How Building Useful Habits Today Helps Me Live a Better Life
Lauren Rad is the senior writer here at Myrth. From time to time, she’ll pop in with a personal blog post. This month, she’s sharing about her plans for building new habits this year.
Like a lot of people, I’m constantly on the lookout for ways to be a better person who uses her limited time on this earth well and who prioritizes things that matter. I also struggle with making sure to keep up the good self-care habits that I know allow me to do those things more effectively. That’s why, at the beginning of the new year, I didn’t make a resolution. Oh, no.
I made 12 of them.
That’s not really how I think about it, though. See, my resolution was to work on building positive habits by choosing one habit each month and focusing on just that habit until it felt like a normal part of my routine.
That wasn’t an arbitrary decision. Before I decided to start this year-long project, I did some research into the science of forming new habits and mapped out a plan for myself. I had already learned from personal experience that taking on too much at once was a recipe for failure, and it’s clear I’m not the only one who’s had the same problem. I figured one habit at a time, one month at a time, was a good, steady plan, even if it turns out the old “21 days to form a habit” canard might be a little more complicated than that.
I started in January with my first habit: wearing sunscreen every day. See, I live in Southern California and get a lot of sun exposure regularly. I’m pretty good about protecting my arms and legs, but my face, neck, and chest? They’ve gotten a lot of sun over the last 35 years, and after some peers had to have pre-cancerous growths removed, I decided it was time to wise up. It’s too late to reverse the damage that’s been done, but I can prevent more from happening.
To get things rolling, I started off with a multi-pronged plan of attack. I knew that one way to successfully build a new habit was to piggyback off of an existing one, so I put my sunscreen right next to my toothbrush. That way, when I reached for the brush every morning, I’d see the sunscreen and be reminded.
Because tracking habits is also a helpful tool, I started logging my daily sunscreen application. The simple act of logging it feels a little like giving myself a gold star every day (and I admit, I may be an adult, but I am definitely still motivated by gold stars), but it goes beyond that. I can look at my tracking to see if there are specific days when I tend to forget (like Thursday, when I’m often in a rush), and then I can use that data to try and make adjustments to my routine. I can also look at my log and see concrete proof of progress, which feels great.
And just in case my other tricks don’t work, I also set a reminder on my phone. It buzzes me every day at 8:00 am to ask, “Did you put on sunscreen today?” Usually I’ve done it by then, but if not, that reminder is perfectly timed to catch me before I head out the door for the day.
January’s habit-building experiment went well, but February’s was trickier. In February, I focused on making the bed every morning. Making your bed is a great way to start the day because it gives you a sense of accomplishment early on, it starts the snowball effect for your day, and it feels mighty good to peel back a smooth comforter at bedtime. For various reasons, though, I’m not able to do it right when I get up, so I decided a different plan of action was in order.
Instead of tying it to when I woke up, I tied it to when I finished breakfast. I’m a big fan of breakfast, even if it doesn’t always happen at the same time each day, so I knew I’d still be making my bed each morning. It just might happen on a slightly more flexible schedule. When I finished breakfast, I’d put the dishes in the sink and head upstairs to make the bed. It worked, usually.
March’s habit was a few minutes of meditation each morning. Like the bed-making, I suspected this one would have to be tied to something other than the moment I get out of bed, so I connected it to my bedtime routine. Things were rocky from the get-go. I often found myself so tired by the end of the day that fitting another thing in before bedtime wasn’t terribly successful, and then Covid-19 hit. We’ve been lucky enough to stay healthy so far, but our normal routines have been completely upended, and the meditation fell by the wayside.
I’m trying again in April—because one of the most important things about habit-building is to keep at it, even when things go off the rails.
TBC….
Have you ever taken on a habit-building project? What strategies did you use, and how did it go? Drop us a line in the comment section!
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