When Start Building A New Habit, Consistency is More Important Than Quantity

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

I saw a YouTube video about building the habit of writing a morning journal and I was interested in it. I tried to do my morning journal the next day. For my very first time doing that, I didn’t know what should I write but I tried to force myself to write. Day after day, I felt more comfortable doing it even though I didn’t have something to write.

Because I want to build that habit, what I do is just sit down, open my book, grab my pen, and start to write. If I’m confused about what to write, I just write it down. I write “Hm I don’t know what should I write here”, or write what I see or feel when I’m doing my morning journal like “A glass of warm water, the fresh air, trees”, “I feel so energized this morning”, or maybe “I still feel so sleepy this morning, let see if I will go to sleep again or not after this haha”.

But guess what happens after I write it down? My mind starts to think about what I want to write next. Suddenly, my mind is full of ideas about what I want to do someday, the next action to be closer to my goals, my story and feelings about yesterday, or creating some plans for the future.

I ever heard that for journaling you can write whatever comes into your mind in a minimum of 3 pages. But for me, I don’t really force myself to strict the minimum pages.

Sometimes when I feel lazy, I can only write 2 pages or even just 1 page. Even the name is “morning journal”, I can write my journal in the noon, afternoon, or evening depending on my free time. It is because maybe in the morning I have a lot of things to do so I do my journaling in the afternoon or at another time. But I still write my morning journal every day.

For me, when I’m still building a new habit, the important thing is consistency rather than quantity. Just do your habit every day (or can be every week or month depending on what habit you want to build) even if you don’t really in a good mood to do it, even though you do it only in a few minutes, keep doing your habit. You’ll see your habit will get strong and you’ll feel something wrong when you miss doing that.

Thanks for reading! And as always, SMILE because you are so much amazing! :)