Choosing appropriate challenges for myself is going make or break this whole exercise. So here’s some background info: I’m a married, twenty-something South African, working abroad for a year in Harrison, New Jersey; 20 minutes outside of New York City. I’m healthy, fairly bright and employed full-time. I’m real. I don’t have a lot of free time but I know that I waste a stack of the stuff.

So my challenges have to be tough, but realistic. And the way I tackle them has to be realistic, too. There will be days when the “real world” of work and responsibilities takes up too much of my spare time to focus on the current 27 day challenge. But, with a little discipline, I’m going to prove to myself that I can better use the hours that I waste every day.

To precisely that end, the first paragraph of this post was written whilst my wife was trying on clothes at Jersey Gardens mall, and the second was during a lull in the romantic comedy we chose to watch tonight.

See, I’m learning…

The 27th is a journal of 27 things I wish to accomplish, each within 27 days.

Achieving a worthwhile goal within such a short period of time requires a significant amount of commitment, concentration and willpower. Or so I’m told. I’m not big on willpower. I’m an easily distracted perfectionist who finds himself wasting countless hours “preparing”, when he could be “doing”. But I truly want to change. And the only way I see that happening is by setting myself tangible yet challenging goals with fixed deadlines and by honestly monitoring my progress, on a daily basis.

So the 27th will be my diary, my logbook, my conscience. I’m in my 27th year of life now, but truthfully I don’t feel like an adult. I’ve made a number of good, solid, adult decisions thus far, but in many ways I’m still just a big kid. I want to challenge myself. I want to stop postponing things for later and start ticking things off my list. I also want to do things, better. I want to think more before I act and when I do act, I want to do so whole-heartedly. I want to do things properly so that I can say that I really finished.

If I can achieve just one new thing every 54 days (27 days on, 27 days off), then hopefully 4 years from now, after the 27th challenge, I can call myself an adult.

But that is by no means a commitment!