Building and tracking habits (bullet journaling part 2)
As I continue to learn about bullet journals and evolve my own practice, I thought it would be helpful for me, and hopefully you as well, if I recorded some notes about stuff that’s helping and stuff that isn’t. Today (29 May 2020), I spent some time thinking about habit tracking and weekly planning. Here’s what I came up with, mostly about habits.
Done right, habit tracking in a bullet journal can help both with building habits and with supporting your use of a bullet journal (which is, itself, a habit). If building or improving habits is important to you, recording them will support the habit. If you’re enthusiastic about doing and recording those habits, it will encourage you to use your planner. Win-win!
One of the ways to support that cycle is to make sure the habits are specific, measurable, and practical, and that some of them, at least, are small*. Small habits include things like taking vitamins, flossing, or doing stretches–actions that might take just one to five minutes and are easy to fit into your day. This is why I track the number of servings of veggies and fruits I have in a day, rather than to just assign a habit of having 5 or more. I’m almost always going to have *some*, and that’s much better than an all-or-nothing approach.
Of course, it’s also important for habits to be meaningful. One issue I struggle with for my habits right now relates to definition and meaning. Specifically, one of my goals is movement or exercise, but what does that mean for me? I have a dog (he’s amazing!), and I get a fair bit of exercise just walking him every day. What I want and need is *more* exercise. But I haven’t yet determined how to define that. If I garden for 45 minutes, or go for a 30-minute walk, or work out on the treadmill and/or exercise bike I have access to for 30 minutes or more, that definitely counts. But what about 15 minutes on the exercise bike, or 10 minutes of vigorous weeding? Where is the line?
I don’t have that answer yet, but more on that when I do. Meanwhile, check this video out for more on weekly planning, which is another thing I’m still working out.