Week Four Is Where Most People Quit. Here's Why I Didn't.

Ok… this whole seven-day challenge thing isn't quite going to plan.

It hasn’t been easy for me to admit that but honestly, now that I’ve told you, I feel a bit better (thanks in advance for listening).

The first two weeks, while they had their moments, happened relatively easily. I quit coffee without much of a fight – something until then, I didn’t believe was possible (talk about the stories we tell ourselves!)

Walking every morning – even the day I got drenched – I succeeded.

The last couple haven't been so simple. I haven't stuck to them properly, and while I did complete last week's challenge – journaling for seven minutes a day - I didn't come away with what I'd hoped I would.

There's a reason for that. I know why journaling works. I could recite the benefits in my sleep (go back and check out one of my original blogs here, if you want to know more). But I was never specific enough about the how.

• I said I'd do it in the morning and never put it in my calendar, so some days it happened at breakfast, some at 3pm, one night at 9pm purely so I could say I hadn't broken the streak.

  
  

• I never printed off the reflection questions I'd written for myself. I never got clear on what I actually wanted at the end of the seven days.

So the whole thing limped along on vague good intentions, when what it actually needed was a plan.

Here's the bit I actually want to talk about, though.

It's around this point in any challenge that most people chuck it in altogether.

Think about it... you set a New Year's resolution. You start strong, full of motivation, calendar colour-coded, ready to go. A few weeks in, it gets a little more sporadic. By week four or five, it's fizzled out completely.

There's actually a name for the exact day most people give up - Strava calls it Quitter's Day.

• It’s based on data from over 800 million logged activities.

• It tends to fall around the second Friday of January.

• By the end of that month, roughly 43% of people have dropped their resolution.

• By mid-February, it's closer to 80%.

  
  

And here's what's really going on underneath that.

Usually it's one missed day, or one week that didn't go the way you had hoped, and then a very familiar voice turns up in your head: I can't do this. I'm not disciplined enough. I've messed it up now, may as well not carry on.

Yep. That voice turned up for me this week too.

Here's why that happens. Psychologists have a name for it…

All-or-nothing thinking.

It’s the same mechanism whether you're talking about a diet, an exercise routine, or a seven-day challenge like mine. One missed day, or one challenge that didn't quite go to plan, gets treated as proof that the whole thing has failed. And what actually makes you stop is the story you told yourself about what that missed day meant. It's the exact same self-fulfilling loop I've talked about in the last couple of posts: the belief comes first, and the outcome follows it.

So here's what I'm doing about it, instead of throwing in the towel on the whole thing.

I'm treating each week as its own decision, separate from the ones before it. Journaling not going to plan sits on its own - the coffee week and the walking week still stand exactly as they were. It's simply one data point. I've paused journaling properly, on purpose, until I've worked out what I actually need in place to make it stick, and I've picked something for this week that I know I can succeed at, to keep the momentum going rather than letting one wobble take the whole thing down with it.

This week’s challenge is reading for 30-minutes a day, just for fun… no highlighter and post it notes required (that’s how I usually roll). I was that kid with her nose permanently in a book - Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Baby-Sitters Club, being some of my favourites - and somewhere between growing up and starting a business, reading for pleasure turned into reading for education, which is a different thing entirely. This week I'm going back to the version that's just for me.

If you've hit your own version of week four or five on something, like a goal that started strong and has gone a bit sporadic lately, this is your reminder that the missed days aren't the problem. It's what you tell yourself about them that decides whether you keep going.

If that voice - I can't do this, I've messed it up now - sounds familiar, that's exactly the kind of story my 5-Days of Clarity Challenge is built to uncover. It's free, five days, 30-minutes a day, 1:1 online with me. By the end, you'll know exactly which of those stories are actually true, and which ones you've just been carrying around out of habit.

Book a quick 10-minute call here to find out if it's the right fit for you.