Habit Tracking Experiment
When I came across this video I'm sharing below, I found it very interesting as I am someone who loves to write everything down and tick off things on paper. I also have some colorful pens I am trying to use up so I went a little bit crazy with color coordinating my habits, lol. We'll see if that will be of any benefit or rather annoying.
So idea with this habit tracking method is to do it in two cycles a month - cycle one is from the 1st until the 15th and cycle two is from the 16th until the end of the month. I wrote down 16-29 February on top of the page and then checked out the dates... It turns out that the 16th is Sunday and for me, my weeks always start on Monday so I decided to go for 17-29 of February. If I end up liking this system, I'll figure out how exactly I'll separate the cycles in the future.
When it comes to the habits I chose, we have:
- movement: walk (30 minutes), latino fitness power class, stretching (20 minutes), at home workout (15 minutes)
- reading: 20 minutes
- languages: Spanish, German
- studying: 1 hour, 2 hours, more than 2 hours sessions
- Steemit: publish a post
As you can tell, I gave myself a few options when it comes to physical activity just to keep it more interesting. The number of minutes is the minimum time for each activity and if I do it longer than than - great, it will probably boost my self confidence and keep me going, but at the same time I was trying to be realistic. Same with all the other habits, I find them to be managable. In the video I shared, Thomas Frank has habits that he doesn't plan on doing daily so you can just cross off the days you want to take a break - for example maybe you don't want to workout or study on the weekends.
Tracking these habits is very easy. In the video + is used for accomplishing the habit, - for failur and a circle is used when you were prevented to do it. I like this idea because sometimes things happen in life and we cannot control everything, which is totally fine. Here I also made a little change so I will fill in each box with a designated color, put an 'X' if I didn't do the habit and use a circle if I wasn't able to do it.
There is also a section for a failure notes where you can write down the date and the reason why you didn't do the habit, kind of explain what happened. Below that there is cycle review part where you can write down any thoughts, what is working and what is not working, how you might want to change certain things in the next cycle... So you might find that learning two languages at the same time is not really the best for you and you should focus on one in the future.
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As always, you can leave your thougths or suggestions in the comments below. They are always welcomed! :) I hope you found this post/topic interesting. If you have published something similar or know someone who did, feel free to drop me a link, I'm always curious to find out more about this topic, especially from other people's experience. Thank you for reading and have an awesome day!
I really like this, I'm a bit obsessed with self-tracking, and I've got a perfect little book I can use. Although I'm already thinking about spreadsheets!
I think my problem is that I'd have four rows in the exercise category and try and do all of them everyday!
Glad you like it and I'm also glad I'm not the only one obsessed with self-tracking, lol. I usually do it on the monthly basis but I'm curious to see if this one works better.
Just an idea I came up with thinking about the problem you mentioned. But yeah, doing all four activities every day might be a bit too much. :)
Oh I hadn't noticed you were putting several digits into one box, go you!
I did it just as another example how it can be done but I'm gonna stick to colors and one, max two activities a day, lol.
The colours look nicer, more motivational too.
You got a cute graph notebook and everything to keep track of your habits :P
Yeah, I went all in, lol.