Tenner Week Sep 2017: Day 5: Challenge yourself a little more

It’s Friday, and the Tenner Week Challenge is about to roll on into the weekend. Yesterday’s activity was about finding something new to learn, and today’s activity is about taking something that’s already familiar and challenging yourself a little more.

With a lot of things in life it’s too easy to let things slip into a bit of a rut and coast along. However, it’s often a case of effort in, effort out, so today we’re looking for an everyday activity where a tiny bit more of a challenge could make quite a difference.

This could be picking something back up that you’ve allowed to tail off, or trying a bit harder with something you’re currently doing. Here are a few ideas for little things you might like to try today:

• Get up ten minutes earlier, or go to bed ten minutes earlier
• Drink one more glass of water
• Add five more minutes to your exercise routine
• Finish a small craft project
• Make one more sales call or scheduled social media post
• Join a reading challenge or Instagram challenge
• Floss your teeth properly
• Spend a little longer reading or studying
• Contact a couple more people about a forthcoming event
• Go back to writing in your journal
• Spend a little more quality time with someone you care about
• Draw one more sketch or doodle
• Use a relaxation app or meditate

Everyone’s different, but I’m sure you can think of one part of your everyday life where you could challenge yourself just that little bit more today.

What’s happening here

Yesterday was fortunately another no-spend day, but we are running out of bread so I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep that up. I spent half an hour looking for evening and day classes nearby, and found some new exercise classes are starting up the road so I might book in for one of those after this budget challenge is over.

I’d never have seen those in time if I hadn’t deliberately been looking for classes in my postcode yesterday evening so that’s been a stroke of luck – really excited to give at least one of them a go next week.

The optional TV Diet is still going well. I listened to the Mercury Prize on the radio, and got on the exercise bike to watch a bit of trash TV without eating into my telly allowance at all (TV watched at the gym or during other exercise isn’t counted towards the total). So I satisfied my rubbishy cravings, listened to all kinds of music and gave myself a nice little cardio workout at the same time.

Where will you be trying just a little bit more today? Fitness, work, health, hobbies, relationships or something else?