The meaning
What is the winter arc challenge?
The winter arc challenge is a plan you make for yourself for the end of the year. You choose a few things you want to get better at, such as reading, exercise or sleep. Then you do them every day until the year ends.
People who do a winter arc start in October, so by January their new habits are already three months old.
News reports call the winter arc a 90-day challenge. Counted on a calendar, to is 92 days.
The rules
What are the winter arc rules?
The winter arc has no official rules, according to a report by the Press Association news agency. You write your own list.
The table below has rules from news reports. The first four were goals of Carly Berges, a TikTok creator whose video about her own winter arc was watched millions of times. The NBC morning show Today listed them. The last two are goals other people posted.
| Rule |
|---|
| Wake up earlier. Carly Berges planned to move her alarm from 7:15 AM to 6:30 AM. |
| Follow a workout plan and a food plan. |
| Write in a journal. She planned to write in the morning and again in the evening. |
| Read more books. Her goal was four books in three months. |
| Go to bed earlier. |
| Go outside every day. At least ten minutes of sun. |
This page gives no diet or medical advice. If you have a health condition, ask a doctor before you start a new exercise plan.
Starting late
Is it too late to start a winter arc?
A winter arc is never too late to start, because it can begin on any day.
Say you start on . There are still 78 days left in the year. Half an hour a day for those days adds up to 39 hours.
The counter below does the same sum for your own start date. Pick your start day and your minutes a day.
What it adds up to by the end of the year
46h
From 30m a day for 92 days.
- Days left this year
- 92
- Full weeks left
- 13
- Each week
- 3h 30m
October to December, a square for each day
your days
30m a day from the first day of October to the end of December is 92 days and 46h.
This is a plan, not a record of what you did. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
| If you start on | Days left | Half an hour a day |
|---|---|---|
| 92 | 46h | |
| 78 | 39h | |
| 61 | 30h 30m | |
| 47 | 23h 30m | |
| 31 | 15h 30m |
How to do it
How to plan a winter arc in hours a week
A winter arc is easier to keep going when every goal says how many minutes and on which days. You cannot check “read more”. You can check “read for half an hour every day”.
Pick two or three goals.
Choose the few things that matter most to you this winter. A long list is hard to keep going for three months.
Give each goal minutes and days.
Write down how long and how often. For example: read for half an hour every day, and exercise for one hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Add up the hours in a week.
Reading for half an hour on seven days is 3h 30m. Exercise for one hour on three days is 3h. Together that is 6h 30m a week. Most of your week is already taken by sleep, work or school. So decide now which hours these will be. If they do not fit, make a goal smaller before you start.
Tick each day, and keep going after a missed day.
Mark a calendar when the day’s goals are done. If you miss a day, do the next one. The pages on the power of consistency and self-discipline show how to keep a plan going. For one hard session, like study before an exam, see how to lock in.
Where it came from
Who started the winter arc?
Nobody knows for sure who started the winter arc, and two sources say different things. Know Your Meme, a website that records where internet phrases come from, found the phrase in posts from late 2022. Back then it meant building muscle over the winter.
In the fall of 2024 the winter arc spread on TikTok to goals of every kind. The NBC show Today credits Carly Berges, a TikTok creator from Miami, with the name. She used it in a video about her own winter arc, posted on of that year.
“Arc” is a word from stories, where an arc is one part of a longer story. Know Your Meme says the name likely comes from manga, the Japanese comics.
The test
How do you know your winter arc is working?
The test
Each goal got the hours you planned for it
every week from your start date to .
A winter arc runs for months. After a while it is hard to remember which weeks you kept to your plan and which weeks you did not.
It helps to have your hours counted from a few words you write or say about your day. Then you do not have to start a timer at the gym or when you open a book. Most journaling apps ask how the day felt. They do not show how many hours went to your goals that week.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: your reading, your workouts, sleep, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. So you can see, week by week, whether you really put in the hours you planned for your winter arc. Add each goal as a habit on the days you choose, such as the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. When what you write about your day shows you went, the app ticks it off.
1. You write your day
2. It counts the hours
- Workout0m
- Work0m
- Sleep0m
- Unaccounted24h
3. It shows your week
Workout this week: 0m
On 6 of 7 days. The gap is the day without it.
An example day and week.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where the facts come from.
Every fact about the trend on this page links to a source below. We read all three in full on .
- Foster, C. (2024). What is TikTok’s viral winter arc challenge and should you do it? PA, published by BreakingNews.ie, October 25, 2024.
- Page, D. (2024). What is the ‘Winter Arc’ challenge? The self-improvement trend going viral right now. Today (NBC), November 14, 2024.
- Know Your Meme (read ). Winter Arc.
Keep reading.
- LearnAnswers about sleep, habits, study, people and work, in hours.
- How to lock inWhat locked in means, five steps to lock in on one task today, and a planner that shows the times and hours for one session or a week.
- Self-disciplineHow to build it, why disciplined people arrange their day instead of resisting, and a weekly count of hours kept against hours promised.
- The power of consistencyWhy thirty minutes a day for a year beats one long session, what it does in your brain, and how to stay consistent.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
What is winter arc?
The winter arc is a TikTok challenge where you work on a few goals every day for the last three months of the year, from October 1 to December 31. The idea is to start now and not wait for January.
When does the winter arc start and end?
Most people start the winter arc on October 1 and finish on December 31. News reports call it a 90-day challenge. Counted on a calendar, those three months are 92 days.
What are the winter arc rules?
The winter arc has no official rules. Common ones are waking up earlier, following a workout plan and a food plan, reading, writing in a journal, going to bed earlier and going outside every day. You pick a few of them.
Is it too late to start a winter arc?
No. A winter arc can start on any day. If you start on November 1, there are still 61 days left in the year, and one hour a day adds up to 61 hours.
How do I keep track of my winter arc?
A paper calendar works: write your goals at the top and tick each day you did them. A notes app works too. Look for a way that shows the hours you put in, and not only a tick. One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in. Think in Numbers counts the hours you spent on reading, exercise and sleep from what you write or say about your day, and shows them week by week. Each goal can also be a habit, ticked off from what you write about your day.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.