Creating daily habits can be the most powerful way to make your life easier. But establishing them can sometimes be tricky. This week, Shannon and Janine discuss the value of daily habits, some strategies for creating them and the importance of cutting yourself some slack if you miss a day.
Discussions topics include:
- Our love of daily habits
- Shannon’s quest for a daily exercise routine now that she’s been cleared to exercise
- The benefits of starting small in creating a new habit
- Janine’s painful fortnight that caused her to interrupt her daily yoga habit
- How a habit is a habit, even if you don’t do it every day
- Shannon’s profound (to Janine) statement that it’s the coming back to something that makes it a habit
- How breaking a daily streak can be discouraging—but doesn’t have to be
- The beauty of daily habits: they’re easy to remember
- How not remembering does not mean that a habit is not important or worthwhile
- How a tiny disruption of routine can make you forget even an ingrained habit
- The time Janine went to Office Depot in her pajamas
- Getting right back to a habit if you do forget it (without beating yourself up about it)
- Shannon’s new daily practice: learning cartooning!
- The shortcut to establishing a daily habit: linking it to something that you’re already doing
- Shannon’s strategy for creating a habit of practicing cartooning (and perhaps other things!) three times a day
- The many potential side benefits of Shannon’s cartooning class
Links:
- Chair yoga from our beloved Yoga with Adriene
- Shannon’s Instagram account (so you can check out her cartooning progress!)
I set up my daily habit over the last month of doing 30 minutes of organizing for 30 days straight (a la Janine’s 30×30 Challenge, although a focus of my own) by putting an all-day appointment on my Google calendar so that it would fall to the top of the list for each day. As I did my 30-minute task, I noted what I did in that 30-minute session and moved it to the appropriate time of day. I found that this helped me remember to do it even when I was too tired. I only have missed one day this month, but I got up extra early the next day and did one session before work and one after work so that I didn’t break the chain. I figure my “day” starts at 7:00 a.m. rather than midnight, so it counted. I have knocked today off my list, so technically I only have tomorrow left. However, I am planning on turning the 30×31 into a 30×31 Challenge so that I do something on August 31st, too Having the appointment on my calendar is key. Just having it listed in my Will-I-Do-It book (as opposed to a To-Do) doesn’t mean it always gets done. Sometimes I defer to the next day. But I didn’t want to break the chain!
That sounds like an excellent system, Christy! Congratulations on keeping your chain going. You’ve done much better with my August 30 x 30 challenge than I have! (This is Janine.) I’ll be posting about it on August 30 on Organize Your Family History.