I Tracked My Daily Habits for Two Weeks
Will it improve my mental health, or act as a burden?
I have somehow found myself on bullet journaling Tik Tok. Half of the videos on my For You Page are people creating beautiful journal spreads and calendars. Their planners are immaculate. Their handwriting is exquisite. Their consistency is mind blowing.
I don’t have those skills by a long shot. I’ve been a consistent nail biter since I was five years old, I’ve never had a solid sleep schedule, and, as a rule, I don’t keep a planner. However, I’ve been inspired by these Tik Tok creators who craft beautiful calendar pages and keep track of their daily habits. So I decided to give it a try for myself and see how I would do.
I’m genuinely very, very bad at taking care of myself. I have to set alarms on my phone to remind me to do the simplest tasks (and even then sometimes I ignore it and forget once again). I want to take better care of myself and be more independent, but I’m having a hard time doing it.
My main assumption was that I would somehow be more inclined to complete each task each day simply for the satisfaction of marking it off (and so that I would have something to show for it when I decided to write about it).
I set out to track my habits for the entire month of June. However, I gave up on that relatively quickly because I was already forgetting to mark things off by the end of week one. So a solid two weeks was what I was able to muster. I know logically that I cannot feasibly form new habits in fourteen days, but I was determined to at least see how I was doing to begin with.
I decided to track five habits that I wanted to improve: Showering at least every other day, eating two meals minimum, drink 20+ oz of water, get dressed every day, and taken my medicine every day. Here’s how it all went.
When I decided I wanted to eat at least two meals per day, I had to figure out what my definition of a “meal” was. I decided a meal was something substantial (i.e. not just snacks here and there). I have a tendency to forget to eat since I work from 2 pm to 9 pm every day as a teacher. I regularly forget about breakfast altogether and scramble to find something to eat before my first class.
I wanted to be sure I was eating more than just absolute junk. And, as you can see, I did manage to eat at least two meals per day for most of the two weeks I ran this experiment. The only days I didn’t get were Monday the 7th and Friday the 11th. The reason why I didn’t have two meals on Friday was because I slept in super late and woke up just barely in time for my first class, and genuinely wasn’t hungry until I was finished for the day. So I had one meal along with a couple of snacks in between.
I ate plenty on the 7th, I just didn’t eat any actual meals besides breakfast. I had a doctor’s appointment that morning pretty early so I didn’t have time for coffee. I treated myself to McDonalds breakfast afterwards and that kept me full for the entire day until around 8 pm. I decided I didn’t want to have a full dinner, as that would require some effort on my part, so I just had some snacks and ice cream for “dinner.”
I’m truly surprised to see how often I ate at least two meals (most days I ate three) because I didn’t realize that I had that much consistency in my diet. Not that everything I ate was super healthy, but at least I’m fueling my body.
You might think I’m gross for this one, but I do not shower every day. For starters, I work completely from home and I don’t get super dirty doing that. As well, I suffer from depression and ADHD which often times makes it very difficult for me to muster up the energy and desire to actually take a shower. If I do end up sweatier than normal (like I did a lot of housework or went out into the world on a particular day) I will definitely take a shower.
Like Friday the 11th and Saturday the 12th. I absolutely had to take a full shower both days because I had not one but TWO cicadas land on me and in my hair while walking my dog. I absolutely hate the cicadas here in Maryland; I think they are so gross and I hate when they land on me. So Saturday evening after the second cicada of the day got itself tangled in my hair, I gave up and took a shower.
Of all the habits I wanted to improve, I definitely was not expecting getting dressed every day to be the one I actually accomplished. My terms for “getting dressed” were simply to put on different clothes than what I slept in the previous night. If that was just a different set of pajamas, so be it. At least I was changing my clothes.
I’m truly shocked I managed to get dressed every day for two weeks. Most days I stay in my pajamas until I start work, and even then I often only put on a different top to look more professional from the shoulders up. But for fourteen whole days, I managed to put on new, fresh, CLEAN clothes every day.
This is a habit that I’ve had a lot of trouble mastering, especially with the last year and a half being such a mental challenge (for everyone). I’d say I’m pretty proud of this one.
I am chronically dehydrated. I don’t know what is wrong with me that I just don’t drink water; it’s not that I don’t like the taste or even that I would rather drink something else, it’s just simply that I forget to drink enough water. My health has suffered as a consequence.
So I decided I wanted to drink at least two large glasses of water per day. I mainly use a 16oz insulated cup and a straw (I’ve found that I am far more inclined to drink anything with a straw than without). If I had two of those, I could mark it off on the calendar. Some days I ended up drinking a third!
I definitely need to work more on getting enough water — I know that even 30oz is not nearly enough — but this is a start.
You would think that of all these habits, taking my daily medication would be an easy one.
Wrong.
I am currently taking two medications for anxiety and depression and one for ADHD. It is recommended that these types of medicines are taken at the same time every day, but I’m wildly inconsistent with my daily scheduling. Some days I wake up at 7am and drink my coffee and am super ready for the day, and other days I’m in bed till 9am and can’t muster up the courage to roll out from under the covers.
So I try to take my medicine around lunch time every day; usually around 1pm. But if I get busy with something or my work schedule gets switched up a bit, I will often forget to take my medicine.
I especially forget to take it on the weekends, which is not recommended by a long shot. I have a pill organizer with the days of the week to try and help myself recall what I’ve taken and when, but, again, it doesn’t always work.
I was hopeful that tracking my medicine intake this way would help but I ended up skipping this entire weekend by mistake and I wound up with an awful headache in the process. If anything, this exercise reminded me how important it is to NOT skip my medicine because I will start to go through withdrawal.
This exercise of tracking my habits was important because it gave me a better idea of where I’m at in terms of self care. I think a lot of people have had trouble taking care of themselves due to the pandemic, but in general I’ve had trouble simply because of my ADHD challenges.
I would definitely like to try this again and go for a full month next time. Now that I know I am likely to forget to mark off my habits, I can make some changes to be more successful next time.
