Did You Start with the Rule Finder?

If you took the Rule Finder quiz first and then were directed here, you’re in the right place.

If you haven’t yet taken the quiz, please do so now so you can be directed to the appropriate challenge stack.

These are the Productivity Challenges, for breaking the rule Stay Comfortable.

Enjoy the 3 Sample Challenges

If you’ve found out from the quiz that you tend to follow the rule Stay Comfortable, the three sample challenges here in the productivity stack will help you get a sense of their effectiveness and what it feels like to set foot outside of Stay Comfortable rule prison.

I hope you’ll try a challenge of your choice, or all of them, and then consider how much more tolerable you’ll be to the rest of us once you’re actually having some fun at work. : )

To get the most out of the sample challenges, become a free subscriber (if you haven’t already).

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How to get maximum benefit from each challenge

If you follow these guidelines for this first challenge, and every other challenge you engage through Break a Rule, you’ll get enormous benefit over time.

1. READ THE CHALLENGE AND VISUALIZE DOING IT
   
   Imagine the situation where you might apply it. You may notice that just thinking about doing it generates resistance. You might feel like it’s silly, too scary, weird or uncomfortable, or a waste of time. But the act of visualizing yourself breaking the rule is like planting a seed. Even if you don’t follow through with the action, you’ll be engaging an inner work that is worthwhile. Just visualizing action is actually a step in the right direction. So don’t ever feel bad if all you do is read the challenge and think about how you’d apply it. That effort counts.

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2. TAKE ACTION HOWEVER YOU CAN
   
   If the challenge as it’s stated feels too daunting or too for steep to you, you’re always free to modify the challenge in a way that supports you to take action. Even if you decide to take on just a fragment of the challenge, cut it in half, or have to get creative with its application to your own life, please do so. Remember, this about taking charge of your own life and destiny by calling the shots for yourself, instead of blindly adopting somebody else’s rules. Use these the way a writer would use a writing prompt, as a springboard for your own creativity and self-expression. These are life prompts. Use them to move—even just a small degree—in a new direction. Stretch a little outside of your comfort zone.
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3. PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITY
   
   Finally, if you want to supercharge and accelerate your growth results ten-fold, engage in the community by leaving a comment on the challenge. Share what you tried—what happened internally and externally as a result. Were you thrilled with the outcome? Disappointed? Are you mad it didn’t work? Are you shocked that such a small action could provide you with so much energy, or produce such a positive change?
   
   It will be at the community level that our work has the potential of making a huge difference, personally, and for others. You will gain more here from relationships with new friends and like-minded professionals than you will from the challenges themselves. Because we need to be surrounded by a community of authentic, inspiring, and courageous humans more than we need a library of new ideas. The ideas are just the seeds for our connection.

Last 3 useful tips

Consider working with a partner

If you really want to magnify the benefits of engaging with the platform, consider bringing a friend or colleague with you into Break a Rule and becoming accountability partners for each other in rule breaking.

This can work really well if you make heartfelt promises to each other to follow through with the challenges, and if your partner drops the ball, to shame the crap out of them for being such a loser uh, I mean, to be kind and respectful and stuff.

Tracking hack

When you find a challenge you want to work with, simply type the words, “Game On,” in the comment section below the challenge.

We’ll send a reply with words, YOUR CURRENT CHALLENGE, the challenge title, and key instructions so it will be right there in your notifications.

This way, you’ll always be able to remind yourself of which challenge you’re working on by clicking the notification icon next to your profile. (See where the arrow is pointing in the screenshot below. You have to be signed up at least as a free subscriber to do this.)

Even if other notifications have arrived, just look for the one that says: YOUR CURRENT CHALLENGE.

Subscribe to the productivity stack

If you’d like to be specifically notified whenever a new productivity challenge is added to the stack, you can subscribe directly to the productivity challenge stack by navigating to your profile, clicking on “settings”, scrolling down to subscriptions and clicking there, and then scrolling down to your notification settings where you will be able to subscribe to any of the development stacks.

This process is shown below.

Go to settings.

Choose Break a Rule from your subscriptions.

Toggle emails “on” to receive new posts to any of the stacks.

Reach Fatigue

This challenge is to engage in some physical activity until you hit the point of fatigue.​

The capacity to work with the actual physical feeling of discomfort and to extend oneself through effort is core to the principle of practice. Successful practice requires the ability to stretch beyond one's existing limits.

Try going for a walk, doing squats, climbing stairs, performing sit-ups or push-ups, skipping rope, or just squeeze a rubber ball until you can't anymore.

Claim the internal authority to push beyond the habit of comfort in some way, shape, or form as a reminder that the strength of your intention trumps the body's craving for the path of least resistance.

Ideally the experience will inspire you to a regular routine of some kind where the capacity to exert yourself will remain permanently on call and available in any moment you choose to assert it.

Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

Shorten the Shower

This challenge is to stop your shower short of that perfect moment when you've lingered under the warm water to your heart's content.​

You might be thinking, "Wait, what kind of masochistic program have I stumbled into here?"

Well hear me out.

The pleasure of comfort increases as we are able to choose it.

When we become a slave to comfort — when we MUST have it to feel good or happy — then that comfort is attended by a measure of underlying anxiety we try to eliminate by getting even more comfortable.

The way out of this loop is to prove to ourselves that we can survive and thrive without the comfort.

This frees us to enjoy comforts when they are present, to choose them when we wish, and then to meet circumstances that require effort, tolerance, or the delay of gratification with brightness, confidence, and maturity.

There's nothing wrong with long showers now and then.

But for the purposes of your training, when the moment of being clean arrives, just shut off the water.

Or you could set a timer and when it goes off, so does the water, whether or not your inner creature feels perfectly comfortable yet.

The ability to turn away from comfort at will is important.

Practicing this sends a message to the unconscious about who is in charge and empowers the real you to be able to do what's appropriate in the moment rather than be run by the automatic need get the most pleasurable pay-off right now.

The truth is we don't have to:

• See the end of a movie.

• We don't have to eat the extra serving at dinner.

• Cool down (or heat up) the car before we get in.

Those things are nice, but when the necessity for comfort runs the show we paradoxically distance ourselves from the well-being we were looking for in the first place.

Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

Put It Back

This challenge is to put something back that you keep noticing is not in its proper home.​

After you've done that, attempt for the rest of the day to put things back where they belong right away after you've used them.

This may seem too basic to mention, but getting in the habit of making small efforts in the moment instead of putting them off for later is an important part of breaking the rule Stay Comfortable.

​Putting things back where they belong requires getting out of our comfort zone, voluntarily involving ourselves in an activity for which the pay-off is subtle and often feels like it's not worth the effort.

As a habit, however, putting things back where they belong is an expression of order, precision, presence, and respect.

Look around today for things that are out of place, but have become invisible to you just because they've been there for so long.

It could even be your own mood, attitude, behavior, or way of speaking that is out of place.

Pay attention today to what doesn't fit where it's showing up and make the effort to restore it to a place, time, or circumstance that is a fitting and appropriate home.

Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

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Pre-Define Enough

This challenge is to set a quota for yourself ahead of time in relationship to the intake of something that is pleasurable.

You may have heard about the experiments with rats where providing them with the ability to self-stimulate a pleasure center in their little brains took precedence over all other activities, to the point of the starvation of some of the subjects.

As fellow mammals we are prone to the same weakness.

We live in a culture where access to pleasuring, especially in the form of Staying Comfortable, is historically unparalleled.

The degree to which we take advantage of those comforts is our call.

How much pleasure do we seek out and gravitate towards in the short term, regardless of the long term consequences?

Before indulging today in dessert, the accumulation of money, the need for attention, the completion of tasks, the distraction of entertainment, the relief of vacation, the buzz of alcohol, etc — give some thought to how much is going to be enough before you start in.

Set an alarm, ask a friend to remind you to stop, buy a smaller tub of ice cream, schedule an interruption — do what you need to and prepare your "enough" point in advance.

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Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

Last week’s free featured challenge, Solve a Puzzle, is now for paying subscribers only.

Annual paid subscribers unlock enough productivity challenges to practice breaking the rule Stay Comfortable every week for an entire year. (Monthly subscribers get the same thing, they just pay more, which according to logic makes the annual subscribers smarter people.)

But that’s not all.

For an insanely minimalistic pittance of $8.33/month you’ll get access not only to all the productivity challenges, but to every challenge for all the other rules as well!

• communication challenges

• innovation challenges

• teamwork challenges

• accountability challenges

• leadership challenges

• vision challenges

So if you want to switch challenge stacks at any time and work on breaking another rule, you can!

It’s professional development in your pocket that’s incredibly effective at a fraction of the cost of traditional training models.

• no high fees

• no time missing work

• no time away from family

• no business travel expenses

• no high-fat meeting break snacks

Any questions?

Q: “How can you possibly run a business by charging such incredibly low and affordable prices?” you ask.

Easy. You’re on your own here. As soon as you hand over your credit card I’m heading for the beach and you can figure out how this thing works on your own.

I mean . . . um . . .

I’m leveraging the power of the internet to scale our services using the marvel of systems and technology that allow for equitable transfer of high-quality services not-forth-withstanding maximum viable product restrictions that are non-taxable in Tennessee on holidays . . .

Oh, the hell with it.

I don’t know. We might go broke. But if enough of you sign up, this might just work to all of our mutual benefit.

So take advantage of this offer ($8.33/month) while you can, because likely we’ll raise prices by a thousand percent next week. And then you’ll be sorry when this costs $8,333/month.

Subscribe now

Any more questions?

Q: “What else do I get, besides 24/7 access to the whole challenge library for every rule?”

Great question!

You’ll unlock access to:

• The full text of, 7 Rules You Were Born to Break

• Recurring Use of the Rule Finder Quiz

• Quarterly Community Rule Breaking Sprints

• Comments and Questions on Challenges

• Unrestricted Reading Beyond the Paywall in Weekly Articles

• Community Chat Threads with the App

• Registration to our first convention as soon as we can find a hotel willing to host thousands of rule breakers who most definitely will not sneak into the pool after hours.

Also-

• As a paid member, you’ll receive new challenges every week

• After that, they’re stored in the communication challenge library so you’ll always have access to dozens of useful practices that will keep you from getting stuck back in Be Normal mode

• How does all that sound?

“Wow, that sounds like an incredible service!”

Yes, it is!

So what are you waiting for?

Your unique success path is waiting for you to express yourself courageously and authentically, serve a unique purpose, and enjoy sharing the real you while making a meaningful contribution to the world.

Let’s Break some Rules baby!

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