Thirty day challenges have been around for a good while. I doubt just one person came up with them. I even did one last year for a 30 Day Social Media detox, which was amazing to do. I highly recommend. I went cold-turkey on my Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat and Twitter. I found that I had more time to think, felt better emotionally and got a lot done in that time. Today, I do use all four but I have a lot of restrictions like I block my Facebook wall with a browser add-on and I only check Twitter once in the morning and evening like I treat my e-mail. Instagram and SnapChat are only opened if somebody directly sends me something.
That brings me to my 12 months of 30-ish Day Challenges, which was a recent inspiration from filmmaker and minimalist Matt D’Avella from his 12 Habits For Life YouTube video. Go check it out and come back to see mine.
So after I started thinking about and listing out my 30 Day Challenges, I came up with the idea to do a 30 Day Tech Challenges list as well since I have so many skills, tools and programming languages I want to learn and perfect upon. So below you will see my list of 12 Tech Challenges and just below that you’ll see my “non-tech” ones. They are all subject to change and I will try to keep them updated.
30 Day Tech Challenges
January: Apache Kafka.
February: Python, Terraform and perfect Tmux.
March: continue Python, Terraform.
April: continue Python, Terraform. GatsbyJS. Apache Airflow. Back-up solutions.
May: continue Python, LPIC-1 study
June: AWS CLI, bash, MySQL. Watch a Linux Webinar. Complete Apache Airflow Master course.
July: Haskell. Only use VIM. Functional Mindset Month Check out NixOS. Functional JS. tmux. do a GatsbyJS site.
August: LPIC-1 study & exam. Build your own something. Start a project that is useful utilizing all technology and skills (i.e. DevOps, git, CI/CD, IaC, etc.).
September: Bitcoin under-the-hood with Python. Look into Kubernetes.
October: Operating Systems from Scratch & Kubernetes at edX. Continue on project. Start personal blog on GatsbyJS and host in AWS on S3.
November: Linux From Scratch install. master git. Continue on project.
December: try a new Linux distro every day. Also, install BSD and others. Check out FreeBSD Handbook Report findings.
30 Day Challenges
January: Organize self with new productive tools and come up with motivational organized tactics like this.
February: Minimalist Game as explained by The Minimalists in their YouTube video.
March: Whole30. No Coffee No Juice. Read about what Whole30 is here.
April: YouTube, Twitter and Reddit purge. Same idea as Minimalist Game but for my YouTube subscribed channels and saved videos.
May: go to gym every morning before work.
Monday: Biceps Tuesday: Chest Wednesday: Back Thursday: Triceps Friday: Shoulders Saturday: Legs Sunday: Rest
June: Birthday month, need some relax time.
July: First tattoo.
August: Record self singing. Set aside an hour at least for recording and setting up portfolio site.
September: Set up a dedicated page for “Computer Learning Resources”, specific to Linux, SysOps, DevOps, etc.
October: Water Challenge – Drink a gallon a day AND Audiobook Challenge. Listen to one for at least 45 minutes every day & Walk outside every day for at least 30 minutes (weather permitting). YubiKey set up.
November: Buy a new phone. Set up LinageOS and Ting. No Google Challenge, switch to NextCloud and ProtonMail, anticipate deleting Google account in 2020. Set up a wiki for documenting SysAdmin and SRE related things.
December: Push-up Challenge or some other crazy exercise. Personal NAS set up.
Looking ahead to 2020:
- Did this work? Review it. What I learned or did not.
- Set up another for 2020? More broad?
- OKR format?
- Do a Linux journey v2.
- Computer Resource page
- Exercise / Meal Plan for 6 months. BMI Goal
Last updated October 28, 2019.