To make something a habit, you just have to do it over and over again until it becomes an unconscious action. But creating a new habit or breaking a built one is not easy as it seems because there are hundreds of things that can distract you from your goal, from the social media notifications on your phone to the daily hustles.
To keep myself stay accountable and motivated, I found out that the following actions work best for me:
- I focus on one habit at a time.
- I track my progress.
Trying to create a new habit can take a lot of effort and willpower. So, I take it one day at a time and don’t overwhelm myself by trying to change too many things at once. And then I record what I do. You want to record the things you do so you can see patterns in your behavior. This is hard to do without some kind of tracking system. If you just think about something and try to remember it later, it is highly likely that you won’t be able to recall if or when it happened. If we rely on our memory for this type of thing, we often get through days without noticing anything new about our behavior and thus don’t have much information to act upon.
Choose paper at first
When it comes to tracking my habits, I found out that the simplest approach is the best. I don’t want to use too many things. And the simplest way to track my habits is to put them on a piece of paper. Sure, you can track things digitally now, but there’s something about writing it down that makes it work better. These are reasons why this is the case:
- It’s simple, easy and quick to use
- It’s cheap
- It’s more effective
- It’s more memorable
This works very well in terms of keeping me motivated and focused on the daily tasks that I have planned out for myself. If you are not used to writing down your tasks or tracking your habits, then I suggest giving this approach a try so you can see how helpful it can be in terms of staying on track with whatever goals you might have in mind.
Once you start tracking your habits, you’ll start to see how consistent (or inconsistent) they are and how they fluctuate over time. This will also allow you to see how much progress you’ve made over time! These small successes are great motivators for keeping up with your new habit.
