I started tracking habits in my journal from 2019. I had written a detailed post on how I do the same. Do check it out if you haven't seen it.
Though I knew the benefits of habit tracking, I wasn't being consistent at it. For some months, I was following it diligently. For some months, I completely stopped writing them down. For some weeks, though the habits were planned, I didn't follow through.
Many experts suggest that we identify ONE single habit and focus only on that for the next 21 days. Personally, for me, it sounds quite boring to just focus on ONE. I prefer to work on multiple habits at the same time.
Over the past few months, I wasn't quite keeping track of my habits as diligently as I wanted them to be. I restarted my habit journaling from Mar 1st. Here's a snapshot of the past 12 days.
- The habits I listed down was a mix of old and new - a few I've been practicing for many months, a few I'm kickstarting new and a few I'm restarting. This way, it feels balanced and achievable.
- I didn't precisely define the tangibility of a few habits. This was intentional as I'm restarting the tracker after 5 months. For eg, a morning walk gets checked whether I walk for 15 minutes or 30 minutes. Fruits intake gets checked whether I eat a single banana or a bowl of watermelon.
- As I'm taking up a course in the morning hours, many of the habits that I usually accomplish during that time went for a toss. Not going to feel bad about it. I don't have Hermione's time turner to do multiple things at the same time :-)
- There were certain habits that I was consistent at and a few others in which I didn't make much progress. The purpose of the tracker is to give me some clarity and not to make me feel guilty. Now that I have the data from the past 12 days, I can plan out the habits for the next 12 days that are more realistic.
Many times, we give up on habit tracking when we don't see a checkmark against every habit. Our focus shouldn't be checking off every habit. Rather, we should use the habit tracker as a way to understand whether we are setting realistic habits, where we are falling off, what could be the reasons and how to correct them. When we are gentle with ourselves, we can use habit tracking as a supporting friend and a guide to navigating our daily routines.