Mobile Community Challenges: The Silver Bullet to Self-Growth & Habit Building

Mobile Challenges: A Series of Tasks Designed to Help People Build Healthy Mindful Habits

A challenge is a structured activity or series of tasks designed to engage participants over a set period of time, often with a specific goal in mind.

Challenges are popular because they gamify learning, growth, or skill-building, making the process more interactive, accessible, and rewarding.

Challenges can be led by a creator or an individual. There is common ground around the motivations and benefits of challenges

Digital Card Decks are the perfect medium to allow anyone to design and deliver a custom challenge.

Challenges Inspire Us

Challenges are top of mind for many thought leaders. It's also a core element in the domain of gamification and habit building.

"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." – Michael Jordan

"Believe in yourself, take on your challenges, dig deep within yourself to conquer fears. Never let anyone bring you down. You got to keep going." – Chantal Sutherland

"Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition. We don’t control the barriers or the people who put them there. But we control ourselves—and that is enough." - Ryan Holiday - Obstacle is the Way

"Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise." – Kobe Bryant

"Life will never be easy… There will ALWAYS be challenges and obstacles thrown at us… But you need to realize that those challenges and obstacles are there to make you stronger, not stop you" - Russell Brunson

Card Decks as a CHALLENGE Platform

We have long thought there was strong synergy between challenges and card decks. So this week we have released a preview of our challenges feature.

Let's dive into the two sides of the challenge problem:

CREATOR LED CHALLENGES:

How Content Creators and Community Builders Use Challenges:

1. Increase Engagement: Challenges provide clear, actionable steps that encourage participants to interact consistently with the content.
2. Build Community: Shared experiences foster connections between participants, creating a sense of belonging and camaraderie.
3. Drive Adoption: By offering a tangible, time-bound outcome (e.g., a skill, mindset shift, or habit), challenges give people a compelling reason to try and stick with a platform or content.
4. Boost Retention: Regular, short activities keep users coming back, developing habits and increasing time spent engaging with the creator's content.
5. Showcase Value: Challenges highlight the practical and actionable benefits of a product, book, or idea.

Communicating the Value of Challenges to Creators:

1. Daily Connection with Your Audience: Challenges make it easier to stay top-of-mind with your audience and provide daily touchpoints that deepen relationships.
2. Turn Ideas into Action: Help participants move beyond passive consumption to applying insights or techniques in their lives, driving real transformation.
3. Build Loyalty and Advocacy: Participants who complete challenges often become loyal fans and are more likely to recommend your content to others.
4. Monetize Your Expertise: Challenges can be standalone offerings or bundled with existing products (like digital decks), adding value and creating a new revenue stream.
5. Easy to Scale: Digital platforms like Deckible make it simple to host challenges globally, reaching a larger audience with minimal effort.
6. Gamification Drives Results: The reward of "progress" motivates users to complete the challenge, creating a sense of achievement and satisfaction.

PARTICIPANT LED CHALLENGES:

On the flip side, participants are as motivated to challenge and be challenged:

How Individuals Use Challenges to Create Habits:

1. Structured Motivation: Challenges provide a clear roadmap, breaking down big goals into smaller, actionable steps, making it easier to start.
2. Accountability: Committing to a challenge adds external or internal pressure to stay consistent, especially if shared with others or tracked publicly.
3. Progress Tracking: Seeing daily progress (e.g., completing a task) builds momentum and reinforces positive behavior.
4. Defined Timeframes: Challenges are often short-term (7, 21, or 30 days), which feels achievable and less overwhelming, encouraging people to commit and complete.
5. Gamification: Challenges add an element of fun and reward, whether it’s checking off a task, unlocking a new stage, or celebrating completion.
6. Sense of Purpose: Challenges often tie actions to a meaningful goal, such as improving fitness, reducing stress, or building a creative routine.

Why People Create Their Own Challenges:

1. Personalized Goals: People design challenges tailored to their unique habits, preferences, and schedules, making the experience more relevant and motivating.
2. Desire for Change: Challenges provide a framework to take control of one’s life, offering hope and direction for achieving personal growth.
3. Overcoming Stagnation: Creating a challenge helps break out of routines, inspiring action and a sense of novelty.
4. Autonomy: Designing a challenge allows individuals to feel empowered—they are in charge of their progress and outcomes.
5. Intrinsic Motivation: People create challenges to achieve something they’ve always wanted but struggled to prioritize or stay consistent with.
6. Creativity and Expression: For some, creating challenges is a way to creatively explore a new concept or engage with their passions.

What Motivates People to Create and Follow Challenges:

• A Desire for Accountability: Even self-created challenges can create a sense of commitment when written down or shared with others.
• Social Sharing: Sharing their challenge online or with friends creates a sense of community and increases accountability.
• Sense of Achievement: Challenges provide opportunities to celebrate small wins along the way, making progress feel satisfying.
• Inspiration from Others: Seeing others succeed at challenges (on social media, for example) motivates people to create their own version tailored to their goals.
• Curiosity and Experimentation: Some people are driven by the desire to test a theory or try something new to see how it impacts their life.
• Reclaiming Control: Life often feels chaotic, and challenges offer a structured way to regain a sense of order and focus.

A unique Lens: The GENIUS of the "AND"

We believe there is huge value in meet both needs in one product based. A marketplace of 900+ card decks with challenges led by creators and consumers alike.

Challenge yourself with a business deck, a therapy deck, an emotions deck , a tarot, affirmations or Oracle deck. There's a deck for that on Deckible.

Be the leader or follow the lead of a creator or another passionate individual

The key thing here is people don't need to wait to be creator led. They can share their passion and invite others to join their personal challenge. They can challenge themself privately or go public and invite others to join them or join other people's challenges.

What does Deckible Platform bring to the Challenges Domain:

• Seamless Integration: Creators can attach challenges to their card decks, turning them into interactive journeys.
• Habit-Forming Structure: Deckible allows creators to leverage digital features (notifications, daily prompts) to keep users engaged and consistent.
• Flexible Formats: Challenges can be tailored to various topics (e.g., mindfulness, productivity, fitness) and durations (e.g., 7-day, 21-day, or even open-ended).
• Enhanced Discoverability: Deckible's marketplace highlights challenges, giving creators an additional way to reach new users.

Challenge is a PREVIEW Feature on Deckible

What does "PREVIEW" mean?

It means we are very open to feedback. It's a beta of sorts to use a technology term.

It means we have not completed and finished every aspect because we want to be open and listen to feedback.

We want to release it rather than keep building things. We want our users to guide us.

We have done this by design. We have published a framework that we can extend and refine in response to creator and customer demands

What's the workflow?

• Pick a deck
• Pick some cards
• Give your challenge a name
• Make it private or public and tune some simple options.
• Share the link. Invite people to join

There is so much more we could add. Let us know what you think. What matters to you.

Here's the home page in the Deckbile app including the challenge feature. The challenges widget is new. It's highlighted as a preview feature to denote we are open to feedback. Send us an email to tell us what you'd like to see.

In the third screen I'm showing one challenge, and my progress. I can enjoy it alone or invite others to join me.

Here' I've clicked on "+" to make a new challenge. Then I'm picking the cards. And naming the challenge.

This is the experience to create challenge

This is showing my progress on my challenge. It's letting me open each card in turn to complete the challenge.

I can also share the link to invite people to join the challenge.

Once you complete are card you will see it in your timeline. Here I click on the booked challenge. I've already completed a card

Once a card is completed it's saved to your timeline.

You can see the art is part of a challenge as it has the challenge icon.

You can click on the next card and then you can journal or flip or complete the card. If there is audio you can listen, if there is a video you can play, you can also tap the card to flip to cycle through all the faces.

It's really very simple.

We can think of 100's of things to add and refine, but what is important is your perspective and your experience.

We plan to add alerting, but you tell us. How would you like to see this.

What do you expect? What do you need?

Anyone can join any challenge if they have the link. They can use any deck for free for 3 days before buying the deck.

Many people seem to charge people before joining a challenge, this seems limiting.

There's many ways we could allow people to customize the challenge and the trial.

We are curious to hear your thoughts. Don't be shy. You can reply to us within the app or email to support@deckible.com.

Simply install the latest release. And you will shortly see the challenge widget on your home page.

Enjoy.