300 Words 1/4/2024 | New Year New Habits
How I’ll keep track of them all.
The start of the new year brings a wave of inspiration to many.
We say this is the year.
This is the year that I will finally get that six pack.
This is the year that I get that promotion.
This is the year I find true love.
We all have hopes, dreams, and goals we want to accomplish.
You are reading one of my goals right now: to publish a minimum of 300 words on Medium every day in 2024.
There is a big difference between the energy we have at the beginning of the year and those final days in December. There are also a lot of days to cover between now and then.
If you are reading this on Jan 4th 2024, that is 362 days and thousands of opportunities to either come through on your new habit or fall short.
The easiest way to achieve a goal is to create a habit. The easiest way to achieve a habit is to measure it.
I was sharing my Medium goal inside Jamie Northrup’s Skool community Minimalist Hustler HQ, and he asked me one very important question. “Are you using something to track the habit?”
That is a very important question to answer.
I am using a combination of Google Sheets, Notion, and Sunsama to keep track of my habits and goals for the year. Read on to get a peek behind the curtain.
The tools:
- The first tool is a simple Google Sheet Habit Tracker created by Johnny Brown.
- The second tool is a custom Notion page I’ve built inside of my personal Notion Dashboard.
- The third tool is Sunsama. A productivity app that is worth every penny. You can use this link for a free 30 day trial on me.
The Habit Tracker
I’m so happy I stumbled across this habit tracker starting out the new year. It is simple, easy to use, and has a very clean look. All you have to do is write out your habits in the left column and then check a box in the right.
Johnny has built in a whole bunch of graphs and data to make it interactive, and give you a birds eye view of your habits. I highly recommend it as a base line for someone looking to start tracking their habits. I’ve made a few personal modifications to it, but I’ll get to that in the next section.
Bonus Tip: When writing out your habits it can be helpful to be slightly vague with the how the habit gets done. For example two are my habit are “Help someone” and “Publish 300 words on Medium”. They are specific enough that I can measure them, but broad enough that I have flexibility with how they get done.
The Notion Dashboard.
The next portion goes hand in hand with the Google sheet above. Like I mentioned before I have made a few modifications to Johnny’s original design.
The first thing I did was add additional rows to the habit tracker. That way I can track more than 10 habits at once. I need the extra space so I can split up some of my larger habits into smaller actions, and split habits into morning and evening rows for habits I want to repeat more than once in a day.
The second thing I did was create two links. One inside the habit tracker that leads me to a specific page inside my Notion account, and another inside my Notion dashboard that opens the habit tracker. That way I never have to search for a link and can easily tab between the two.
You may be asking, “If you already have the habit tracker why do you need the Notion page as well?”
That is a great question. Do you remember the habit “Help somebody”?
That habit and others are exactly why I have the Notion page.
Help Somebody is a really generic outcome. That could be helping a friend move to helping my grandma across the street. I want to have a record of what each checkbox is so I can go back and review my week, my month, my year.
To keep that record I created a simple Notion page with a link to the habit tracker and a custom button. Every time I press “Notes for Today.” It creates a new toggled list with the day it was created and questions to answer. So I can check off the habit in the Google sheet, press the link to go over to Notion, press the button and write a quick answer to those questions. It is a short and seamless process that will give exponential results in the long run.
Just imaging what your yearly review would look like if you had an answer to these two questions for every day over the past year? “How did I help someone today?” and “How did I move the needle today?”
What would your year look like after a year of doing that every day?
Thankfully I won’t have to imagine because I’m doing it.
Sunsama
Sunsama is the glue that holds it all together. I have an obsession with Sunsama. You can read all about it here. Sunsama is the one productivity app to rule them all. Everything has one centralized place to live. Say goodbye to “when was that Zoom Call again?” and “what’s for dinner next Tuesday?”. Sunsama is great. You should use it. It is worth every single penny of the monthly subscription cost and then some. If you want to try it out for yourself you can use my special affiliate for a 30 day free trial.
“That’s great Jeff, but how does that help me with my habits?”
Enter your schedule. It is great to have habits and all, but you don’t life in a vacuum. Life has a way of messing up even the best set plans. Sunsama is how I schedule my habits to make sure they actually get done.
I add a task for each habit I want to complete. I set it to repeat daily, I add a time estimate. Then I just schedule it into my day around my other obligations. That way I can make sure I am always completing my habits even on my busiest days. I’m even able to use Sunsama’s timer feature to time how long it takes to complete each habit. (In case you are wondering I’m up to an hour and eight minutes for this article.)
Putting it all together.
It’s great to have New Years goals, but you won’t accomplish them unless you break them down into smaller daily or weekly habits. You need to measure your habits in-order to track them.
I use the system above to track mine.
Google sets the stage. Notion logs the details. Sunsama makes sure I fit it all in.
That’s all for now.
Jeff
P.S. Did you like this article? Do you have questions or want help setting up a system like this for yourself? Let me know in the comments.
Thank you for reading along. If you like this story and want to support my work. Here are a couple ways you can support me.
- You can sign up for my email newsletter.
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- You can hire me for 1 on 1 public speaking coaching.
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