If you follow me on social media, you’ll know that most of the writing strategies I teach have to do with purpose. I think it is essential to know why you’re doing what you’re doing if you want to keep up the motivation and determination necessary to finish a project. To put it another way: if you want to achieve a goal, you need to first define it. And that is what the May challenge: Imagine is designed to help you do. In the month of May, in 30 minutes a day, you’ll think about your long term dreams, turn them into goals, and break those down into a workable plan. Keep it up for the entire month, post your progress using #PassionateWriterProject, and I promise: by the end of the month you’ll have a workable plan to become the Passionate Writer you’ve always dreamed you’d be.
Why a challenge?
The easy answer here? “Because it’s fun.”
But there’s actually some deeper (psychological) reasons as well.
For Neurotypicals, it has been shown that activities carried out for 30 (or 90, depending on who you ask) days turned into habits. And that means that if you challenge yourself to imagine your future – and to connect your daily actions to that image of your future – this will become a habit. And that is why 30-day challenges are generally such a success!
For neurodivergent people, I believe, the logic is a little different. Though people with ADHD thrive within structures, I have found that as soon as something becomes habit, it becomes boring and therefore nearly impossible to keep up. And that means that a 30-day (or, in this case, 31-day) challenge is probably the perfect amount of time. It’s short enough to keep it up without getting bored, but long enough that actual progress can be seen!
But that’s enough psychology. Let’s move on to the fun part: the May challenge: Imagine!
How does it work?
During the month of May, I’m challenging you to take 30 minutes every day to work on your long and short-term goals. For each day of the month, I’ve written prompts that you can use as an exercise. These exercises will help you gradually move from “lifetime dream” to “daily action”. You can find the monthly calendar and weekly lists of exercises below.
UPDATE: This challenge is now closed!
If you want instructions for every exercise, you can find the workbooks in my Gumroad and Etsy stores:
May Challenge: Imagine
