Ninety Won
Win Your Life in Ninety-One Days
Ninety Won is a 13-week challenge to start a Victorious Cycle in your life, thereby changing your life in ninety-one days.
If you want to win your life, it starts by winning each day and each week. Ninety-Won gives you a framework for challenging yourself and knowing when you’re winning. Tune in for the full explanation and use this as a reference to refer back to.
The Score
In Ninety Won you will Score Your Day, Score Your Week, and Score Your Quarter. Think of it as a sport.
- A Quarter (13 Weeks) is the Season
- A Week is a Game
- A Day is a Period
If you want to have a winning season, you must win most of your games. If you want to win the games, you must win most of your periods.
Teams don’t need perfect winning records to be great or win the Super Bowl. But they do need to win most of the time and win when it counts.
The Points
Here are the maximum points you can earn:
- Day: 10 Points
- Week: 70 Points
- Quarter: 910 Points
You earn points by completing the Daily Challenges. You can earn additional points for the week by completing the Weekly Bonuses and avoiding the Weekly Penalties. You can earn a few additional bonus points by completing some Quarterly Tasks. Win enough days and you will win the week. Win enough weeks and you will win the quarter. Super Bowl Champions, my friends.
The Daily Challenges
Here are the Daily Challenges.
🛏 Wake & Make
Wake up on time and make your bed. 1 Point
You earn one point for completing both parts of this challenge. Skip either and you lose the point.
Wake Up & Win
Wake up on time. If you wake up on time, you complete this part of the task. What does that mean?
Choose an “early” time to wake up the next morning before you go to bed. Not 10:00 AM. Not noon! Not a time you could easily wake up, but an early time that will allow you to complete the rest of your morning routine. Then you must get out of bed within ten minutes of that time.
You are not allowed to change your goal wake time in the morning. You must wake up when you decided the night before. You can choose the night before to sleep in the following morning, but you cannot make the decision in when you wake up.
Wake up on time, whatever that means for you. Plan when you wake up. Wake up when you plan. That’s the first part of the challenge.
Make Your Bed
You must make your bed in the morning. Period. If you wake up after or concurrently with a spouse, you must make it immediately. If you wake up before your spouse, it must be made shortly after they arise, and before you are off for the day.
If are in bed 11 minutes or more beyond the time you chose, or if you do not make your bed, you fail the first challenge for the day. No points.
Wake up on time and make your bed. Then you earn one point.
🙏🏻 Spiritual Training
30 Minutes of Spiritual Time – 1 Point
Call it a quiet time, devotional, meditation, or whatever you want. But you must spend at least thirty minutes with God, praying, reading, and/or listening, to get the point.
🧠 Mental Training
Absorb One Chapter of a Nonfiction Book – 1 Point
Read or listen to one chapter of any nonfiction book. You are encouraged to rotate or concurrently listen to books on all the different domains of life. The average non-fiction book has 8-12 chapters. You could finish three a month, or 36 per year.
We absorb books for two reasons:
- Information – To learn facts and strategies to help us.
- Inspiration – To gain and retain motivation to act and keep acting.
If time is an issue, listen to your books. Humans have been listening for thousands of years before we could all read. You will also get better with practice and be able to retain the information and inspiration at 1.25x speed, 1.5x, and even 2.0x speed or more. Good readers can read faster than people can speak. Good listeners can do the same.
Get Libby and connect to your local library. You can put up to ten books on hold that are interesting to you, and listen to them as they come in. Invest in yourself. Get Audible and listen to new books and best sellers for $12-$15, instead of $20-$30.
I’ve been absorbing (mostly listening) to 52 non-fiction books a year since 2019, and was listening to dozens a year before that. In 2021 I also listened to 48 fiction books, for 100 books total in 52 weeks. Don’t tell me it’s not possible to absorb a chapter a day.
🏋🏻♂️ Physical Training
Exercise for 30 Minutes & 300 Active Calories – 1 Point
You must do a planned workout (just moving around doesn’t count) that is at least 30 minutes and that burns 300 Active Calories. If you have an Apple Watch, it will track active calories for you. If your device only tracks total calories, you will need to determine your basal metabolic rate (the calories you burn by being alive) and subtract those from your total.
In this way, you must exercise for 1/48th of a day, but you must also exercise at an intensity that doesn’t let you slack off. If you want to do a medium- to high-intensity workout, you can get it done in 30 minutes. If you want to simply go for a walk, it’s probably going to take you an hour.
I would encourage you to make strength training part if not most of your exercise plan. Strength training not only helps you feel and look better, but it makes everything easier. When your body is strong, it doesn’t have to work as hard to do basic tasks (such as standing up, lifting a child, etc.). When everything is easier and takes less energy, you have more energy to devote to your priorities.
Invest in yourself. Get an Apple Watch or a Fitbit or some device that will give you feedback on what you are doing. It will help you get more from your training.
🥗 Eat Clean
Avoid Sweeteners & Bad Fats – 1 Point – Unlimited Loss
Everything we do we do in our bodies. How you fuel that body matters. Garbage in, garbage out. Eating junk food makes you sluggish, foggy, and tired. You can’t win your life if your body is letting you down.
Many diets out there disagree on whether certain foods are healthy or not. Is beef healthy or does it cause cancer? Is bread okay or is it the reason we are obese? Are eggs good for you or do they cause high cholesterol? But there are certain foods that all diets agree are toxic for us. To earn one point, you must avoid these three items.
- Sweets – Deserts, sweetened drinks, “breakfast food” such as muffins and sweetened cereals, etc. This included zero-calorie sweeteners! No “diet” drinks or foods. If it is sweetened, it’s a sweet. Foods with marginal added sugar (bread, for example), are fine, but if it is a sweet food, then it’s a no-go.
- Bad Fats – Trans fats, canola or vegetable oil, peanut oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, etc. This means deep-fried food (fries, chips, fried chicken, etc) and most processed foods. Note, you can have olive, coconut, and avocado oil, as well as butter.
- Beer and Hard Alcohol – Can you win at life if you’re constantly drinking? No. You can drink wine (it’s better for you and fewer people abuse it).
Unlimited Loss. For all other challenges, you get a point if you do it, and you lose a point if you don’t. For this one, you lose a point for every violation. Technically, you can lose all other points for the day if you eat badly enough. This encourages moderation. You can earn the nine other points and forfeit the 10th point with a bowl of ice cream and still win the day (90%). You can even choose to forfeit two points on a couple of fun drinks on another day (80%), and average winning across the two days (85%). But if you choose to pig out on garbage, you’re going to have a hard time winning your days, weeks, and life. Perhaps you choose one indulgence instead of going whole hog.
Exceptions. People get fat and unhealthy by eating unhealthy all the time. A bowl of ice cream every once in a while never made anyone fat, but eating every day will. Having a few drinks occasionally is fine, but a daily habit is unhealthy. Ninety Won teaches us to enjoy special foods on special occasions. So you get a free pass on special events and intentional times. They could include:
- Date Night
- Holidays
- A wedding
- Sabbath (explained later)
- Going to a sporting event
- A planned special dinner
- Etc.
This does not include beer with your drinking buddies every other day. Don’t abuse the spirit of the challenge by trying to find loopholes in the letter of the law.
💧 Drink Water
Drink 100oz of Water – 1 Point
You’ve heard it. “Drink eight cups of water a day.” Then you’ve likely heard that that’s too much. Or too little. Opinions abound. Challenge does three things:
- Ensures Hydration – More people are dehydrated than are hydrated. If you’re being active, you’ll want to ensure hydration. This will be easier in the summer and harder in the winter.
- Promotes Intentionality – You must track your water. Use WaterMinder or Strides apps. Ensuring you are drinking water throughout the day will keep you attuned to what you need to be doing. Unlike the other challenges, you can’t simply “knock this one out” in the morning. It’s an ongoing challenge.
- Requires Movement – If you’re drinking more, you’re moving more–both to replesh your water and to expel the water. You can’t sit at a desk without moving for four hours when you’re completing this challenge.
Drink 100oz (verified by tracking) to earn one point. Create a good habit here and you can get this point every day.
✍🏻 Plan Day
Plan & Schedule Your Priorities – 1 Point
Too many people wander through life. Each day happens to them. They spend the day putting out fires and reacting to what’s happening. In the end, they feel like they have accomplished nothing. This is not winning.
Earn one point by planning out your day in a planner and in your calendar. Identify your Key Three Tasks for the day. These are not goals (outcomes you hope for). These are tasks (items you can do).
Your Key Three should be three tasks that would make your day a success. What are they? Answer this question:
“If I got nothing else done today, but was able to accomplish these three tasks, what three tasks would those be to make today feel like a success?”
Too often we make lists of 20 items, and then accomplish none of them. Or we knock out a bunch of piddly tasks and it doesn’t move us closer to our goals. Our Daily Key Three tasks should make progress on our Weekly Key Three (more on that later), which will make progress toward our quarterly goals. We win our day, we win our week, we accomplish our goals and win our life.
Plan your day means establishing your Key Three and any other smaller tasks you might try to accomplish after your Key Three, and then schedule when you are going to do them. If they aren’t on your calendar, they won’t get done.
Use the Victorious Planner to plan out each day. If you don’t want to use that, you still must have somewhere that you are recording your Key Three and can refer back to it. You cannot simply have them in your mind. They must be on paper (or in an app).
Planning your day must be done at the beginning of the day or work day to count. You can’t retroactively plan your day at 3:00pm and give yourself a point. You can’t say, “Well I have it in my head, and I knew what I was going to do today.” If that were true, you can take 60 seconds to write it all down.
Planning your day also consits of closing out the previous day. Ideally, you would close out your day at the end of the day. That way you can leave work at work. But minimally you should close your previous day first thing in the morning and carry forward your previous tasks.
🗝 Key Three
Complete Your Daily Key Three Tasks – 1 Point Each
Plan what you do. Do what you plan. Planning is more potent when it is executed. You get one point for each of your Key Three Tasks.
During the week these are almost certainly going to be work tasks. Mine always are work tasks Monday through Friday. But you still must plan and complete a Key Three on the weekends. But they may be household chores, or more importantly, intentional time with your family and friends.
What if each day you accomplished three meaningful tasks? That would be 15 meaningful work tasks each week. That’s almost 200 key three per quarter, or 800 per year! Do you think you could move the needle in your career if you were accomplishing 800 important tasks per year?
What if weekends weren’t wasted but instead included meaningful family time and planned projects. Could your relational, recreational, physical, and spiriutal life be improved by completing over 300 important weekend tasks or experiences in a year?
Yes. Yes.
Summary of Daily Challenges
That’s it. One point for each of the first seven challenges. One point for completing your Key Three from challenge eight. Ten points possible for a day. Take how many you earned and divide it by 10 for your daily score. You want to average 85% to be winning your days.
Not getting 8s, 9s, and 10s each day to average 85%? You can still win your week with the Weekly Challenges.
The Weekly Challenges
You can get extra points for the week (to make up for those skipped workouts, the few Key Tasks you missed, and the ice cream cone) by completing the weekly challenges. You get one point for each of these challenges, and except for one, you can only get one point for the week. These are bonus points, meaning they don’t count against you if you don’t complete them. We’ll cover Weekly Penalties next.
✅ Review Goals
Earn one point for sitting down and carefully reading through each of your goals. Obviously you must have all your goals, targets, and vision written out for all your life domains to get this. Writing down one goal and then reviewing your only goal each week doesn’t count.
You must have each of these completed for each Life Domain in order to get this weekly point.
- Vision Statement
- 10 Year Vision
- 1 or 3 Year Target
- Quarterly Goal
If you haven’t written all this out for each life domain, you can earn this point by spending 30 minutes reflecting and writing your goals. If you are spending 30 minutes per week considering and writing your goals, you will soon have all of these areas written out.
The last R in SMARTER goals is “Reviewed.” Goals don’t do you any good if you never review them. Review your goals weekly to get a point for the week. Ideally this should be first thing Monday Morning. That way your goals are fresh in your mind as you plan you week and execute throughout the week.
✍🏻 Plan Week
Your Daily Key Three Tasks should be contributing to your Weekly Key Three Tasks. You don’t have those if you don’t plan your week.
Planning your week means identifying your Weekly Key Three Tasks: If you only accomplished three things all week, what would they need to be to feel like you executed at a high level that week. It also means scheduling when you are going to do those tasks. Preferably early in the week so you can ensure they get done. These Weekly Key Three should bring you seriously closer to your quarterly goals.
You can also fill out additional tasks you’d like to accomplish that week, provided you have time. But the Key Three are the priority. Commit to yourself and others that you will accompish them.
Similar to days, you will want to close out your week as well, preferrably on Friday, but minimally on Monday morning before planning the new week.
The Victorious Planner is built for setting your Vision, Targets, and Goals, as well as planning and executing your Weeks and Days. I challenge you to get the planner for one 13 week cycle. If it helps you accomplish all these things, won’t it be worth it?
🧎🏻♂️ Sabbath Day
All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy. The same goes for no rest.
Ninety Won is not a “hustle and grind, bro!” challenge. It’s not about working 50-70 hours a week and neglecting the rest of your life. It’s about victory in all of life.
God rested. Think about that. GOD… rested. Shouldn’t you.
If you have never looked into sabbathing, then you really should. For the purposes of this challenge, it means taking a deliberate 24 hour period where you abstain and engage.
For 24 hours, abstain from:
- Work (vocational or home chores, etc.)
- Smart phone (minimally any entertainment on it)
- Media (TV, social, etc)
Which means that for 24 hours you can engage in:
- Faith (something changes when you’re not trying to “fit-it-in” but are giving it plenty of time)
- Family (spending deliberate time with them)
- Food (free pass to enjoy all wonderful foods out there)
As will all these, we’ll explain more in a separate article/podcast. But for now, it’s 24 hours of abstaining and engaging gets you a point for the week. I do mine from 10:00 AM Saturday through 10:00am Sunday.
🤲🏻 Fast Day
Have ever fasted for 24 hours? It will do wonders for your spiritual life and for your self control. Explaining the benefits and caveats are beyond this episode. But you will get one point if you go for 24 hours without food. Ask your doctor (and all that junk).
👩🏻❤️👨🏻 Date Night
Do you still date your spouse? I don’t mean tossing in a frozen pizza and watching TV together. I mean and intentional Date Night with just the two of you without phones, social media, or TV. Enjoy conversation and each other’s company. Earn one point if you enjoy a date night together for at least a couple hours with no kids or distractions.
The purpose of this is to build intimacy with someone. If you’re not yet married but seriously dating or trying to date to find a spouse, you can also earn this point by going on an intentional date with your boy/girlfriend or with someone you’re in the early stages of exploring whether you should date. But casual dates where you’re just trying to hook up with someone definitely do not count.
💵 Balance Budget
If you want to hit your financial goals it takes intention. You must pay attention, and control where your money is going instead of wondering where it went. Keeping a budget or cashflow plan is the best way to do this. It’s just for poor people or people trying to get out of debt. Budgeting will help anyone win with finances contribute to winning with life.
You earn one point if you balance the budget in a week. That means two things:
- Categorizing all Transactions – Know exactly how much you’ve spent in each category.
- Reconciling Accounts – Ensuring what you have in your budget matches what your banks have in their balances.
You can use whatever method of budgeting you want (app, spreadsheet, envelope system), but I’d recommend YNAB. I balance my budget every tuesday morning. Mornings are best for me, and Monday morning is too soon for weekend transactions to have cleared.
🚴🏻♂️ Extra Active
What if you go beyond the minimum activity? Then you get more points. While you can’t make up for a week of eating junk food by working out for two hours once on the weekend, you can burn additonial calories and get healthier if you go above and beyond a good daily habit.
You can earn one extra point for hitting 5,000 Active Calories for the week, and an additional point for every 1,000 points above that (6,000, 7,000 etc.). These are active calories, so if you don’t have an apple watch you need to calculate your basal metabolic rate for the week and subtract it from total calories.
❌ The Weekly Penalties
You can get bonuses for the Weekly Challenges. Extra points if you do them, no lost points if you don’t. In the opposite way, there are two ways you can get penalized. You don’t earn any points for avoiding these activities, but you do lose points every time you do one.
💔 View Porn
Porn will destroy your Relational Life, and possibly the rest of your life too. You can’t win your life while viewing pornography.
You lose ten points each time you view pornography.
Defeat porn. End the vicious cycle. Start a Victorious Cycle.
🚬 Smoke Toxins
Once again, can you really say you are winning your life if you are burning up your money and lungs on cigarretes? Smoking cigarrettes will costs you millions of dollars over your life time. You need to bust this addiction ASAP!
Similarly, are you winning if you are a pothead? No.
You lose one point every time you smoke any toxin.
- Cigarettes
- Weed
- Vaping
- Cigars
Absorb Alan Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking if you smoke and want to quit once and for all.
📊 Score Your Week
Now you have the Daily Challenges and Weekly Bonuses and Penalties. Score each day in the top right of your Planner. How many of the 10 points did you earn?
Then Score your Week. Use the Scorecard in the Victorious Planner, or set up your own. How many points did you get in each Daily Challenge? 6/7 on Wake & Make? 7/7 on Physical training? 1/7 on Eat Clean? Or maybe -5… What is your total from all the Daily Challenges. 60?
Then add in your Weekly Bonuses and Penalties. Perhaps you got 5 more. Now you’re at 65. Your scoring for the day is out of 10, and your scoring for the week is out of 70. 65/70 = 93%. Congrats. You won that week!
📊 Score Your Quarter
Now do it again, for 13 weeks. Ninety-one Days. Then you Score Your Quarter. You can get a few more Quarterly Bonuses
✍🏻 Plan Your Quarter – 1 Point. If you plan out your quarter (your goals, Quarterly Key Three, and other priorities) on paper or in an app, you get one Point.
👀 Review Your Quarter – 1 Point. If you look back on your quarter, reflect on what worked and didn’t to revise your execution and goals, you get one point.
✅ Achieve Quarterly Goals – 1 Point Each. You get one point for each of your quarterly goals that you achieve.
📊 Win Your Life
What if you started winning your days. Not necessarily being perfect every day, but winning most days?
What if you started winning your weeks? What if on most days of the week you:
🛏 Woke up on time and made your bed, giving yourself time to achieve your other goals and starting the day off with accomplishment?
🙏🏻 Spent 30+ minutes with God, enjoying his presence and promises and becoming daily more like Jesus?
🧠 Read a chapter of a great book, building your knowledge and motivation?
🏋🏻♂️ Strengthened your body, giving you more energy and confidence?
🥗 Ate nutritious and delicious food instead of junk, avoiding the slumps and crashes?
💧Drank plenty of water, flushing out toxins and hyrdating your body?
✍🏻 Planned your day, making the most of each day by prioritizing what’s most important to you?
🗝 Accomplished Three Key Tasks, moving you closer to your goals and vision?
What if you did all that nearly ever day? What if once a week you also:
✅ Reviewed your goals?
✍🏻 Planned your week?
🧎🏻♂️ Sabbathed a day?
🤲🏻 Fasted a day?
👩🏻❤️👨🏻 Enjoyed a quality date night?
💵 Balanced your budget?
🚴🏻♂️ Were extra active?
Would you feel like you won that week?
What if you did that each week, for thirteen weeks? What if you won most of your days for ninety-one days? Would you feel like you were winning your life?
Yes. Unequivocally, yes.
You would have made significant progress in all areas of life, which all supported the other areas of life. You would be winning your life in just ninety-one days. You will be creating and living in a Victorious Cycle.
Just Do It.
What are you waiting for? Just do it. All of these challenges are designed to help all the others. It all starts with waking up on time. Wake up and win. It will give you the time and ability to accomplish everything else.
My Rhythm
Living in a Victorious Cycle for me means keeping to daily and weekly rhythms. Routine sounds borning and identical. Rhythms mean the days and weeks rhyme, but can flex and flow. Here is my ideal week:
4:00 AM: Wake & Make 🛏
4:05 AM: Morning Devotional 🙏🏻
4:45ish AM: Flex Time (Review Goals on Monday ✅, Balance Budget on Tuesday 💵, work on side projects 🧠, play video games ⛳️, etc.)
5:15ish AM: Strength Training 🏋🏻♂️
6:00ish AM: Kids wake up. Enjoy quality morning time. 👨👩👧👧
7:30ish AM: Leave for work. Listen to chapter on the way. 🧠
8:00ish AM: Plan Day ✍🏻 (Plan week on Mondays)
Note: 5 of my 10 points for the day are earned by 8:30 AM. Win your Morning, Win your Day.
8:30ish AM: Start first Key Three
11:00ish AM: Eat amazing salad for lunch. 🥗
4:30ish AM: Close day, having finished Key Three, and head home. 🗝
5:00ish PM: Dinner with the Family, finishing off my water for the day 💧, and hopefully earning my Eat Clean point (or not losing more than one). (Date Night is Wednesday 👩🏻❤️👨🏻.)
All points earned by 6:00 PM. Enjoy the evening having won the day. Kids in bed at 7:00. Get in bed at 9:00. Fall asleep immediately and get 7:00 restful hours of sleep (unless baby has something to say about that, which she often does.)