Building habits is challenging. All habits are different. According to social psychologist Jeremy Dean, it takes on average 66 days to form a lifelong habit. However, that can take more or less time depending on how well you resonate with the habit. Some habits may never stick. 

 

Below, I will outline some of the systems I have implemented for maintaining strong habits in my daily life.
 

Weekly Goals

 

This is how I keep track of my weekly goals. On Sunday nights, I identify three to five habits I would like to focus on that week. Many times, the goals expand on the goals from the week before.

 

Each goal is summarized by a one to two-word descriptor on a post-it-note with Sunday’s date at the top. Each evening, I place a tally mark next to the descriptor when achieved for the day. I line the sticky notes on a wall of my apartment, each note representing one week of goals.

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Some descriptors that I have found appear most often on my personal notes include, meditate workout, python class. Most weeks, I try to add four to five tally marks per description. 

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There are three reasons why this bootstrap system has worked well for me to build and track habits. To build a habit, you have to do it regularly. Duh. But what does “regularly” mean? In weight lifting, most regiments have one hour in the gym five times a week, with two rest days. This applies to almost any activity. Five days on, two days off. No matter the habit, your body and mind need breaks. So, I consider “regularly” as four to five times a week. Moreover, life can get in the way of the building of habits. Do not let missing a day or two stop the strong development of a habit. By tracking week over week the daily activation of a habit, missing one or two days becomes a small blip on the road to success.

 

Secondly, there is self-determination placed on what is deserving of a tally-mark. If you spend 3 minutes meditating, does that deserve a tally mark on the meditation tracker? Does a 30-minute workout? What about a 20 minute HIIT workout? This simple method allows for benchmarking a successful or unsuccessful day of your continuous training toward your goal. 

 

Finally, this method creates a system of accountability.  Week over week, goals can be followed and it is easy to see how much time has been devoted to a certain task. To boot, it only takes 5 minutes to track. And the tallied post-it notes stares you in the face regularly when placed on the wall of your apartment. 

 

Journaling

 

Journaling is arguably the most popular self-improvement, life hack touted by YouTubers and Podcasters. One can find hundreds of products, such as the five-minute journal or bullet journal, that are made to help build a habit of journaling. 

 

To be honest, I have never been able to keep a consistent habit of journaling in a notebook. My hand cramps up, I dread doing it, and I always feel as if my brain moves faster than I can write. 

 

About a year and a half ago I developed a regular and easy way to journal. I call it a Daily Retroactive. It is an excel document with six headers: 

• Date 

• Description of the day 

• Happiness score (on a scale from -2 to 2) 

• Productivity score (how productive did I feel I was that day?) 

• Location 

• One to three word summary of the day 

 

I started doing my daily retroactive before bed every night on February 9th, 2019. Since that date, I have written in my daily retroactive 78% of my days. My average happiness score is .8. 

 

I found success with my Daily Retroactive compared to traditional journaling because it had a lower barrier to entry. I felt like I could write a lot in a cell -- one day I wrote close to 2,000 words. I also felt comfortable writing ten words in a cell. It is easy to write and stayed on pace with my rapid thoughts. I can type freely for as long as I feel is necessary. Additionally, my day was clearly recorded with some key stats. I was drawn to the data tracking of this new method. I could track my happiness day over day. I could perform correlation analysis on my data such as: does writing more indicate a better day? Or, am I happier when I think I was more productive?

 

Weekly Goals II

 

In the previous iteration of my weekly goals post-it-notes, I would write three to four large goals on a post-it-note for the week with the weekly date as the header. Notably, the goals were larger than the goals outlined above. Some examples include: run 30 miles this week or build a yurt for Burning Man. If I achieved one of the goals I would place a checkmark next to it. Like in the next iteration, I would line my apartment wall with the weekly post-it-notes. 

 

An important note is I would write three to four goals with the intent to hit one to two of the goals per week. I would try to get all four goals, but would usually not and would not make all four goals necessarily achievable in one week. My logic was as follows. 

 

If a baseball player hits .300 for his career he is considered a Hall of Famer. A player does not need to hit home runs, many times they only hit singles. If a baseball player hits mostly singles, some of them will eventually become doubles, triples, or even a home run. If I could set goals and try to hit .300 on those goals, meaning 1/3 or 1/4 over multiple weeks, I too, could be a Hall of Famer. 

 

Meditation:

 

I have been able to maintain a steady dose of meditation for 4 years now. I started meditating regularly in college and bolstered it significantly during a ten-day silent meditation retreat at Wat Suan Mokhh in Thailand. However, I still struggle to build a regular routine with meditation and meditate consistently for more than 20 minutes a day. 

 

When I lose my meditation practice and have to pick it back up again, I employ a “growing goal” system. The first day I try meditating I will set a timer for one minute. I count that as a day with meditation. On day 2, I will set a timer for one minute and 30 seconds. On day 3, I will set a two-minute timer. After five or six days I will be at ten minutes of meditation a day.