.  I tend to start 3-4 books at a time and go between them depending on mood and time.  This challenge may help me to gain more focus.

The 52 Week Money Challenge seems to be one of the most popular.  The premise is simple: Save a set amount each week starting with $1.00 the first week and increasing the contribution by $1.00 each week until the last week you save $52.00 and your total balance is $1,378.00.  A good challenge for those who can’t save money well; if this is you it might be a good idea to give the savings to a trusted family member so that you can’t dip into it during the year, except in a true emergency.

The 52 Week Organized House Challenge is a good one many people will probably join.  I have two issues with this one. The big one is that life happens and the kitchen that you organized in Week 1 is probably going to need it again by Week 29.  Cleaning is a loop, something that you really can’t get totally ahead on. Second, if you need a tip to tell you it is not a good use of space to store pots and pans on your kitchen counters, then this is not going to work for you. Who stores pots and pans on the counter?….odd.

The CodeAcadamy has another challenge that I will be participating in this year; they have updated their Year of Code for 2014.  Learn how to computer code by doing a little bit each week.  I picked Sunday as my day to learn and by the end of the year who knows what I will have picked up.  My 11 year old son is taking this challenge along with me.

These are just four that I found interesting. There are also photo challenges, something called the salad challenge (not eating salads, but growing lettuce) and then all the silly ‘I’m going to do this for an entire year’ challenges.

Are you participating in any 52 week, 365 Day, or other type of challenge in 2014?

 

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