My habit-tracking mania has evolved over the past few years. It started as a passing interest and has grown into a full-on obsession.
It's something I've thought about most of my life. How do people form and keep good habits? But really seeing the impact of habits, both good and bad ones, didn't come until I read Charles Duhigg's 'The Power of Habit'. (I freaking love this book.)
It really broke down the components of habits; how we form them, what triggers them, as well as how to grow them, lose them, or adjust them. It made me really start noticing what they do for you; both good and bad ones.
Once you look at things through the lens of what habits do for you, it becomes obvious that the statement "Habits make our lives" is the absolute truth.
By creating and evolving my exercise routines, I really got confidence that I could actually form and keep good habits. (I always hated exercise...I figure if I could form good habits around this I could do anything.) It's turned out to be pretty true.
For me keeping a visual record of new habits I'm trying to form is key. I can see when I get off track, and when I get back on, and then note what contributed to these cycles. But mainly, it really motivates me to keep my habit-keeping streaks going.
I have toyed with the number of habits to work on at any given time, and I'm seeing I can only keep up with tracking about 6. Of course we all have hundreds of habits from brushing our teeth, to what we eat, to what we watch on tv.
I guess I'm mainly talking about the habits I'm working on forming or keeping at the moment. If it's still something that feels easy to let slide, it needs to be tracked.
So questioning what's most important to achieve in life is crucial. For me it's about staying healthy, (exercise/diet), expressing myself (keeping my writing habit going and growing), growing spiritually and mental (learning and meditating), and staying organized so I can enjoy life, and the people in my life, fully.
I use my Best Self Journal to track all six. I started using these books in July of '17 and they have turned out to be just right for me. They're flexible enough to do what I need them to do, and fixed enough to keep my head clear.
They have a place for goal-setting, a monthly calendar, weekly check in space, daily pages, and free pages at the back of the books. I've used all of them. (Though the weekly check-in is usually the hardest for me to keep on top of.)
Amazingly, I've used these daily since the beginning. I've been surprised in the past month that busy-ness, and lack of focus, have made it really challenging to keep up with any of it.
The holidays, the house renovation, all these goals I've got going,...make it really necessary to have a system, and right when it's most important to keep track of things. For some reason I started going for days without checking in.
Not only was I skipping habits...I was skipping tracking the fact that I was skipping them. That really got me freaked out; like everything was about to start spiraling out of control.
I've now caught up...and instantly felt more focused and clear. I think of tracking habits as a Life Score Card you give yourself. It's good to know when you're rocking it. It's also good to know when you're not.
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