The 8 Habits You Should Track Daily
Tracking your work guarantees you’ll get it done
Why Track Habits In The First Place?
Progress is not the result of a gigantic special effort. It is not the result of one big push in order to make something happen. Progress is the result of consistent forward motion. Those who make their dreams come true are not the ones who wake up the weekend before and work through the night, those who make their dreams come true are the ones who do the work every day.
Tracking daily habits keeps you accountable to yourself; it tells you whether you really did the work, or whether you let life get the better of you. When you track daily habits, you aren’t able to hide behind excuses (“I didn’t have the time”) or generalizations (“I get it done most days!”). As someone who tracks their habits, you know the truth.
So, without further ado, here are the habits I track:
1. Writing
Here is a list of some of my dreams, in no particular order:
- To write several successful self-help books
- To maintain a blog/email list that makes six figures directly from my writing (that means no e-courses, folks)
- To get published in magazines like The New Yorker
The one thing those dreams all have in common is they require me to write. Every day I write, I move closer to these dreams; every day I don’t write, I stay where I am.
Since my dreams all hinge on writing, I have to write every day. But chances are, your dreams don’t have as much to do with writing. Whatever your dreams are, there is something you should be doing today to move them a little farther; if you dream of being a software engineer, you could code more. If you dream of being a competitive athlete, you could be practicing. Whatever it is, make sure you do it every day.
2. Pitching Magazines
Every creator needs to ship. As a writer, what I ship are words; articles, short stories, books, pitches, and other combinations of words. If I want to achieve any kind of success, I need to be shipping words as often as possible. Therefore, one of the daily habits I track is how often I pitch words to magazines, publishers, and other people who can turn my words into money.
If you’re not a writer, you probably don’t ship words. Software engineers, for instance, ship code. Project managers ship follow-ups with their team and comprehensive situation reports. If there’s something you should be shipping, you should be doing it often as possible — preferably every day.
3. Reading
No writer can expect to write well if they don’t read. Any writer who is worth their freelancing fee is also a voracious reader, devouring books the way fire devours kindling. The skilled writer reads from a variety of genres, from the humanities to the hard sciences to all kinds of fiction. Therefore, reading for ten minutes a day is one of my habits for success.
However, reading has benefits for everyone, not just writers. No matter what challenges you’re facing in life, chances are there is a book out there that has the solution to your problem. You don’t have to muck around trying to reinvent the wheel; you can draw on the wisdom of others and solve your problems in a fraction of the time. Therefore, everyone should be reading at least ten minutes a day, no matter what their vocation.
4. Exercising
The rationale here should be obvious. Of all the different kinds of medical interventions a person could make in their life, the most worthwhile is just a regular habit of exercising. The more we exercise, the longer we live, and the better our lives are. Therefore, I set an intention to exercise — even just a little — daily.
5. Stretching
When I don’t stretch regularly, my body hurts. My back feels pinched after sitting in the computer chair, my legs feel cramped after sitting on the couch, and I get intermittent back pain like I’m thirty years older than I am. It’s not a quality of life I feel comfortable with.
On the other hand, when I stretch, I feel good. I’m not necessarily strong or in great cardiovascular shape, but my limbs don’t lock up like I haven’t eaten enough vitamins in years. Therefore, taking ten minutes to stretch is something I attempt to do daily.
6. Journaling
When we are just living our lives, what goes on in our minds is mostly just pre-verbal pre-linguistic webs of thoughts and feelings. The act of writing our thoughts down in a journal forces us to make sense out of the chaos. Through that process, we often confront thoughts and beliefs we didn’t realize we had. Therefore, journaling regularly is one of my habits for success.
7. Meditating
Like exercise, meditating has been connected with an unbelievable amount of health benefits, including treating a variety of mental illnesses, increasing the quality of your life, and extending it to boot. Even if you don’t put any stock by the spiritual aspects of meditation, the physical benefits alone are great enough to make it worth your while. These health benefits (and its spiritual significance) are important to me, so I try to meditate every day.
8. Client Work
My dream is to live off of my Medium income, book royalties, and some kind of blog-funded income indefinitely. But until those dreams come true, I’m hawking my writing services as a freelancer to bridge the gap between my Medium income and my expenses. So every day, I get some client work done.
If you have big dreams that can’t yet support you, chances are you’re in a similar position. Perhaps you’re an aspiring video game streamer, but you make ends meet by driving Uber and freelancing Java development. Or you’re a future rockstar, but for now, you’re an Associate General Manager at Menards.
Whatever the particulars of your situation, it’s important to make sure that while you’re pursuing your dreams, your on-the-ground reality doesn’t get left behind.
Habits To Avoid
There are also two habits I track that I want to avoid:
Drinking Alcohol
I love a good party as much as anyone else, believe me, but alcohol is just terrible for you. It trashes your liver and thrashes your critical thinking abilities and is exactly the poison we say it is. So while I love to get turnt at a party every once and a while, I track my alcohol consumption to make sure it isn’t getting out of hand.
Smoking Cannabis
I don’t have a problem with alcohol, but I do have a problem with cannabis. Left to my own devices, I would smoke almost every day of the week. Tracking my consumption keeps me accountable to myself, helps me visualize exactly how much I’m smoking, and makes it clear to me when it’s time to give it a rest.
Most days, I don’t get most of these habits done. In fact, on a good day, I do about half. But tracking them daily keeps them front-of-mind, reminding me that over the long run, these are things I do not want to neglect.
To track these reminders, I use the iPhone app Habit — Daily Tracker. There are many habit-tracking apps with many more features, but this one is my favorite because it has a great iOS Widget that allows me to check off habits and see my progress for the day without even opening the app.
Obviously, your habit list will be different than mine. You are probably not a writer and therefore don’t need to write and pitch magazines daily. You probably also don’t have a problem with overindulging in weed.
But you have some dreams, whatever they are, and need to progress toward them daily. You also have some vices (maybe you eat too much candy, or watch TV/play video games every day) that are holding you back. Coming up with a habit list to serve these purposes can do nothing but help.
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