Welcome back to our series on Challenges for 2022, where we are breaking down our 30 yearly resolutions in challenges. The update so far is – we’ve been able to plan a vacation that was something off our bucket-list. Going vegetarian for the month was easier than we anticipated, so yay! However, I failed desperately when it came to having 2 liters of water everyday. Like I mentioned in my earlier post on Coffee Meet @ PY, I’m going to try taking up the challenge once again. Try and try until you succeed, right? Coming back to Challenges for 2022, in this part we’ll be taking you through a summary of how our second quarter is going to look like:

Challenges for Q2

April Challenges – 2022

• Do a one-week no spend challenge. This is going to be tough, and lots of emphasis on tough! Routinely, I tend to spread my expenditure around trivial areas with street food topping it all. If I’m going to do a no spend week, that boils down to no food delivery for one entire week. However, I’m leaning towards my meal-planning habits taken up in March to help me get through this.
• Negotiate on a bill. I suck at negotiating. Honestly, it took me years to simply get myself to be better at negotiating on deadlines. Bills are a completely new domain, however, I’m glad that I’m doing this. It’s quite a push from my usual comfort zone and like I mentioned, we’re on our journey towards becoming risk-takers!

May Challenges 2022

• Clear out the closet of things you don’t need. I am scared of the heap of things that are going to fall off my wardrobe when we take on this challenge. Understandably, this was long-needed and decluttering is something that really calms me down. On the contrary, I wait before I’m calmer to pick my dirt up and like you can imagine, the circle never ends. Hopefully, this gives me an impetus to finally clear things out.
• Use the envelope system for a month. Since this was an initially unfamiliar concept to me, I’m jumping at this opportunity to explain this to you. Broadly, the envelope system is where you categorize your expenses and maintain the required amount in cash stored in labelled envelopes. And then, you stick to these envelopes and spend on the budgeted categories as decided. I’ve tried transitioning from digital payments to cash payments before, it really helped decrease some really unnecessary, impulsive expenses since “convenience” was factored out. However, I jumped right back into the loop. I really think the envelope system is a notch higher than what I was previously trying to do. And this could be an amazing step towards a better budgeting practice for me. You can refer to this article by The Balance on How to Use the Envelope Budgeting Method for any other guidelines you’d like to adopt. Also, I currently use the 50-30-20 model for my savings and I discovered a calculator for the same on this post by Nerdwallet where you can calculate the amount to be set aside for your necessities, wants and savings. You can simply plug in your after-tax monthly income and it calculates the rest for you.
• Say no and put yourself first. If I could only start describing how difficult it was for me to say no. Be that as it may, I have been able to be more assertive in 2022. I’ve been able to say no to things I didn’t want to do. Professionally, I’ve been able to ask for more realistic deadlines. I’ve had better responses to taking up extra projects than an agreeable “Yes”. Personally, I’ve been able to set boundaries around my capacity to entertain leisure with others. It’s easier for me to say no to plans when it’s extremely difficult for me to drag myself outside the house. And I think this was the most important aspect of my growth since last year. While setting these challenges, I was extremely confident of this being a chance at failure, but no more. I’m pretty confident I’m going to beat this one out.

June Challenges – 2022

• Eat in for ten days straight. Again, this is along the same lines towards my goals of a better diet and better budget. According to my anticipation, if I have been able to meal plan throughout March and do a no-spend week in April, I should be accustomed to having better meal habits by June. I’ve personally never had a record of eating in ten days straight. The last time I could hardly rally for some 2.5 days, but I’m committed to making it happen this year. 10 days, phew!
• Go one week without reacting impulsively. This should teach me quite a lot of restraint since I’m not somebody who is habitually a “think-before-you-leap” person. More than often, I find myself on an endless loop of just thinking and not leaping at all. Certainly, it follows that I have trained myself to bounce when I know I’ll end up contemplating while my moment passes by. Over the years, I’ve successfully been quicker at getting furious; I’ve been slower at learning patience. I’ve also discovered that I’m quite prone to a devil-may-care attitude when it comes to interactions that I have on a personal level. More than my own personal development, I think this is going to help my closer circle recover on the damages I constantly create while jumping the gun.

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An insider on do I cheat on my challenges // No, I don’t. It gets really difficult sometimes and I’ve always had this tendency to be perfect. This explains why getting through with all of my challenges, or at least majority of them, is so important to me. However, I refrain from cheating on them. One trick that I non-vocally use is giving myself 2 – 3 cheat days for the longer duration challenges. It helps me keep my motivation going and the craving to be non-compliant simmers down.

If you’re taking up the 2022 challenges with us, we are so glad to share this platform with you. We’d love to hear your progress in the comments below. Also, to help you track the challenges you’ve been able to accomplish, we have created a free printable for you to keep handy.

Tune in next week for our upcoming post // Coffee Meet @ PY: Career Conversations [Part 1], wherein V and me talk about our career goals, priorities and compare our current work-life – can’t hold the excitement, stay hooked!