Habits

Almost exactly 6 years after I talked about Habits it is time to pick up the topic again. It seems that starting a new year brings out the desire to work on self-improvement in me. And that means working on all of the things that “one should do” regularly (like brushing teeth). A couple of years ago, I tried the BJ Fogg Tinyhabits method to intrduce new habits (it seems that the topic of Micro Habits is the new hot shit anyway) and failed spectacularly. I don’t even remeber what I tried to achieve then. Other habits have been more successful: 2 years ago I bought an Apple Watch and have been closing my rings almost every day ever since (I’m on day 703 of 1000). I learned that I needed to be able to make exceptions (being sick is one of them, helping kids prepare for final exams another) and be ok to breaking the chain. Still I have been walking to work almost every single day for the past two years. ...

It seems (and I have not done any kind of research on this topic) that the “approved” way of learning things or learn to do things, is to form habits. Starting a habit is easy - everyone that has tried to live through a new years resolution knows that - but ingraining a habit is quite difficult) There are apps (of course there are apps) that can help you - I stumbled upon lift.do a couple of days ago - but they are only a help. The habit forming has to come from you, and you need to really want to do whatever it is you are doing. Looking at my life, I’m working on ingraining several habits, some with more, some with less success. ...