The Surprising Way To Build A New Habit
And it’s easy to implement
“Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going.” — Jim Ryun
Building a new habit feels like a herculean task at the beginning because you are forcing your mind and body to adapt to new behavior.
There are many ways to build a new habit like scheduling a time in your calendar, finding an accountability partner, setting an alarm for a new activity, etc.
When I started writing on Medium, I struggled a lot to make writing a daily habit. I tried to block a certain time on my schedule and I committed to writing 200 words a day but nothing worked for the first 4–5 months.
Then, I came across a concept called — Habit Tracker when I was reading Atomic Habits:
The idea is to mark a cross on the calendar whenever you do a new activity or habit. When you mark a couple of continuous crosses on your calendar, you don’t want to leave a blank spot that motivates you to perform the new habit every day and mark the cross.
Habit Tracking
The idea is pretty simple:
- Use a calendar or you can make a calendar by yourself just like I did:
Make sure you put a calendar where you can see it all the time. I put it in the living room.
2. Mark a cross whenever you perform the new activity:
Just the act of putting a cross is enough to motivate you to do the work.
3. Track the monthly progress and push yourself to do better every month. This is what my writing progress in February looks like. I put a cross whenever I publish an article.
I know I did not write as many articles as I wanted but it’s better than nothing.
Whenever I see this calendar, I want to put a cross on it. Try this approach by yourself and see your life change forever.
Thanks for reading.
