Try something new for 30 days - Matt Cutts

What I Learned From Trying Something New for 30 Days

A few years ago, I felt stuck in a rut. So I decided to run an experiment: pick something I'd always wanted to do and commit to it for the next 30 days.

The idea is simple. Think of something you'd like to add to your life — or subtract, like watching the news — and try it for a month. It turns out 30 days is just about the right amount of time to pick up a new habit or drop an old one. Here's what the experiment taught me.

Time Becomes Memorable

For one of the challenges, I took a picture every single day for a month. The strange part is that, instead of the weeks blurring together and slipping away forgotten, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on each of those days. The months stopped vanishing without a trace.

Confidence Grows With Every Challenge

As the challenges got bigger and harder, my self-confidence grew right along with them. I went from a desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work for fun. I even ended up hiking Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. Before I started these challenges, I never would have been that adventurous.

If You Want It Badly Enough, You Can Do Almost Anything

Every November, tens of thousands of people try to write a 50,000-word novel from scratch in 30 days. The math is simple: 1,667 words a day for a month. So I did it. The trick is not to go to sleep until you've hit your word count for the day — you might end up sleep-deprived, but you'll finish your novel.

Is my book the next great American novel? Not even close. I wrote it in a month, and it's awful. But now, if I want to, I can call myself a novelist.

Small Changes Are the Ones That Stick

The most valuable lesson came at the end: when I made small, sustainable changes — things I could actually keep doing — they were far more likely to stick. Big, crazy challenges are a ton of fun, but they're also harder to sustain. When I gave up sugar for 30 days, day 31 looked a lot like going right back to it.

So What Are You Waiting For?

Here's the thing I can guarantee: the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not. So the question writes itself. Why not think of something you've always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next month?

Vocabulary

• I felt like I was stuck in a rut.
• I decided to follow in the footsteps of my father and become a teacher.
• It turns out that I was wrong. 
• Why don't you give it a shot?
• you might be sleep deprived

Advertising

Advertising is everywhere. On your phone, on TV, on the street, even inside your favorite apps. Let’s explore this topic together and use it to build your vocabulary and speaking skills.

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🔥 Warm-Up

Take a moment to think about this:

Do you think you're influenced by advertising? Why or why not?

Be honest with yourself. Even small things—like choosing one brand over another—can be influenced by ads.

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🧠 Vocabulary Challenge

Try to guess the words before looking at the answers.

• n b a r d = A type of product from a certain company with a certain name.

• e i c o m c m l r a = What you see on TV during breaks.

• c i u n e f e l n r = Someone with a lot of social media followers.

• c m u e s t r o = Someone who buys something or uses a service.

• t g a t r e = To go after, or aim for something.

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💬 Idioms and Phrases

Complete the sentences using these expressions:

• go viral

• across the board

• sold on (something)

• deliver the goods

• price yourself out of the market

1. If you don't _____, you'll be out of a job.

2. Have you seen the latest video? It will _____, I think.

3. I'm not _____ this colour. What do you think?

4. Be careful. You might _____ if you go too high.

5. It's rare that we agree on a decision _____ at our company.

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✅ Answers

Vocabulary Challenge:
brand, commercial, influencer, customer, target

Idioms and Phrases:
deliver the goods, go viral, sold on, price yourself out of the market, across the board

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🗣 Let’s Talk

Here are some discussion questions you can use in class, with friends, or for writing practice:

• Name at least 5 different advertising methods.

• What are some of your favourite brands?

• If you need a new pair of shoes, what influences your decision?

• Have you seen any shocking or memorable commercials?

• What makes an ad memorable?

• Do celebrity or influencer ads make you want to buy something?

• Are you easily influenced by advertising?

• What do you think about companies that target children?

• Do you check customer reviews before buying something?

• Should political parties advertise before elections?

• Should pharmaceutical companies advertise their drugs?

• Would you rather pay for a streaming subscription than watch ads?

• What are the negative effects of advertising?

• Do you buy “store brand” products at the grocery store?

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✍️ Writing Prompts

Use these ideas to practice writing a short essay or paragraph:

1. Is there enough protection against false advertising in your country?

2. Which products depend most on advertising? Which have strong brand loyalty?

3. Do you think advertising is a form of art?

4. Practice Tough Love

The golden thread of a highly successful and meaningful life is self-discipline. Discipline allows you to do all those things you know in your heart you should do but never feel like doing. Without self-discipline, you will not set clear goals, manage your time effectively, treat people well, persist through the tough times, care for your health or think positive thoughts.

I call the habit of self-discipline “Tough Love” because getting tough with yourself is actually a very loving gesture. By being stricter with yourself, you will begin to live life more deliberately, on your own terms rather than simply reacting to life the way a leaf floating in a stream drifts according to the flow of the current on a particular day. As I teach in one of my seminars, the tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you. The quality of your life ultimately is shaped by the quality of your choices and decisions, ones that range from the career you choose to pursue to the books you read, the time that you wake up every morning and the thoughts you think during the hours of your days. When you consistently flex your willpower by making those choices that you know are the right ones (rather than the easy ones), you take back control of your life. Effective, fulfilled people do not spend their time doing what is most convenient and comfortable. They have the courage to listen to their hearts and to do the wise thing. This habit is what makes them great.

“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do,” remarked essayist and thinker E. M. Gray. “They don’t like doing them either, necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.” The nineteenth-century English writer Thomas Henry Huxley arrived at a similar conclusion, noting: “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” And Aristotle made this point of wisdom in yet another way: “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it: men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players, by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we come to be brave.”

3. Maintain Your Perspective

2. Every Day, Be Kind to a Stranger

On his deathbed, Aldous Huxley reflected on his entire life’s learning and then summed it up in seven simple words: “Let us be kinder to one another.” All too often, we believe that in order to live a truly fulfilling life we must achieve some great act or grand feat that will put us on the front covers of magazines and newspapers. Nothing could be further from the truth. A meaningful life is made up of a series of daily acts of decency and kindness, which, ironically, add up to something truly great over the course of a lifetime.

Everyone who enters your life has a lesson to teach and a story to tell. Every person you pass during the moments that make up your days represents an opportunity to show a little more of the compassion and courtesy that define your humanity. Why not start being more of the person you truly are during your days and doing what you can to enrich the world around you? In my mind, if you make even one person smile during your day or brighten the mood of even one stranger, your day has been a worthwhile one. Kindness, quite simply, is the rent we must pay for the space we occupy on this planet.

Become more creative in the ways you show compassion to strangers. Paying the toll for the person in the car behind you, offering your seat on the subway to someone in need and being the first to say hello are great places to start. Recently, I received a letter from a reader of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari who lives in Washington State. In it she wrote: “I have a practice of tithing to people who have helped me along my spiritual path. Please accept the enclosed check of $100 with my blessing and gratitude.” I quickly responded to her generous act by sending one of my audiotape programs in return so she received value for the gift she sent me. Her gesture was a great lesson in the importance of giving sincerely and from the heart.

1. Discover Your Calling

When I was growing up, my father said something to me I will never forget, “Son, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die the world cries while you rejoice.” We live in an age when we have forgotten what life is all about. We can easily put a person on the Moon, but we have trouble walking across the street to meet a new neighbor. We can fire a missile across the world with pinpoint accuracy, but we have trouble keeping a date with our children to go to the library. We have e-mail, fax machines and digital phones so that we can stay connected and yet we live in a time where human beings have never been less connected. We have lost touch with our humanity. We have lost touch with our purpose. We have lost sight of the things that matter the most. 

And so, as you start this book, I respectfully ask you, Who will cry when you die? How many lives will you touch while you have the privilege to walk this planet? What impact will your life have on the generations that follow you? And what legacy will you leave behind after you have taken your last breath? One of the lessons I have learned in my own life is that if you don’t act on life, life has a habit of acting on you. The days slip into weeks, the weeks slip into months and the months slip into years. Pretty soon it’s all over and you are left with nothing more than a heart filled with regret over a life half lived. George Bernard Shaw was asked on his deathbed, “What would you do if you could live your life over again?” He reflected, then replied with a deep sigh: “I’d like to be the person I could have been but never was.” I’ve written this book so that this will never happen to you. 

As a professional speaker, I spend much of my work life delivering keynote addresses at conferences across North America, flying from city to city, sharing my insights on leadership in business and in life with many different people. Though they all come from diverse walks of life, their questions invariably center on the same things these days: How can I find greater meaning in my life? How can I make a lasting contribution through my work? and How can I simplify so that I can enjoy the journey of life before it is too late? 

My answer always begins the same way: Find your calling. I believe we all have special talents that are just waiting to be engaged in a worthy pursuit. We are all here for some unique purpose, some noble objective that will allow us to manifest our highest human potential while we, at the same time, add value to the lives around us. Finding your calling doesn’t mean you must leave the job you now have. It simply means you need to bring more of yourself into your work and focus on the things you do best. It means you have to stop waiting for other people to make the changes you desire and, as Mahatma Gandhi noted: “Be the change that you wish to see most in your world.” And once you do, your life will change.

How To Improve English By Reading Books

 

Step 1: Read slowly

Step 2: Take notes

Step 3: Search words online

Step 4: Pick words to practise