Transcript of How to Change Your Life in 90 Days (And Make It Last)

The morning becomes rushed, and by lunchtime you already feel behind. You skip the workout by lunch because there was nothing in the refrigerator and tell yourself you will start properly tomorrow. It is amazing how quickly a plan that was supposed to improve your life can become another reason to feel bad about it. Sound familiar? This is where it becomes much bigger than one missed workout or one unfinished application. Every plan you abandon changes the way the next promise sounds. You say, "I'm serious this time," and another voice in your head says, "You always say that."

Eventually, you stop trusting yourself before you have even begun. I don't think that means you're incapable of changing, but I do think you may be creating plans that only work when you feel completely motivated. The hopeful version of you writes the schedule, and then the tired version has to follow it. The distracted version has to follow it. The version who gets disappointing news on a random afternoon has to follow it as well. So here's what I want you to do: choose one part of your life you want to change, and give it 90 days.

Just one thing, just 90 days, and don't worry about everything else. I'm about to tell you exactly how to do this. But first, why 90 days? It's because it's long enough to get you through just the excited period of change, but short enough that it can be real and manageable. You likely already know what's on your calendar in the next 3 months when it comes to big events, trips, or distractions. 90 days gives time for your goals to survive around your actual life. You will have a busy week, lose motivation, get interrupted, and discover that something takes longer than you expected.

We're going to plan for those moments instead of acting surprised when they arrive. By the end of this episode, you will know exactly how to attack the next 90 days so that the life you want actually has a chance to be built. We're going to move through the 3 months in order, beginning with the decision you need to make before day 1. The first step is to decide what you want day 90 to look like, but picture it in your real life. When your life feels off track, it's very easy to make a list of everything that's wrong.

You need to sleep more, exercise again, get ahead at work, spend less, clean the house, call your family, answer your messages, and stop wasting so much time on your phone. The list gives you a brief feeling of control. Then you look at it and realize that changing your life has become a second full-time job. Picture an ordinary Monday 3 months from now. You probably still have the same commute, many of the same responsibilities, and laundry waiting somewhere. But what could be different? Maybe you could get 7 hours of sleep instead of scrolling on your phone until 1 in the morning.

Maybe you'd begin work knowing that other job applications are sent out rather than spending another day complaining about a job you have wanted to leave for years. Maybe you'd check your bank account without panic because you know what is there and what to do with it. An ordinary Monday is more useful than imagining that you have become your best self. Ask, "What problem am I most tired of carrying into every new week?" Then describe what you want to be true 90 days from now.

Fix my life, get healthy, and be better with money. They sound important, but each phrase contains dozens of completely different plans. If your health feels off track, your day 90 result might be completing a 5-kilometer walk without stopping, or finally booking and completing the medical appointments you've delayed. If sleep is affecting everything, the result might be a routine that gets you into bed by 10 and wakes you with enough time to eat breakfast before work. If your phone is the problem, you might aim to reduce your daily screen time by 2 hours and keep it outside your bedroom at night.

If you feel lonely, your result could be joining one recurring activity or hosting a dinner before day 90. If you miss being creative, you might record 4 songs, submit 3 pitches, publish 6 essays, or complete the online class you bought last year and never opened. Whatever it is for you, choose a result that involves something you can do. You cannot guarantee that an employer will hire you, that another person will change, or that your friends will respond in the perfect way.

So finish this sentence. On day 90, I want to be able to say that I— fill in the blank. Try saying the answer aloud. I paid off the card. I completed the doctor's appointments. I sent the applications. I can walk 5 kilometers. I hosted the dinner. I finished the first draft. Then step 1 is to do the smallest thing that makes the sentence less hypothetical. Register, email, open the account, create the document, or ask the friend whether they are free.

After completing this step, the second step is this: build the first month from a week you have actually lived. A new goal doesn't arrive with new hours. If you want to train 3 times a week, those hours already belong to something. If you want to take a course on Tuesday nights, Tuesday night cannot remain available to every person who asked for it. If you want to go to bed at 10, something you currently do between 10 and 1 has to move or end. This is where many plans become impossible.

We place a writing routine on top of a demanding job, a long commute, childcare, errands, and a full social calendar. We add meal preparation to a Sunday that already contains laundry, family plans, and all the work we did not finish on Friday. Then we interpret the collision as a lack of discipline, even though the real problem is that we built the plan with hours we didn't have. There is fascinating research on how rarely people consider solving a problem by removing something. In a series of experiments published in Nature, researchers gave people different things to improve, including designs, written work, and schedules.

Participants repeatedly looked for something they could add, even when taking something away could improve the result. We think the most important thing we can do today is start something new. Often, the most important thing you can do today is stop doing something you already do. Changing your life sometimes means doing less than doing more, and that secret will change everything. Pause the recurring commitment you no longer enjoy.

Mute the group chat during the hour you're trying to work. Order the same groceries each week instead of making 20 decisions. Stop offering your evenings before checking your calendar. Allow the house to be clean enough while you complete the course. For now, you only need to protect the next 3 months. Some changes also require another person's cooperation. You may need your partner to handle bedtime one night, your manager to know that you're unavailable after 6, a sibling to cover one appointment for your parent, or a friend to attend the first class with you.

Be open with loved ones about your goals. If you protect the plan entirely in your head, people will continue treating that time as available because they have no reason to know otherwise. Once you have made some room, decide whether the action will happen. Most of us plan by looking forward. We imagine next Tuesday going smoothly and think, "I'll do it then." I want you to look backward instead. Open your calendar, messages, or photos, and look at the last 2 weeks. What did Tuesday actually contain?

What time did you get home? Who needed you? When were you alert, and when were you so tired that even choosing dinner felt difficult? This is related to something psychologists call the planning fallacy. In one well-known study, Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin, and Michael Ross asked students to predict when they would finish their honors thesis. On average, the students expected to finish in about 34 days. Even when asked to imagine a worst-case scenario, their average estimate was under 49 days.

The work actually took about 56 days, and only around 30% finished by the date they had originally predicted. The students were intelligent and familiar with long assignments. They still pictured the work going more smoothly than it did. We make the same mistake when we build a plan only around the weekdays, where work ends on time, nobody calls, traffic is light, and we still feel energetic at 7:30. Use your past month as information.

If work is run late every Thursday, do not place the most important hour of your week after Thursday's final meeting. If Sunday mornings keep being absorbed by family, choose another day. If you always plan to exercise after work and repeatedly arrive home exhausted, try before work, during lunch, closer to the office, or on the weekend. Do not keep selecting a time simply because it would be convenient if your life were different. For the first 30 days, choose 2 times during the week that you can block off to work on your goal.

Participants chose from audiobooks that were easy to become absorbed in, and one group received the books on a device they could only access at the gym. If they wanted to hear the next chapter, they had to return and exercise. At first, that group visited the gym more often than people who had received general encouragement. The researchers called this temptation bundling. Many changes ask you to accept something difficult now for a benefit that may take months to notice. But the audiobook gave people something to look forward to now.

The useful detail is that access was saved for the behavior. If they could listen anywhere, the story might still make exercise more pleasant, but it would no longer give them a reason to return to the gym. Think about something you already love. Maybe a favorite show, meal, or podcast. To put this into practice, maybe that show is only available while you walk on the treadmill, or you get to order your favorite meal when you work on Saturdays. Maybe you save the best podcast of the week for the afternoon when you sort paperwork or clear the spare room.

The reward should not create another expensive or unhealthy problem, but it can give a difficult appointment something enjoyable now. In the audiobook study, the effect weakened when Thanksgiving interrupted people's routines. I actually like that detail because it keeps the advice realistic. A great audiobook did not make holiday travel disappear. A strategy can help you return more often without protecting you from every disruption the next 3 months will contain.

During the first 30 days, keep the routine simple enough that you can watch what happens. Do not add a third workout because the first week felt easy. Do not double your writing target because you had one unusually free Saturday. Let the plan experience a stressful week before deciding it's too small. At the end of each week, ask 2 questions. Did I do what I said I would? And what made doing it easier or harder? You may discover that an hour working on a goal is too long, but 30 focused minutes works.

You may learn that you need to choose which room you're clearing before Saturday morning, or the entire session becomes moving objects between piles. You may realize that the language lesson happens when it's scheduled immediately before dinner and gets pushed to tomorrow when you leave it for later. By day 30, you're looking for a routine you can repeat. The debt may not be paid, the course may not be finished, and the friendship may not feel close yet. But the work should have a place in your actual week, and you should know what had to leave to create it.

Now let's move on to the third step. Use the second month to change what is not working. At some point in the next 90 days, you're going to reach the part of this change that has stopped you before. You may do everything right for 2 weeks and see almost no progress. The work may become more difficult just as your confidence begins to drop. You may miss several days and feel embarrassed about returning, or discover that changing this part of your life requires a conversation you've been avoiding. This is usually where people decide that the plan is failing.

Sometimes it is, but we also need to know what kind of failure we're looking at, because there is a difference between struggling to do the plan and faithfully doing something that does not work. Making a plan is important. Sticking to a plan is important. Knowing when the plan needs to change is also important. One of the biggest mistakes we make when forming a new habit is we don't recognize that changing the plan can actually be the best decision we make. Sticking to a plan just for the sake of sticking to it can actually make it much less sustainable and make you give up much quicker.

Imagine you planned 3 workouts each week and completed 1. The issue may be the timing, the distance to the gym, the length of the workout, or the fact that nobody covers the responsibility you leave behind. Now imagine you completed all 3 workouts for a month, but you're experiencing pain or making no progress toward the physical goal. That calls for a different response. Perhaps feedback from a trainer or a medical professional and a change to the program. The same distinction applies everywhere. If you want to start a podcast but keep postponing the first recording, examine what makes beginning feel so difficult.

If you record every week but the episodes still sound unfocused, ask an experienced producer to listen and tell you where they lose interest. If you want to be better with money but keep forgetting the weekly money check-in, move it to payday or set the appointment with someone else. If you complete it every week and the debt is still growing, your budget may be ignoring the category where you actually spend. This is why day 30 should include feedback. Show the work to someone who can tell you something you cannot tell yourself. Ask a person in the industry, "If you were hiring for this role, what's missing here?"

Ask the financial advisor where the plan is unrealistic. Ask your friend, "I feel as though we keep saying we'll see each other, and we never do. Would a recurring plan make this easier?" Ask your partner, "Do these check-ins feel as though they're helping us, or are we having the same argument at a scheduled time?" There's another problem that often appears in the second month. Once progress becomes uncomfortable, we replace action with preparation. You watch tutorials instead of writing. You compare running shoes instead of training.

You spend an hour choosing a budgeting app instead of opening the account you're afraid to see. You keep researching therapists because making the first call would make the problem feel real. Examine this instinct in yourself. What is your avoidance tactic? Once you know the situation, you can decide what you will do when it happens. Researchers call these implementation intentions, and the mentor framework is very simple. If this happens, then I will do that. Peter Golwitzer and Pascal Sheeran reviewed 94 tests of these plans and found a large positive effect on goal achievement.

The strength is in the specificity. If life becomes difficult, "I will stay committed" gives you nothing to do. If my manager asks me to stay late on Tuesday, I will say that I already have an appointment and ask what can be handled Wednesday morning prepares you for a real moment. This could also look like, if I want to order something I did not budget for, I will place it on a 48-hour list. If I miss the morning walk, I will take the 15-minute route after lunch. If I start looking for another tutorial, I'll work on the draft for 10 minutes first.

Overall, it did, and the effect was even stronger when progress was physically recorded or shared with somebody else. Record the behavior you chose and one sign of progress. Write down the amount transferred or the current debt balance every Friday. Track how many invitations you initiated and how many plans you attended. Record the nights the phone stayed outside the bedroom and the time you actually went to sleep. The tracker should take less than a minute and tell you more than whether the week felt productive.

There's a problem with putting an end date on change. The date can motivate you, but it can also convince you that you only have to live this way temporarily. You follow the budget until the challenge ends. You push yourself through the workouts until day 90. You keep your phone outside the bedroom while you're tracking it, then slowly bring it back once you feel as though you've completed the plan. The final month is when you use the information you've learned to decide what this change will look like when it is no longer a challenge and you aren't counting down the days.

Start by looking at everything you've been doing and ask, "Could I continue this for another 6 months?" Be honest. Perhaps you can exercise 6 days a week for 90 days, but you already know that you cannot build your life around that schedule. Maybe you've stopped eating out completely to pay off debt, but you miss seeing your friends and feel close to abandoning the budget. Maybe you've been waking at 5 to work on a creative project, but you're exhausted by the afternoon and relying on 3 alarms to get out of bed. Do not wait until the plan collapses to admit that it asks too much of you.

I did this myself recently. I was working out 6 days a week of weight training and 2 days a week of cardio, and I realized that after doing that for 30 days, I was exhausted. I really enjoyed it. I was seeing results, but I couldn't keep it up. It wasn't realistic, so I had to cut a couple of workouts out. Use the final month to reduce it to a version you can genuinely keep. This is not lowering the standard because you've lost motivation. You're deciding what your normal standard will be once the unusually focused 90 days are over.

There can still be weeks when you do more, but you need a version you can return to without redesigning your entire life every Monday. Choose what I would call your weekly baseline. This is the set of actions that keeps the change alive during a regular week. If you're rebuilding your social life, your baseline may be initiating 1 plan and attending 1 recurring activity. We sometimes think a habit only counts once we can do it without reminders, accountability, or help, but there is no prize for making a good decision unnecessarily difficult.

If booking the class in advance gets you there, keep booking it. If you spend less when the card is removed from your phone, leave it removed. If seeing a therapist, trainer, mentor, friend, or group helps you continue, that support can be part of your life instead of something you graduate from. You also need a plan for what happens when the routine breaks, because eventually it will. You will travel, get sick, work late, have visitors, or go through a week when something more urgent needs your attention. The goal is no longer to prevent every interruption.

It is to stop 1 interruption from quietly becoming the end of the change. Decide now what returning looks like. If you miss a week of exercise, perhaps you return with the shortest class rather than punishing yourself with the hardest one. If an expensive month interrupts your debt payments, you restart the automatic transfer at an amount you can afford instead of avoiding the account. If you cancel plans because you're overwhelmed, you text the person with another date before the evening ends. Make the return small and specific.

The longer you wait for the perfect restart, the more emotionally important restarting becomes. There's one more thing I want you to do before day 90. Schedule day 91. This is where the habit truly forms. Book the workout that happens after the plan ends, put the next money review on the calendar, arrange the next dinner, decide which evening you will continue working on the application, course, business, or first draft. Imagine someone whose goal was to feel less lonely. Over the 90 days, they joined a Thursday group class, began initiating plans, and invited a few people to dinner.

Whatever your goal is, take 1 action that makes it real. Day 4, make time for it. Open your calendar and schedule 2 specific times over the next week to work toward your goal. Treat those appointments like commitments you wouldn't cancel. Day 5, do something different. Break 1 pattern that's keeping you stuck. If you always skip your workout after work, try going in the morning. If you struggle to focus at home, work somewhere new.

Change your environment or your approach instead of repeating what hasn't worked. Day 6, create your backup plan. Think about what's most likely to get in your way, because there will be something. Then write down 1 simple solution. For example, "If I miss my morning workout, I'll do it 15 minutes after work." Don't wait until something goes wrong to decide how you'll respond. And day 7, make your 90-day commitment. Look back at the week. What worked?

What felt realistic? What didn't work? Choose 1 action you can commit to repeating every week for the next 90 days. And schedule the first 2 weeks now, because changing your life isn't about doing everything perfectly. It's about making 1 decision, taking 1 step, and showing up for yourself again and again. 7 days won't change your entire life, but they can change the direction you're heading. The 7-Day Challenge was brought to you by Ultra Running.

On day 90, I want to be able to say, "Blank." You may still be waiting on the job offer, the response, the medical result, or another person's decision, but even so, you have changed. You now know which time of day works for you to make progress on your goals. You know which obstacle keeps returning. You know which kind of support helps, and you know the method that actually creates change. Think back to the voice from the opening, the one that says, "You always say you're going to change." On day 90, I want you to look at what you did.

Look at what changed because you kept showing up even when the plan became inconvenient and the excitement wore off. You should be proud of yourself because this time you did not abandon yourself. If the voice in your head ever tells you, "You're not changing enough. You're not good enough. You're not making things happen," you don't have to believe it. You have 90 days of your own life proving otherwise. Thank you so much for listening and watching today. Remember, I'm forever in your corner, and I'm always rooting for you.

I hope you come back to this episode across the next 90 days to make sure that you map it accordingly. I can't wait to hear what you learn about yourself and how much you grow.