How a Habit Tracker Made Me Honest With Myself
I tracked my habits for 30 days and learned these 7 surprising truths about my life
Last month I took a class on productivity — how to build a sustainable writing practice. For decades I started and stopped with my writing. I told myself over and over again that “this” change in life, whatever it might be, would be the time I really stuck with the habit of writing. Although I’ve had (very) modest publishing successes over the years, I never managed to continue writing beyond a few weeks or past that first submission.
This time, I promise myself. This time. I took a class, and during the course, I wrote lots of notes. I made up a schedule for myself and wrote down what outside distractions and internal voices caused me to lose focus. I was ready.
I Installed a Habit Tracker
Like any New Year’s day hopeful, I began tracking not one, but 5 habits at once. I thought that tracking habits I was already consistent with would boost my confidence and link the practice of daily writing to other daily habits. I wanted to remind myself how disciplined I am overall to encourage myself to be disciplined about my writing.
Here’s what I learned after a month of tracking five daily habits, including writing.
1. I am not disciplined at all
This came as a shock to me, but it turns out that I am not consistent with any of my five habits. In fact, my easiest and most consistent habit — taking supplements every morning — tracks at 43% of the time. Ouch.
2. I rarely complete all five habits
When I made up my schedule in class, it appeared that adding writing to my morning routine would be a cinch. On paper, I had plenty of time. In reality, I run out of time to get all five habits done in the morning. This led to compromise, often of the “I’ll do it later,” excuse.
3. I won’t do it later
I sometimes get a break between clients during the day, but the reality is, I will not meditate, do yoga, write, or any other habit on my list while I’m in my office. I do plenty of work for my business, but I can’t seem to convince myself to tackle any of the five daily habits. I don’t know why.
“Facing my own laziness and forcing myself to be better has not been fun, but the payoff is fantastic.”
4. I am lazier than I thought
Number four hurts. I pride myself on my productivity, but since tracking my habits, I notice a lot of mornings when I think I “deserve a break today.” Because it’s Monday, because I’m tired, because I’ve had a busy week, because I argued with my husband — I mean, my brain seems to be a master at creating reasons I shouldn’t “have to” write or do yoga or whatever.
5. Being consistent with habits takes hard work and discipline
While tracking habits makes me feel virtuous, tracking is not a substitute for the discipline of work. There are a hundred other distractions that seem more worthy of my lazy attention right this second. Discipline is a struggle on many days.
6. Choosing some habits means other tasks get left undone
It wasn’t just Trevor Noah or cute baby videos that sabotaged my discipline. When I am disciplined and stick to the habits I have deemed most important, I have to make hard decisions about priorities. I leave dishes in the sink, don’t respond immediately to emails, and my hair isn’t always perfect (ok, my hair was rarely perfect anyway).
Lessons Learned
As I become more disciplined with my most important habits, I don’t have the luxury of extra time on workdays. Now I have to schedule a time to respond to emails and texts, I have to make sure the kitchen is clean before bed, and I have to hold myself to a schedule for cleaning the cat box and doing laundry.
Discipline with my most essential habits means I have to be disciplined with slightly less essential habits. If I wake up Monday morning with a dozen weekend to-dos still hanging over my head, I have tough decisions to make. One or more critical tasks have to wait. Since I am not one to sacrifice sleep, I have to find time someplace else. I can pray for a cancellation in my schedule, but if that does not happen, then I have to decide what goes. The less my life is filled with superfluous Youtube watching and phone-surfing, the more complicated my choices become.
Will I keep tracking habits? Yes! There is up-side to forcing myself to be disciplined and choosing writing and yoga over doing the dishes and straightening my hair: I have an entire Google Drive folder of posts to edit and publish. Facing my own laziness and forcing myself to be better has not been fun, but the payoff is fantastic.
