Self-Improvement

April 27, 2024

I used to struggle with forming new, healthy habits.

I’d often forget to do them or struggle to remember the specifics of what to do and when I was supposed to do it.

Consequently, I was uncertain about how much I was engaging in the habit.

Despite knowing what I should be doing, it felt as if I was regressing rather than progressing towards my goals.

Leading to me feeling bad about myself all of the time.

If you’re anything like me, this letter will help you.

I’m going to explain why you’re getting the results you’re currently seeing, and how to get the results you want by tracking your habits.

I’ll also show you how to set up your own habit tracker in a way that helped me go from barely checking any habits back in November:

To nearly completely filling it in April:

What Makes Habit Tracking So Good?

There are 3 main benefits of habit tracking:

1. It serves as a visual reminder to do the right thing
2. It reflects Newton's first law of inertia - once you start making progress, the momentum encourages discipline to keep going.
3. Thirdly, as Ali Abdaal would put it: “Tracking your progress provides you tangible evidence that you are moving towards your goals” - Leading to a sense of satisfaction.

Tracking your habits will help you identify what areas you are falling behind and how you should adjust for better results.

You’re, in a way, celebrating your wins - even if that win is just an X on a piece of paper.

To put it plainly, tracking your habits is a great way to stick to them.

It motivates you to get started with a habit, keep going with a habit, and discourages breaking the streak. While visualizing your progress over a long period of time.

How To Set Up  Habit Tracker

For those of you who still don’t know what a habit tracker is, it’s a simple way to measure whether you did a habit or not by noting it down on something like a calendar, notebook, or on digital spreadsheet.

Every day that you do the habit, you would cross off that day on your tracker - logging your accomplishment.

For example: if I exercise on Tuesday and Thursday this week, I would cross off those days on my habit tracker in the spot dedicated to exercise.

I personally use a physical bullet journal to track my habits.

A bullet journal is great for this because you can easily set up spaces for all your habits and divvy up the days and weeks as needed.

I learned how to set up this method for habit tracking by Ryder Carol, the founder of the bullet journal method. He has a short video explaining how to do it. (when this letter becomes a video on my YouTube channel, I will show you how to set it up)

I also have a digital one that you can access inside of the Purpose Planner - my personal productivity method designed to help you create your own clarity.

Completely up to you which type of tracker you prefer to do this with.

Before you can complete the setup of your tracker, you need to actually decide which habits you want to implement into your life.

You probably already have a pretty good idea of what you want to do.

Here are the 5 habits that Im currently focusing on:

• Meditation
• Stretching
• Exercise
• Reading
• Pushups

For some people, this amount may seem daunting. You don’t need to focus on 5 different habits at once.

You may be better off starting with 1 or 2 habits to focus on every week.

This step is where most people stop. And that’s why we struggle to build habits.

When I first started trying to build good habits, I simply couldn’t make them stick no matter how much I reminded myself that I should do them.

There were three reasons for my lack of progress:

1. I didn’t clearly define the habit,
2. I didn’t clearly determine when and where the habit was to be performed
3. I didn’t track my progress - leaving no room for improvement.

If you don’t know what exactly you are going to be doing, that leaves room for uncertainty.

Uncertainty drives us to procrastinate and gives us feelings of fear and anxiety; making us avoid doing the habit altogether.

Implementation Intentions

You can create some clarity around each habit by using implementation intentions.

Implementation Intentions are similar to an if…then… statement, but a little different.

If you have taken any kind of CS class you know what I’m talking about.

In coding, you have to be very clear about what you want the program to do. Otherwise, it might not do exactly what you want or it won’t work at all.

The more detail you add, the better.

For example: “I will exercise” is a lot more ambiguous than “I’m going to the gym and doing 25 minutes on the treadmill”

The latter breeds clarity by specifying what action you are going to take.

The former leaves room for uncertainty.

Similarly, if you don’t clearly define when you are going to do the habit, it’s unlikely to be done.

In Feel Good Productivity Ali Abdaal mentions this:

“If you don’t know when you’re doing something, chances are you won’t do it”-Ali Abdaal

In my upcoming series ‘Read What You Need’ I’ll be summarizing the key points and lessons from the books I’m reading. Starting with this one.

So make sure to subscribe to the newsletter to get that when it comes out.

To further clarify your habit, you can specify at which point in your day you will perform it.

In our gym example, it would look something like this:

I will go to the gym and use the treadmill for 25 minutes after my latest class, every day.

When we started, all we had was “I will exercise”

Now we know exactly what the habit is, when we will perform it, and where it’ll be done.

When you do this, you no longer need to think about when you’ll do it.

You just do.

But we aren’t done yet.

We can still further increase the likelihood that we will perform the habit by attaching an identity to it.

Even if you aren’t currently where you want to be, you’ll have to adopt the identity of someone that IS in order to get there.

Because that is the type of person who would do that habit.

The person who is bad at names will never be good with names.

Only the person who is good with names will be good with names.

The person who is out of shape will never get in shape.

Only the athlete gets and stays in shape.

See what I’m getting at here?

Ever heard the phrase “your new life is going to cost you your old one”?

This is what its talking about.

James clear puts it perfectly:

"The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I'm the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this." - James Clear, Atomic Habits

I wrote a whole newsletter people loved specifically about this topic called ‘This is Why You Can’t Change’

We can use the power of identity by attaching one to our desired habit.

Let’s continue our example of exercise.

The student should choose to adopt the identity of someone who is already in shape.

That would be an athlete.

“I will go to the gym and use the treadmill for 35 minutes after my latest class everyday because i want to be an athlete”

But theres still something missing…

Instead, lets say “I will go to the gym and use the treadmill for 25 minutes after my latest class everyday because I AM an athlete”

Slight difference but it’s extremely powerful.

Now you are adopting the identity of someone who does that thing.

Not someone who wants to do the thing. Because you've been wanting to change your life for a long time now, but it hasn’t happened yet, because you aren’t that type of person.

We think that in order to change our life we must change our habits, but it's quite the opposite - we have to change our life and the way we see ourselves first, and the habits will follow. 

The decision to be better comes first. Then you get better.

Make these implementation intentions for each one of your habits.

Once you have them written down, you can add them into your habit tracker.

What To Do When You Fail

The thing about habits is that they aren't habit yet. (obviously) Which means you aren't likely to do it every time that you say you will.

You may have a good streak for a while, but eventually, there will be a day when something gets in the way, or you forget, or you just don’t have the willpower to get it done.

Life happens.

Don’t think of this as failure. Think of it as a learning opportunity. When you miss a day, think of why you missed it and what the result was of you missing a day.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that not much changes if you don’t do something for one day.

Thats not what consistency is all about.

We discussed this last week, but this tweet by Dickie Bush summarizes this pretty well:

“It’s not how many days in a row you do something. It’s about how reliably you get back on track when you inevitably fall off.”

Missing one day is okay.

Don’t beat yourself up over ending the streak.

Just make sure to start the next one tomorrow.

Don't Obsess Over The Numbers

Approach these new habits with the open-mindedness and humility of a beginner, just like any endeavor in life.

Embracing humility allows you to start with a clean slate. it enables you to be more comfortable with missing a day which, like we talked about, is only detrimental if you dont learn and start again asap.

By letting go the need for perfection or keeping a streak for a certain number of days, you relieve yourself from unneeded stress. Replace it with the openness and humility essential for change.

This doesn't mean that its okay to keep missing your habits. the goal is to make it a part of your normal daily routine.

The idea is to try not to lean too much into one side or the other.

Be hard on yourself, and think in the longterm to build the discipline required to make new habits, while also having enough humility to know that nobody is perfect.

If you want help figuring out which habits you should be focusing on, I have a free journaling course called 14 Days To Purpose that will help you gain direction in your life and identify which habits will put you on the right track.

If you want help maintaining your habits and staying accountable, I highly recommend you check out my free self-improvement community: Apperception Alliance

Other paid stuff like 1-1 coaching and the Purpose Planner also available on my website, check em out.

Enjoy your weekend,

-Abraham