With the right intentions year after year, why do we often fail in our resolutions? I don’t know the answer, but I have two ideas. For one thing, they are brave. There is nothing wrong with big goals, but in order for them to be sustainable, to last until the next year, the goals must be achieved. Second—and I believe this is a major culprit of what hinders our success—we start chasing our goals without knowing what our lives look like right now or how we really spend our time.
Being aware of your habits puts you in the driver’s seat and, in my experience, helps you set reasonable, achievable goals. So how do you notice? By following your habits. With all the momentum behind a New Year’s resolution, keeping track of the trend can feel a little overwhelming. Who has time to spend tracking their habits when what they really need to do is work for the best version of themselves?
Everyone.
Because if you start tracking, it’s possible to create achievable goals, so you don’t have to start all over the next year. Progress must be preceded by awareness, otherwise, you really don’t know where you are coming from.
A few months ago, I started carefully following my habits. I had an idea of how I spent my days, but I wanted to be clear about what I was indeed I spent my time doing. I already knew that I spend most of my mornings writing (I thought) and going to yoga a few times a week (I thought). It wasn’t until I tracked my habits that I noticed the difference between where I thought I was spending my time indeed he dismissed it. This awareness has made me amazing progress.
It wasn’t until I tracked my habits that I noticed the difference between where I thought I was spending my time indeed he dismissed it. This awareness has made me amazing progress.
For all of you who are aiming to keep your New Year’s resolutions this year, I suggest you start by tracking your habits. It’s life changing, I promise.
How Habit Tracking Works
All you need is a notebook, a pen, and a little dedication, because you’ll need to finish each day following your habits. (If you’re the type of person who needs more structure than a hand-drawn grid, there are apps, tools, and notebooks out there to help you track your habits.)
To start, make a grid.
Editor’s Note: Looking for a practice tracking form in advance? Click here to download a free habit tracking worksheet, designed by Kate.
Graph paper like we use in middle school math lessons is handy so you don’t need to draw rows and columns. On one axis, write the habits you want to follow, and on the other axis, count the days of the month. Because the first month or two is all about being mindful, I suggest you write down all the things you can think of that you spend your time doing: watching TV, going to Target, ordering pizza, exercising, scrolling through Facebook, working, etc. .
A note about tracking how much you work: If you work nine to five, I don’t think you need to track it because you know exactly how many hours a week you spend at work. However, if you stay up late or work from home in the evenings, even if it happens occasionally, I would follow that. You may notice that you spend more time than you think working outside of the expected hours. I will explain how to track this in the next section.
Each day you do your routine, you get a check mark (I use an X).
You can track any trend you like—just make sure you have the parameters around it. For example, if one of the habits you want to follow is exercise, make sure you explain what that means. Is half an hour of exercise the same as an hour for you? If not, specify that.
Personally, some of my habits look like this:
- Yoga (this is an hour class by default)
- Ten minutes or so of silence
- < forty-two minutes on my phone
- There is no television without children
When I do each of these, I get X. On a really good day, I’ll get about six or seven X’s out of the eight habits I follow in any given month. And let me tell you, there is nothing more exciting than getting a column full of X’s.
Because I’ve been doing this for a few months now, I’m at a point where I’m aware of what my habits look like, and now I’ve adjusted them to work on doing more of the things I do. fill me in. That’s the beauty of tracking: It only takes a month to give you a good idea of your current situation. In the second month, you can start working on things you want, like spending less time on your phone, for example, which most of us can resist doing.
I use an app called Time that sends me alerts throughout the day about how much screen time I’ve used, including the total minutes on my phone and the number of times I download it. The app gave me a goal of forty-two minutes or less on my phone per day, and that’s what I’m still striving for. If your phone usage is something you’re aiming to eventually cut back on, using an app to identify how much time you typically spend on it will help you create more realistic cutting goals.
think positive
Something that works well for me is the habit of saying words so that X is positive. In the example of working from home in the evening, this habit might be called “No Evening Work,” and you might give yourself X each day when you get off work at 5:00 and not worry about it again until you get off work. the next morning. Or, if the habit you’d like to track is how often you use single-use plastic, for example, the habit might be “No Single Use Plastic,” and each day you had to go without using it, get an X.
Over a month of habit tracking, you will create an interesting visual of what you spend your time doing, X’s are all good work. You may even notice trends; when you do more of one thing, you also do more of another, or vice versa. This awareness is important for making changes in your habits.
Changing Your Habits
The important thing is not to try to change your habits right away, but first notice them. It only takes a month or two of tracking to understand exactly what your habits are. Once you’re aware, you can make informed changes to your habits and incorporate some new year resolutions.
Forbes contributor Brianna Wiest suggests creating just a few goals. “Choosing less than a few goals in this new decade doesn’t mean you’re giving up on your ambition,” he said. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You become more focused and clear about what you want to do, and you improve your ability to create real, lasting impact.”
I suggest adding one or two new habits a month, to make sure you can achieve them. Changing your life drastically from top to bottom, while attractive, is not sustainable.
Consequences of Following a Habit
In the past few months I have followed my habits, I have taken big steps to become the person I want to be. Besides adjusting my schedule to wake up at 5:00 every morning to write (tracking the habit revealed that unless I made this change, I was unlikely to spend any time writing), I was spending very little time. on social media, which is an important practice for me. When I started tracking, I wrote “No Social Media” in the habit column; I wanted to see how often I go without social media. The answer was no. Never, that is, until I knew I was going to get X number of days that I didn’t spend time scrolling through Instagram.
In my first month—a month I intended to use for awareness, not progress—I had fixed my habit and went eleven days without social media. The days of entering the community were not consecutive but spread throughout the month. I never thought I could go a third of the month without it. Turns out it’s easy! Not only that, but it gave me time to spend working on getting X’s in my other habits. (In the second month I went fifteen days without it. Following a habit is something indeed it’s encouraging.)
Few things are more admirable than someone who knows themselves, and with awareness comes the ability to create goals that will not only stick but will make you a better version of you.
Once you get a good overview of your current habits, you’ll be able to readjust and start working on creating better habits. If you’re not a big reader but wish you were, maybe you can add twenty minutes of reading to your routine. Or maybe you want to try ten minutes of daily meditation. If you need some inspiration, here is a great post about creating good habits. Whatever habits you want to do, all you have to do is add them to your tracker and see how many times you put an X next to them. It’s almost embarrassingly simple.
You may find that some habits will stop. I no longer keep track of the days I watch television without my baby because they are so few and far between that when they do happen I consider them a gift. And I no longer track the ten or so minutes of silence because every time I drive somewhere I turn off my podcasts for the first ten minutes. It’s already been – wait for it –habit.
Few things are more admirable than someone who knows themselves, and with awareness comes the ability to create goals that will not only stick but will make you a better version of you. It’s not hubris when I say that tracking habits has changed my life. I wish you the same this year.
Kolina Cicero loves stories – reading them, writing them, getting lost in them. Her other interests include yoga, traveling, and taking cooking, Italian, and writing classes. His first children’s book, Rosie and the Hobby Farmpublished in July 2020.