Day Zero Project

Last year at Day Zero Project we launched the Places directory as a way to discover interesting things to do in destinations across the globe. A few sharp visitors noticed that the US was not included in this list…

Day Zero is a truly global community, but not surprisingly around 40% of our members are based in the US. So we thought it would be a fun idea to use all this great knowledge and get people to recommend the best and most interesting things to do in their State.

Introducing the 50 States Project! A way to share the best local knowledge of things to do across the US. Head over to the index page and select your State (or any State you have travelled) and fill out your Top 10 things to see and do. 

Once we have a good range of suggestions we will publish the ultimate Top 10 list for each State!

Go to the 50 States Project

We are rapidly approaching the New Year and many people are contemplating their goals for 2013 so we thought it would be a good time to bring up some new goal setting list ideas.

Earlier this year we introduced the ability to go beyond the 101 Things challenge and create any type of list. So to help spark your inspiration, here are a few ideas for lists our users have created in this time. 

•   50 Things To Do This Summer
•   10 Destinations in 10 Years
•   Things to do in my 20s
•   Things To Change About Myself
•   30 Day Challenge
•   21 Places to Visit When I’m 21
•   Before our 10th Anniversary
•   50 skills in 50 weeks
•   Things to do before I’m old and boring
•   Habits to develop
•   Culinary Bucket List
•   365 Day Drawing Challenge
•   Things to do before having a baby
•   Places to Visit in my Lifetime
•   101 Healthy Goals
•   Things To Do Over Summer Break
•   101 things to do before 30
•   Awesome stuff I have already done
•   365 things in 365 days
•   Photography Bucketlist
•   30 Things in 30 Days
•   Things To Do Before Graduating College 
•   Reading Bucket List
•   50 Places to go Before I Die
•   101 Healthy Goals

Now is a great time to head over to Day Zero Project to review your goals setting ambitions and maybe create a new list for 20131!

There has been a lot happening behind the scenes here at Day Zero. Today sees the first of these updates released. Here is a summary of the changes and additions:

• All new menu
  Now it’s even easier to access your lists from any page. The top menu has been compeletely redesigned to make it quick and easy to find things.
• Likes
  Put your stamp of approval on notes and photos from anyone on the website. It’s a great wait to let people you follow know they are on the right track and give that extra bit of encouragement!
• Manage Lists
  There is an all new page for adding and editing your lists. You can get to this from the link at the top of the lists on your profile page.
• New Timeline
  The timeline page has had a tidy up. It now shows more activity and also any Likes you have received.
• Recent Activity
  Your Recent Activity stream (on your profile page) also now shows even more things. Including goals you add, Likes you make, and your status updates.

There’s a lot more coming soon. Thanks so much to everyone who has given feedback on the website, and best of luck with all your goals!

This is the seventh in our regular series of posts that will pick out and highlight a few interesting submissions from Day Zero participants.

• Read 10 classics I should have read but have never got around to
• Write a letter to three people who have made a difference in my life
• Attend a TED event
• Try kickboxing
• Make at least 10 recipes that I’ve pinned on Pinterest
• Learn about the constellations
• Attend the 2014 World Cup in Brazil
• Make a robot
• Cook 5 meals from 5 different countries
• Scuba dive in a shipwreck
• Start drawing a weekly comic strip
• Have a picnic in a tree
• Smash my face in a cake
• Learn to play 5 full songs on guitar
• Visit a tea plantation in India/Sri Lanka
• Learn to play the banjo
• Buy an unusual color of eye make-up
• Try cooking with 10 herbs that are new to me
• Make marshmallows from scratch
• Wear a fake moustache for a whole day
• …

Click through to view the full list of 50 goal ideas!

With recent media reports suggesting inactivity is ‘killing as many as smoking’, there’s now no better time to start looking after yourself.

Here are a few health and fitness based challenges to get you motivated - some are more fun and others will push you to the limit.

Complete a 30 Miles in 30 Days Challenge
The goal for this challenge is to log in at least 30 miles by the end of the four-week (approx 30 day) plan. Just be sure to listen to your body during your workouts. If a recommended workout is too intense, or too many miles, scale it back to meet your body’s needs.

Do a Couch to 5k running plan
C25K has been designed to get just about anyone from the couch to running 5 kilometers or 30 minutes in just 9 weeks.

Complete a 100 Pushups Challenge
If you’re serious about increasing your strength, follow this six week training program and you’ll soon be on your way to completing 100 consecutive push ups!

Do a 30x30 Challenge (30 minutes of physical activity for 30 days)
Rules of Engagement: 1. 30 Minutes Per Day Minimum 2. 30 Consecutive Days in a Row 3. NO EXCUSES! 4. NO Minimum Pace Required-Just Move! 5. Must Be “Dedicated Time” for Exercise

Complete a 30 Day Yoga Challenge
Completing your own 30 day yoga challenge will require discipline, commitment, focus, and sacrifice. It won’t guarantee that you have a yoga habit for life – you can fall out of good habits just as easily as you fall into bad ones – but it will be a step in the right direction.

Complete a 200 Sit-ups Challenge
No doubt some of you can already do 100 consecutive sit-ups, but let’s face it, you’re in a big minority. Most of you reading this won’t even be able to manage 20 sit-ups. Actually, I’m sure many of you can’t even do 10.

Complete P90X
P90X, or Power 90 Extreme, is a home exercise system developed by Tony Horton in conjunction with Beachbody and director Mason Bendewald. It claims to improve physical fitness in 90 days through a rigorous segmented training program combined with a nutrition and dietary supplement plan.

Complete a 200 Squats Challenge
The same formula as the 200 Sit-ups and 100 Pushups challenges - but this time with squats.

Complete the 30 Day Shred
Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred is an awesome workout that will begin showing a difference in your body in about 5 days, and put you that much closer to a body like the super toned, super hot Jillian Michaels.

Complete a ‘Walk To Mordor’ challenge
In the Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien, Frodo, Sam, and their companions travel from Bag End in Hobbiton to Rivendell. Our goal is to re-create their walk in our neighborhoods, parks, gyms, homes, and minds. It’s 1779 miles (2863 km) from the Shire to Mordor following Frodo and Sam’s journey. If you walk three miles every other day, it will take you 20 weeks (about 4.5 months) to reach Weathertop and complete your challenge.

This list and others can also be found on the Day Zero website in the Features section - and you can easily add the goals you like to any of your lists.

Following on from the recent announcement that you can now add photos to your goals, we thought it would be great to have a way of sharing some of the amazing achievements of the Day Zero community.

A Recent Activity page has now been set up that gives you a visual look at some highlighted achievements from the many goals that get checked off people’s lists everyday!

So keep adding photos to illustrate your achievements, and now you can help inspire others with your accomplishments.

The much requested feature of printing and exporting lists is now available. Just scroll down to the bottom of any of your lists and hit the Print List button. You will get a plain text version of the list which is great for printing, or copying and pasting into a blog or Tumblr post.

Note: You must be logged into your account to print the lists, and can only print and export your own lists - this is because your list may be private, or contain goals which are marked as private.

We are very pleased to announce the latest feature on the Day Zero Project website - photo uploading!

Prove to everyone that you knocked that goal off by posting a photo of that dream destination, or show off your hard work on a craft or cooking project.

Just click on the goal on your list and choose ‘Add Note or Photo’ from the pop-up box. Photos will also appear on your activity stream once they are uploaded.

There are even more exciting updates coming up in the next few weeks. As well as improvements to the current processes, there will be some new ways to discover things to do, and ways to better plan and execute your own goals.

If you have any feedback or suggestions we’d love to hear it! Email michael@dayzeroproject.com.

There have been a lot of updates to the website over the past week. A whole bunch of bug fixes and a few new features.

Editing Notes

By popular demand, you can now edit your notes! It’s easy, just visit your progress update page and click the Edit link under the note. When saved, it will be given a new date stamp of the current time and will appear at the top of your activity stream.

Many users have found this to be a great way of maintaining sub-lists of goals such at books or movies to read.

View Your Followers Updates

This is now back up and working. You can see the updates from people you follow by clicking on the number of your followers on your profile home page. You can also use this page to search for people to follow by entering their name or email address.

Places

The directory of Places is growing by the day. We are adding new country pages and lots of interesting things to do. Have you checked it out yet?

Thanks for all your feedback and help identifying issues. There are going to be even more new features over the coming weeks! If you have any questions or comments, fire off an email to: michael@dayzeroproject.com

If you’re in search of your next big race, the team at Smashrun.com have come up with a challenging list of incredible marathons from around the world for the Day Zero community.

This list and others can also be found on the Day Zero website in the Features section - and you can easily add the goals you like to any of your lists.

Thanks to everyone for your feedback and comments on the new changes. I’m reviewing these and do expect to made a few modifications over the next few weeks to improve and enhance the site.

Notes

There is a lot of interest in seeing the return of notes editing and we are working on a solution for this that will allow these to be used in much the same way they were before. 

Mobile Site

This is currently offline and getting rebuilt to work with the new multiple lists. It will return soon with some new features!

Activity Stream

Due to an excessive amount of users currently on the website in the past few weeks this page is currently offline. It will return soon though and be better than before - we are just optimizing the code to run faster and not slow down the website for everyone.

Support Email

There has been a problem with the support emails. If you have emailed michael@dayzeroproject.com in the last week and not yet received a response then please resend it as it may have been lost. Very sorry for the inconvenience.

Other Bug Fixes

A few bugs arose after the server migration and have now been fixed. These include:

• The Follow button is now working correctly.
• There was a problem with the password reset tool. This has now been fixed up and is working. 
• The total counts of goals on lists are now correct.
• The reorder popup is in a new position as it was offscreen for some users. 

Thanks again for your feedback. The goal is to build a site that you don’t just find useful, but also love to use. Your feedback is important in knowing when we get things right or wrong.

This week saw the release of several updates to the website. These are just the first of many exciting new additions that will be coming this year!

Multiple Lists and New Challenges

It is now possible to create new lists with different challenges. This is a much requested feature for those about to complete their first 1001 day challenge.

Previously, you had three lists - a 101 Day Challenge, a Someday list and a Done list. Now you can add up to four new lists and set your own type of challenge and finish date. There are some popular suggestions such as the original 101 Things in 1001 Days list, or a 30 Things by 30 list, or just a list of things you want to achieve this year. You decide! We’ll be adding even more ideas for challenges here soon.

Places

We know how difficult it can be to think up ideas for your lists, so now there’s a whole new area on the website to help you discover things to do from destinations across the globe.

Mark off where you have been and tag the places you want to go and things you want to do.

There are now hundreds to ideas in diverse range of countries and more locations are being added all the time.

Notes and Progress Updates

The final change is to the way notes work. Originally, it was only possible to add a short note directly to a goal. Later we introduced the the Progress Updates which made it possible to add casual updates as well as record notes about goals. In order to simplify this we have converted the old style of task notes to Progress Updates. These were orginally not tagged with the time the update was made, so we have used an algorithm to estimate the time the note was added. If no estimate could be made, the notes were added as occurring at the time they were upgraded. (Sorry if this is confusing!)

Previously you may recall the Progress Log would show updates to the status of goals - such as when it was added, set to in progress or completed. These will be returning to the Progress Log soon - we are just fine tuning this feature to make it more accurate.

Thanks again for your patience during the upgrade. We are now located on a new dedicated server which will hopefully be more robust. Work has already started on some interesting new ideas for the site - and the first of these will be completed in just a few days.