I've always had a hard time developing good habits. I've made resolution after resolution about exercise, eating right, writing every day, etc. I've read books about how to develop good habits and stick to them, but I haven't been very successful, and I have often felt disappointed in myself.
I came up with a new approach in February. It's probably way too geeky for most people. Shows the engineer in me. I picked several good habits I'd like to do on most days such as meditating for 20 minutes, exercising for 30 minutes, and doing some kind of thoughtful journaling (such as in this blog or in a personal journal). In February, I started tracking these habits daily in Excel so that I could measure how well I was sticking to them. This has been by far the best success I've had, and it has been going on now for 4 months.
Each day I give myself a "point" for everything I did, such as a point for exercise, and zero points for anything I skipped. For any week, I hope to get at least 70% of all possible "points". This means I did my good habits 70% of the time that week. As shown below, I've had about 4 bad weeks and 12 good ones. The bad weeks were when I had long business trips with 12 hour days. I might have been just 40% successful with good habits those weeks versus my 70% goal. But I think before I started this system, and before I ever tracked my progress, a week with a business trip usually meant NO exercise, meditation, or writing. I'm not satisfied with just hitting 40% on business trips. With my new system, I'll be able to see if I improve, starting this week because I'll be traveling again.
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