I lied to you before, when I said this would launch in early June. No excuses, my bad. The waiting is officially over, and now its on.

To kick things off with a bang, this will be a five-part challenge.

The Challenge

What:

• 1,500 pushups
• 5 sessions of P90x Ab Ripper
• Learn to count to 10 in Hindi
• Learn to count to 10 in Marathi
• 10 blog posts (Onwardly or CarpeMinutam)

When:

Duration of 10 days, July 13th-23rd, 2010.

Why:

I’m currently traveling in India, and traveling makes it easy to ignore basic things that keep you healthy and help you have a long life, such as exercise. While I’m here, it’d be a shame if I didn’t pick up any of the local language, and learning numbers is a practical place to start. Lastly, I just launched Onwardly, and I want to beef up the site with some good content.

Final Report (Coming July 24th)

I love challenges. They push boundaries, inspire engagement, motivate action, and reward the curious. This is a place to document and share challenges, for the sake of the official record and hopefully to motivate others.

You can turn anything into a challenge. Read three books in three days. Eat only raw foods for a month. Do 1000 pushups in 5 days. Learn how to do a handstand. Build something, build anything. Do something you’ve never done before. Do something you always assumed you can’t do. Get the picture?

That said, I want to lay out some ground rules. I challenge you to convince me to change them (which is possible):

• Challenges Should be Challenging. If its easy, its not really a challenge
• Purposeful. Doing 100 backflips in 10 minutes may be challenging, but its not really constructive. You don’t have to save the world, but should add some kind of positive value, no matter how small
• Quantifiable. Attach a number somewhere, even if that number is 1. If you quantify it, you can tell whether or not you completed the challenge. Find a way to make either the method or the outcome something you measure.

That’s it! I’ll be adding some interactive features as we move along to make it easier for anyone to participate. You can also join me!

Stay tuned, this site will be active in early June.