Project 50 challenge: 7 daily rules & tracker

The Project 50 challenge is a 50-day personal reset built around seven daily habits: waking before 8:00 a.m., taking a distraction-free morning hour, exercising for an hour, reading 10 pages, spending an hour on a new skill, eating clean, and writing in a journal. Austrian filmmaker and athlete Nico Rauchenwald created the challenge with his brand SOM Studios, and it spread rapidly online as thousands of people documented Days 1 through 50 in short daily vlogs.

Most multi-week challenges revolve around workouts and water jugs while ignoring what you want to build outside the gym. Project 50 gives equal weight to physical movement and learning something new, though fitting three separate one-hour blocks around a full-time job or classes is tougher than it looks on Day 1. People rarely quit Project 50 from sore muscles; they stall out in week two when a busy Tuesday leaves an hour of skill study and 10 unread pages colliding with bedtime.

The 7 rules of the Project 50 challenge

You follow the same seven habits every day, including weekends, for 50 days in a row:

1. Wake up before 8:00 a.m. Set a fixed wake-up time before 8:00 a.m. every morning while still getting at least six to eight hours of sleep. Waking up early by cutting sleep to four or five hours wrecks your focus by week two, so lock in a consistent bedtime and count backward to allow time to fall asleep.
2. Take a 1-hour morning routine with zero distractions. Keep your phone out of reach and stay off social media and email for the first 60 minutes of the day. Use the hour to stretch, eat a real breakfast, meditate for 10 minutes, or step outside into natural daylight, which triggers your morning cortisol pulse and helps you wake up faster. Rauchenwald also recommends waiting 90 minutes after waking before drinking coffee, much like the morning timing in the Huberman daily protocol, so your natural alertness kicks in before caffeine hits.
3. Exercise for 1 hour a day. Move actively for at least 60 minutes in whatever sport fits your routine, such as lifting weights, running, cycling, yoga, swimming, or playing soccer. Unlike challenges that demand high-impact training every day, Rauchenwald's rules allow active recovery days (like an easy jog, a brisk walk, or mobility stretching) after a taxing week so your joints and tendons can recover.
4. Read 10 pages a day. Read at least 10 pages of non-fiction focused on psychology, skill building, biography, or business. Switching books mid-challenge is fine, though picking two or three titles before Day 1 prevents decision stalls. Reading physical pages before bed gives your eyes a break from bright screens and makes it easier to fall asleep on time for your morning alarm.
5. Dedicate 1 hour toward a new skill. Spend 60 uninterrupted minutes practicing a skill outside your regular job or coursework. Whether you're learning conversational phrases in a new language, practicing chords, or sketching, shut down notifications and give that single topic your full attention.
6. Follow a healthy diet. You don't need to weigh every gram of food, but stick to wholesome meals that keep your energy steady: cut out alcohol, skip sugary sodas and sweets, drink plenty of water, and avoid heavy meals right before sleep so digestion doesn't fragment your rest. A simple time-saver from Rauchenwald's own routine is cooking two portions at lunch so a clean dinner is already waiting in the fridge after work.
7. Track your daily progress in a journal. Before bed, take five minutes to write down what went well, where your schedule slipped, what workout and skill work you finished, and one specific adjustment for tomorrow. You can write in a paper notebook or log your notes in a digital tracker.

Under Rauchenwald's original rules, missing any of the seven habits means restarting from Day 1 and repeating the cycle until you string together all 50 consecutive days. That strict standard works well if clear pass-or-fail stakes motivate you, though plenty of people with demanding work or family schedules run a modified Project 50 where a missed task gets logged honestly and the count continues the next morning.

Fitting 3+ hours of habits into a workday

Rules 2, 3, and 5 require three full hours of timed blocks every day, plus roughly 20 minutes for reading and nightly notes. Trying to squeeze all three hours into the evening after a full workday almost always fails, so the cleanest weekday setup splits them between early morning and late afternoon:

Time block	Project 50 rule	Duration	Practical focus
6:30–7:30 a.m.	Wake & morning	60 minutes	Sunlight, stretch, breakfast
7:30–8:30 a.m.	New skill study	60 minutes	Quiet solo practice
5:30–6:30 p.m.	Daily exercise	60 minutes	Gym, run, or walk
9:40–10:00 p.m.	Read & journal	20 minutes	10 pages and notes

Front-loading your skill hour right after your phone-free morning routine means two of your three big blocks are finished before work even starts, when your focus and working memory are freshest. Saving your 60-minute workout for late afternoon or early evening gives your eyes and posture a physical break after hours at a desk. If an early commute makes a two-hour morning impossible, swap the skill block and workout, or use your lunch hour for a brisk 60-minute walk so you only have one hour of skill practice left after dinner.

Project 50 vs. 75 Hard and 75 Soft

Project 50 runs 25 days shorter than 75 Hard and swaps double workouts for a phone-free morning and a daily hour of skill study:

Feature	Project 50	75 Hard	75 Soft
Total length	50 days	75 days	75 days
Daily exercise	One 60-min session	Two 45-min workouts	One 45-min workout
Morning & skill	2 hours daily	Not included	Not included
Diet & alcohol	Clean food, no alcohol	Strict diet, no alcohol	Mindful, social drinks
Active recovery	Allowed when needed	Zero rest days	One day a week
Missed rule	Restart (or modify)	Restart at Day 1	Keep going tomorrow

Andy Frisella's 75 Hard tests physical grit through sheer volume: 90 minutes of daily training (with one 45-minute session outdoors in any weather), a gallon of water, and daily progress photos. If your main goal is easing into consistent exercise and hydration without cutting out social drinks or blocking off two morning hours, the 75 Soft challenge (or the zero-alcohol 75 Medium challenge) fits a busy calendar much better. Project 50 sits closer to a monk mode sprint, making it a strong pick if you want daily movement while actually building a concrete skill outside work.

Picking a 50-hour skill you'll actually finish

Practicing one skill for an hour a day across 50 days gives you 50 focused hours, which is more than double the 20-hour mark needed to get past beginner awkwardness.

In the 20-hour rule, author Josh Kaufman shows that 20 hours of focused practice (about 45 minutes a day for a month) is enough to play simple songs, hold basic conversations, or sketch recognizable forms. Putting 50 straight hours into one narrow subject over seven weeks carries you well into solid beginner territory, provided you define the skill clearly before Day 1.

People usually stall on Rule 5 when they write down a vague goal like "learn design" or "study business" and waste half the hour browsing videos trying to decide what to do. Pick one skill with an obvious daily action and line up your lessons ahead of time:

• Visual art and design: Work through line, proportion, and shading drills (see our guide on how to get better at drawing), learn 3D modeling basics in Blender, or design one poster layout a day.
• Music: Practice clean chord transitions and strumming rhythms on guitar, or build two-hand coordination on a keyboard.
• Languages: Pair 30 minutes of vocabulary flashcards and grammar drills with 30 minutes of beginner audio lessons in a language you've put off starting.
• Crafts and games: Study tactical patterns in chess, edit short video clips in DaVinci Resolve, or sew a garment from a pattern.

How to track the Project 50 challenge

If you want a Project 50 tracker app that handles both timers and daily counts, timespent lets you run your three 1-hour blocks, log your daily Tallies, and write your evening reflections in one place.

Group all seven Activities into a 50-day Habit Arc with a start and finish date if you're following the strict unbroken streak rule, or choose an Unscripted Arc if you're running a modified Project 50 and want to see your total days active and hours logged without a missed evening resetting your progress to zero. Create a Timed Activity each for your Morning Routine, Daily Exercise, and New Skill with 1-hour daily Do More goals. Your active timers stay visible on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, and connecting Apple Health logs your 60-minute walks, runs, or workouts on their own.

Add a Simple Tally each for waking before 8:00 a.m., reading 10 pages, and eating clean, and set up recurring Plans in My Day so custom reminders keep evening reading from slipping past bedtime. Before sleep, open Mood & Reflections in My Space to rate your day from 1 to 5 and jot down what worked and what to adjust tomorrow, while Moments celebrate your first hour down, crossing 24 total hours, and completing your 50-hour skill goal on Day 50.

Common questions

How many hours does Project 50 add up to over 50 days?

Completing all seven rules for 50 days (7 weeks and 1 day) adds up to 150 hours across the three 1-hour blocks, or about 167 total hours once you include reading and nightly journaling (3 hours 20 minutes × 50 days = 166 hours 40 minutes).

Project 50 habit	Daily pace	Weekly time	50-day total
Morning routine	60 minutes	7 hours	50 hours
Daily exercise	60 minutes	7 hours	50 hours
New skill study	60 minutes	7 hours	50 hours
Read & journal	20 minutes	2 hr 20 min	16 hr 40 min

At 10 pages a day, 10 pages × 50 days = 500 pages, which finishes about two standard non-fiction books alongside 50 hours of training and 50 hours on your chosen skill. Fifty consecutive days also brings you close to the 66-day median researchers found in how long it takes to form a habit, so most of the routine feels automatic by the final two weeks.

Can you modify Project 50 for night shifts or busy schedules?

Yes, you can adjust the wake-up cutoff and block lengths to fit shift work or caregiving without losing the structure of the challenge. Rauchenwald notes in Rule 1 that getting six or more hours of consistent sleep matters more than an arbitrary clock time. If your hospital or warehouse shift ends at midnight, waking at a fixed hour after seven hours of rest makes far more sense than forcing an 8:00 a.m. alarm on four hours of sleep. Busy participants also often scale the morning routine and skill blocks to 30 minutes each (30 minutes × 50 days = 25 hours), which still clears the 20-hour beginner mark while keeping weekdays manageable.

Do you have to post daily vlogs on TikTok or Instagram?

No, filming or posting videos is optional. Even though daily Day 1-to-50 vlogs made the challenge popular on social media, Rauchenwald points out on his official Project 50 page that making a daily video was never one of the seven rules. Rule 7 only asks you to keep an honest daily log for yourself so you can see what's working and adjust tomorrow's plan.

What counts as the 1-hour workout in Project 50?

Any intentional sport or active movement lasting at least 60 minutes counts, indoors or outdoors. Lifting weights, running, cycling, yoga, swimming, climbing, or team sports all qualify. Unlike challenges that ban easy days, Project 50 allows active recovery sessions, such as stretching, light jogging, or alternating brisk and easy paces with Japanese walking, when your legs or joints feel tired from earlier in the week.