July 8, 2011

I have witnessed the power of participating in a simple challenge multiple times in my life. Let me share two incidents to set the stage.

The first one was about getting back into writing fiction. My first four books were works of fiction—the last was published in 1987. After a long hiatus, I started writing again in 2005, and published three non-fiction books over four years. Fiction was on my mind and I was waiting for the right time. As you know, waiting for the right time never works.

In October 2009, I heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and was instantly drawn to that idea. In NaNoWriMo, people who sign up, will pledge to write a complete novel of 50,000 words or more in the month of November. I signed up immediately. It was not easy by any stretch but in the end I completed my work of fiction (not published yet) four days before the challenge ended.

I met a lot people in the NaNoWriMo network during this exercise and with strikingly similar experiences. There were many people who had put off writing their novel, until they signed up for NaNoWriMo and tamed the beast for good.

In 2010, there were 200,500 NaNoWriMo participants and 37,500 winners. Would these 37,500 people have written a novel—within a month—without participating in a challenge like NaNoWriMo? It’s possible but highly unlikely.

The second challenge was more recent—#Trust30 is an online initiative from The Domino Project. The challenge, as described on the site, is below:

"#Trust30 is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future. 30 prompts from inspiring thought-leaders will guide you on your writing journey."

I took the pledge along with hundreds of people online and started writing mini sagas—stories that are written in exactly 50 words. I had written 73 of them over the last five years and one of my goals was to get to 100. I have to admit that I had felt stuck at 73. But something magical happened over the next 27 days as I wrote a mini saga each day and reached my goal.

There are examples of such challenges at work in many areas. Look at another one—building a new startup. Startup Weekend challenges happen all over the world. They happen over the course of a weekend and have produced a number of real startups. According to the statistics on the site, 36 percent of the startups launched were going strong even after the 54-hour startup weekend.

Some companies have made challenges as the backbone of their business model. 99designs conducts design challenges and Top Coder hosts programming challenges helping their clients benefit from power of such challenges.

Now, how do you put the power of a simple challenge to work for you? By participating in one. The next step is to find such a challenge in an area that matters most to you and signing up with all your heart. If you can’t find one that fits your need, create one either with a few like-minded people or simply on your own. Start small and as you start winning raise the stakes. It’s worth a try.

Image/Photo credit: HawkeyePilot

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He also creates and sells limited-edition prints at Sparktastic. You can follow him on Twitter at @rajsetty.

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