We’re nearly halfway through the month of May and today I want to do a quick check-in on the 5 habits I set out to keep this month.
The 5 habits I’m working on this month are:
- Mindfulness: 10 minutes per day, every day
- Exercise: 5 days per week
- Blog: 1 new post, every day
- Steps: 5k minimum, every day
- Read: minimum of 10 minutes, every day
As of this evening, I’m on track. I’ve managed to keep all of my daily habits and only skipped working out one day each weekend.
A Damn Good Month
To be honest, this is the best I’ve ever done at keeping my habits. A much more typical showing based on past results would be about 60-70% consistency.
I think the difference in this case has been this blog, where I’ve talked about my habits and plans pubicly, and my participation in a 100 day blogging challenge along with several coworkers, which means that if I fall flat on my face they’re all going to see me do it.
There’s a lot of power in that accountability. Even this evening, the very last thing I want to do is blog. I’m not feeling great and what I really want to do it go straight to bed, but here I am at 10:30 PM finishing up this post and knowing that I’ll be reading for 10 minutes before I finally do go to bed so I can tick that last box.
I think this is today’s takeaway: habits aren’t formed when you’re excited about doing them, they’re formed when you don’t want to do them, but do them anyway. And going public with your plans is a powerful added incentive to stick it out even on a night when you really don’t want to.