If you look at the date stamps on this post and the one before it, you’ll realize that I’ve somehow let 7 months go by without updating the blog! How the heck did that happen? Where did all that time go?
I’m sure I’m not the only who’s ever gotten caught up in letting things get out of hand and letting simple, daily tasks drop off your radar. After all, it’s SOOOOOO easy to say to yourself, “I can skip today and pick it up again tomorrow.”
But as you can see, that doesn’t happen all the time. When you skip what should be a daily habit once, it becomes easier to skip it again. And again. And again. Then the daily habit has become SKIPPING the original habit! Don’t we do this all the time with important things like exercise, or getting up earlier each day or taking the time to read or journal at the end of the day?
These are all good habits to have, yet probably most of us have at one time or another created and then later let these habits slowly (or not so slowly) disappear from our daily routine. It’s easier to stop doing something than it is to keep on doing it sometimes.
That’s why it’s so important that we learn to keep track of our Success Habits and make sure we do them each day. It’s vital to have a system in place to keep track of these important tasks that you do each day. When we keep track, we do them. We know when we fail or forget. When the habit or task is so important that you need to track it, you WILL be motivated to keep the streak alive.
In fact, treating your daily tasks and habits as a streak that you want to increase each day is a FANTASTIC way to reinforce the importance of doing them each and every day. There are plenty of apps for your phone that will help with this, but really all you need is a plain, old-fashioned paper calendar that you can put a check mark on for each thing you need to do each day. You can do this on multiple calendars or lists, if necessary because sometimes we have different home, work and personal habits and tasks we want to track. Sometimes we have different locations where we do these things and it’s easier to track them where we do them.
Sometimes we have different locations where we do these things and it’s easier to track them where we do them. After all, if you want to track how many pages you write for your book each day, does it make more sense to track it where you write, on your fridge or at your day job? Where you write of course. The only problem with separate trackers is that if you have one thing you do in a particular place, tracking it there may not work. For instance, if you track your gym workouts, it doesn’t put any pressure on you to keep it going if you only track them at the gym does it? If you don’t go, you don’t check it off and you’ll never see how many days it’s been since you’ve worked out.
Track those important habits. Track them. Count them. Measure them. Feel guilty for missing them. Most importantly celebrate them as your streak gets bigger and bigger. Make a big deal out of hitting 10 in a row, 50 in a row, 100 in a row or even 1000 in a row. Those are major accomplishments.
If you miss a day and have to start over, then make a big deal and celebrate about starting over. All your guilt should go away the minute you restart your streak. Guilt in the pursuit of our goals should never be used to dao anything besides motivating us to change or begin again what needs to be changed or begun again. Once that happens, there should never be any left over guilt.
