The Powerful Results of Adding a New Habit Every Day for 30 Days
If I can do it, anyone can
What happens when you add one new habit every day for an entire month?
You end up with 30 new habits and a definite upward trajectory in your life.
In many ways, this is merely the halfway point of my experiment. I have created 30 new habits, but since I added them one a day some of them are only a few days old. Throughout the month of May, I will be evaluating each habit as it reaches the 30-day mark and deciding if I love it, need to tweak it, or let it go.
Here are the lessons about habits I’ve learned so far.
Small is good
Starting with small, easy habits is hardly an original idea. A quick Amazon search yields a slew of titles:
- Tiny Habits: Why Starting Small Makes Lasting Change Easy — BJ Fogg
- Atomic Habits — James Clear, “Tiny Habits, Remarkable Results”
- Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results — Stephen Guise
- Little Habits Mastery — Emily Collins
- Small Habits Revolution: 10 Steps To Transforming Your Life Through The Power Of Mini Habits! — Damon Zahariades
Each of these books has its own spin on the issue but the essence is the same. Start with small habits to feed your sense of success and accomplishment. Once you are on an upward path you can continually level up, bit by bit working your way up towards your goals.
I went small in each individual habit while going big on habit formation overall. Adding a new daily habit each day meant a constant change to my routine. The first few changes were great and encouraging but as the month wore on I found the pace of change was faster than an ideal rate for me.
On the other hand, the rapid adoption of new habits has kept me continually in new habit mode. Each habit bolstered the others even though they were generally completely unrelated to each other.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. — Lao Tzu
Morning habits are easier to stick to
Most of the habits were done at a fixed time of day. Morning habits were far easier to stick to and enjoy. I feel downright virtuous and energized knocking out a few pushups before sitting down to write for the day. Doing squats while watching the evening news is painful both literally and figuratively.
Not only is my willpower higher in the morning but during the day most habits are a break from sitting at the computer. Using the upstairs bathroom is a nice way to stretch my legs after sitting too long. In the evening, new habits take me away from chilling with my family, reading a book, or watching TV.
It’s much harder to get my butt off the couch so I need to tweak the timing of some of my habits and front load the morning more.
I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning. — J. B. Priestley
Spreadsheets are the bomb
I kept track of all my habits in a simple google sheets spreadsheet. A tab was always open to this spreadsheet on my browser so I was able to click to it regularly throughout the working day and put an x in the square for any completed habits.
Seeing a chart fill up with x’s was surprisingly rewarding. This is another reason daytime habits fared better than evening ones. When I was away from my spreadsheet I didn’t have the same reminder and mini reward right at hand. It is amazing to me what a difference this made.
Put your goals on paper, or an Excel spreadsheet. Measure every day, ‘Did I do my best to…?’ Your problems won’t disappear, but you will exist in a different relation to them, and you will improve. — Marshall Goldsmith
Success breeds success
Even though my habits weren’t connected to each other, the momentum of positive energy from having added one new habit definitely made it easier to add each additional habit.
“I’m the sort of person who does healthy things,” each habit told the next one in line. “It’s no big deal. You can do this. See, I’m working out all right!”
“You can’t make yourself feel positive, but you can choose how to act, and if you choose right, it builds your confidence.” ― Julien Smith, The Flinch
Life happens but doesn’t have to derail you
In retrospect, I should have started this experiment in January when the country was still tightly locked down. If you look at the spreadsheet screenshot above you’ll be able to identify immediately when the first lockdown easing occurred and my spouse and I took a mini-break in Cornwall.
Lockdown due to a global pandemic was not a natural state of affairs. I hope it won’t be repeated again soon if ever. The norm of my life is that I don’t just stay at home doing the same thing every day. Any habit formation plan needs to be able to roll with the changes and not be totally derailed by a couple of days away from home or other major schedule disruptions.
I can miss a few habits here and there without giving up entirely.
When you get to know me, I don’t despair — I just get up, clean up, and start again. — Avi Arad
30 daily habits are a lot to remember
30 new habits are not too many if you keep them small and doable, but it did get harder to remember once I got past the first ten or so. Here is where the spreadsheet saved me. Most of the blanks in the spreadsheet screenshot above are times I simply forgot to do the habit.
Evening habits were much worse than morning habits because I don’t use my computer in the evening, so I relied on my memory. In retrospect, I should have kept a written list of habits handy to glance at throughout the evening.
I’ve a grand memory for forgetting. — Robert Louis Stevenson
Not all habits should be daily
I started this month with only a vague idea of what habits I would be adding. As I thoughts of new ones, I wrote them on the spreadsheet and then adopted them as they came up in turn. I rejected several ideas because they weren’t something I could do daily. In the future, I may try to do a new habits weekly challenge.
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. — John F. Kennedy
New habits force you to rethink old habits
Adding a bunch of new habits in short order shakes up your routine. It forces you to examine not only what positive changes you want to implement but also what already established habits in your life would be better off gone.
I purposefully choose to only add habits that were doing something new rather than trying to break old habits since creating habits is much easier than breaking them. The habit I struggled with most — brushing teeth in the evening to prevent snacking — was really about breaking a habit rather than starting a new one.
Over time the energy I’m gaining from new habits will enable me to tackle some of the bad habits in my life.
Old habits die hard, and if you’re not careful, the person you used to be can overtake the person you’re trying to become. — Lecrae
Would I recommend this challenge?
Yes, absolutely. I’ve learned so much about what does and doesn’t work for me personally to make positive changes in my life. I’ve read many books on habit formation but ultimately what works for someone else isn’t going to be perfect for you. The only way to effectively change your own patterns is to experiment on yourself.
Maybe you don’t want to go all-in with daily habits and a new one each day. Modify it in whatever way works for you. I found public accountability helpful. If you would like to try some kind of habit challenge of your own devising you can use this publication to write about it.
It is possible to make positive changes in your life if you are persistent and patient. Go for it.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” ― Lao Tzu
Check out the entire habit formation journey here:
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