The Habit: Foam Roller
Strategy: Set Cues for New Habits (aka Habit Stacking)

I’ve used foam rollers off and on over the years, usually after workouts at the gym, but this past year I made it a habit to do a short foam rolling session at home most mornings. It’s a simple 5-10 minute habit that’s especially beneficial if you feel a bit stiff in the morning or after long bouts of desk work.

This habit has been super easy to maintain because I have an easy to remember cue for when to do it – after I brush my teeth in the morning, I hit the foam roller. Choosing a cue – an existing routine or habit that you’ll do you new habit before or after, is one of the most effective strategies for building a new habit. For starters it simply makes it easier to remember to do the habit in the first place. But beyond that, by doing a new habit before or especially after something already automatic to you, it inherits some of that automatic quality. It just feels more natural to do it.

Quick tip: If you’re using a habit tracker, consider putting the cue in the habit’s title when you’re first starting a new habit. So for example: “Foam roller (after brush teeth)”. If you’re using Motidayt you can optionally use the habit’s details field instead, which makes it easy to show or hide your cue as needed.

The Habit: Light Cardio
Strategy: Start Small, with a Consistently Achievable Goal

Although strength training has been a part of my routine for years, I’d never been able to maintain the same consistency with cardio. That’s why I’m especially pleased that this past year I made regular cardio a part of my weekly routine. I started with a simple four exercise circuit – jumping jacks, jump squats, side steps, and jumping lunges – done for three sets. Including rests it all takes less than ten minutes.

The reasons I was finally able to make cardio a regular habit are 1) I started tracking it and 2) I started small. If I’d started with a goal of doing 30 minutes of cardio a day it almost certainly wouldn’t have lasted. But three sets of four exercises for less than ten minutes is something I could stick to even on busy or low motivation days.

Starting small applies to your weekly goals for habits as well. Don’t set a weekly goal of seven days a week for a new habit! Set a goal that is high enough to reap rewards, but low enough to achieve on a weekly basis, even when unexpected things come up (which they will).

I started with a goal of three times a week, which is enough for cardio to bring substantial benefits. It’s also far better than the zero it might be if I had set an excessive goal and quit. (After a couple months of consistent success I bumped my goal up to four times a week and am still hitting it consistently.)

The Habit: ATG Split Squat
Strategy: Improve Incrementally

I learned about the ATG split squat from watching Ben Patrick, aka Knees Over Toes Guy, who in turn I learned about through Huberman Lab. Since then I’ve added a few reps of it to my morning mobility routine, and several more reps to my bodyweight strength training routine soon after. It was awkward and difficult to do at first, but now I love the muscular activation and stretch I get in both legs from this one movement. (Quick disclaimer: I’m not an exercise physiologist or anything of the sort so do your own research before implementing it.)

The strategy here piggybacks on the last one: Start small with an effective, consistently achievable “dose” of a new habit, then gradually build or improve upon it. In this case, a few ATG split squats each morning might not seem like a big deal, but that added to some side lunges, deep squats, shoulder rotations, downward dogs, hip rotations, side planks and mountain climbers as part of a morning mobility routine built over time when you previously weren’t doing anything at all – that’s a pretty big deal.

The Habit: Tongue Scraping
Strategy: Try Something New

I first read about tongue scraping in some random article and thought it sounded silly. Then I saw it mentioned again in some other random article and thought, “What the hell, why not.” Ten dollars and a couple hundred tongue scrapings later this is my favorite small, “who’d have thunk it” habit from the past year. I really had no idea what a difference such a simple habit – one that I hadn’t even heard of until maybe a year before – could make.

The strategy here is more a mindset: Don’t let skepticism or a bit of laziness prevent you from trying a new habit. If you have the time to try something new and the investment isn’t too great (which it usually isn’t if you start small) then just give it a go! Life is too short and our own judgement too limited to rule out new things simply because of a bit of skepticism.

New Year, New Habits

Those are four habits I’m glad to have started in the past year, and more importantly four strategies that can make any potential habit a consistent part of your life. Using these strategies along with a good habit tracker to track progress can put you on the right foot to building habits and achieving goals in 2024 and beyond.

The post Four Favorite Habits – and Habit-Building Strategies – from 2023 appeared first on Motidayt.

Streaks.

Nearly every app has a screenshot of days on a calendar with a pretty little line connecting them for a habit’s streak. “Don’t break the streak!” they say.

I say don’t worry about it. Daily streaks are fine for added motivation, but they shouldn’t be your primary measure of success. The key to long-term success with habits is setting weekly goals and sticking to them. Here’s why:

Achievable goals are paramount

Pretty much every authority on habit building talks about the importance of setting achievable goals. At the micro level, this might mean starting with a goal of training for only five minutes each workout instead of an hour. Or setting out to write just a few sentences on your first book each session, not a whole page. 

At the macro level, this means setting realistic, achievable goals for how often you’ll do habits as well. And for most people, doing every habit every day for weeks on end isn’t in line with reality. Which brings us to point 2…

Life gets in the way

There are days when despite your best intentions it simply isn’t practical to do a habit, especially if you’re maintaining several habits at once. Maybe you come down with a bad cold and it’s just not a good idea to do that workout. Maybe you’ve been out since 6 a.m. on an all-day hiking trip and don’t have time that day to write for your book. A day missed here or there shouldn’t feel like failure from breaking your streak when you’re otherwise doing a great job maintaining a habit.

Not every habit needs to be done every day

The vast majority of habits don’t have to be done every day to reap benefits from them. If you’re meditating five or six days a week, the added mindfulness and clarity will carry over into the other day or two. Or if you’re doing heavy weight training, unless your program, diet and rest are super dialed in you risk actually losing gains by doing it every day – for most people three to five days a week is a much better target.

Occasional breaks are a good thing

Following a habit routine obsessively every day may be great to start with but in the long-term it’s an invitation for burnout. That’s why for people tracking multiple habits in particular, I recommend taking a break from the habit tracker and to do list for at least one day every week or two. Just take the day to rest and relax, and if you feel naturally compelled to do certain habits that’s fine, but don’t do them primarily to check them off a list.

If not streaks then what?

Even if daily streaks shouldn’t be the primary measurement of success, most people absolutely do stick to habits better using some form of measurement. (That’s the whole point of habit tracking.) So instead of streaks, for your primary measurements set realistic, achievable daily and weekly goals.

• Daily goal: Your goal for doing a habit each session or day. For intellectual pursuits and even many physical habits I recommend deciding the minimum amount of time you’ll dedicate to that habit each time you do it, whether it be writing, coding, or training.
• Weekly goal: The number of days per week you’ll aim to do it. You want to choose a high enough number for the habit to be beneficial and become habitual over time, but with enough leeway that you can reasonably achieve it most weeks. Four to six days per week is a good target for most habits.

But I like streaks!

I get that streaks provide motivation for a lot of people, even if daily streaks aren’t ideal for the reasons above. That’s why in Motidayt there’s a feature I call “weekly success streaks”. Set a weekly goal of days per week to do a habit, and for every consecutive week you reach that goal you’ll see your weekly streak increase. This provides the motivational power of streaks without the potential downsides of expecting to do every habit every day.

(For fans of pen and paper trackers, depending on the design you could track weekly streaks in these as well. Simply decide your weekly goal, and for every week you achieve it write the number your streak has increased to beside it.)

That’s a look at habit tracking focused on weekly goals instead of streaks. Whether you’re using a paper tracker or a habit tracker app, I encourage you to set weekly goals that you can make progress with while also allowing room for the demands of everyday life. And more importantly, if you’ve yet to get started habit tracking just get started! It’s a simple habit that paves the way for many more behind it. 

The post Tracking Habits? Streaks are Fine, but Weekly Goals are Better appeared first on Motidayt.

1. Record Everything

Whenever you think of something that you need to do or want to achieve, either do it or write it down, then and there. This has two main benefits:

1. You’re far more likely to remember the task or prioritize the goal.
2. Getting things out of your head and in writing (whether on paper or in an app) reduces the cognitive load of consciously or subconsciously trying to remember it.

2. Assign a Timeframe

When you record your task or goal, immediately assign it either a specific date or one of the following timeframes:

• Today
• This Week
• This Month
• This Year
• Lifetime

Using these timeframes provides three advantages:

1. Better manageability: Having your tasks broken up into sections is more manageable and less intimidating than one long inbox or to do list.
2. Built-in prioritization: Your most important and fundamentally limited resource is time, so it makes sense to prioritize tasks according to it.
3. Easy review: Which bring us to the last principle…

3. Review Regularly

“Set it and forget it” doesn’t cut it for accomplishing tasks and goals. It’s absolutely essential to review regularly, decide what to focus on, and reprioritize as necessary. Fortunately by using the timeframes above you make reviewing tasks and goals extraordinarily simple:

• Review this week’s tasks every day (preferably in the morning). Move any tasks you’d like to do today to today’s to do list.
• Review this month’s tasks and goals once a week. Move the ones you’d like to get done in the next week to this week’s to do list.
• Review this year’s tasks and goals once a month. Move the ones you’d like to accomplish in the next month to this month’s to do list.
• Review your lifetime tasks and goals once a year. Take some time at the beginning of the year to look over them, decide if there are any you want to accomplish in the year ahead, and move them to this year’s to do list.

If you follow this method it’s literally impossible to forget tasks and goals, and by prioritizing them by timeframe you can be sure that the things that are important to you won’t linger too long in the background.

Tools

That’s the system, now here are some potential tools for implementing it:

• Pen and paper – Plenty of paper planners have layouts for daily, weekly, and monthly tasks (probably yearly and lifetime as well, though I haven’t used them personally). You’ll need to manually rewrite tasks as you move them from one timeframe to another, but if you’re partial to analog task management it can work.
• To do list apps – As long as the app offers multiple to do lists or projects, you can create a list for each timeframe and move tasks between lists.
• List-making apps – General list-making apps can work as well, you just need to create separate lists for each timeframe, and you’ll need to be able to move items between lists. Dynalist is my favorite of these – I don’t use it for task management but I do like it for keeping details for individual projects.
• Motidayt – I created Motidayt specifically for managing tasks and planning goals using this method. You can assign a timeframe with the tap of a button, and tasks are organized in each timeframe on a single screen that you can expand or collapse as needed – show future timeframes when planning, and hide them when done to focus on today’s tasks. (Anyone interested in building habits might like that habit tracking is also fully integrated into the to do list.)

That’s the Motidayt Method for managing tasks and planning goals in a nutshell. It’s not a one size fits all solution, but for people who have yet to try a proper task management system or find the methods common in other task management apps impractical, I think it offers a good balance of simplicity and effectiveness. If you have any question or thoughts please share!

The post The Motidayt Method for Managing Tasks & Achieving Goals appeared first on Motidayt.

“Success is the product of daily habits”

The key to achieving long-term goals is building the habits required to accomplish them. And one of the best strategies for building habits is to use a habit tracker.

I’d honestly thought habit trackers were a gimmick for people lacking the resolve to “do the work,” but I’ve found them incredibly effective at kickstarting and maintaining progress for two reasons:

1. The only way to know that you’re actually putting enough time and effort towards your goal is to keep track of it.
2. Seeing your success from previous days and weeks provides a powerful sense of accomplishment, as well as motivation to maintain progress.

So should you use an app to track habits or go with old-school pen and paper? Let’s start with a look at printable habit trackers (complete with a free printable PDF), then compare the merits of habit tracker apps.

Printable Habit Trackers

My own early habit tracking success came from using the single-habit, full-year tracker below. Some printable habit tracker templates track multiple habits – usually for the span of a few weeks at a time – but I think for people new to habit tracking it’s good to start with tracking just one or two habits for your most important goals.

To get started you’ll need a printout of the PDF linked below, a red highlighter, and a blue or green highlighter. On the days you do your habit, fill in the corresponding date with the blue highlighter. On the days you miss it, fill in the date with the red one. Simple, right?

That said here are a few tips to make the most of your printable habit tracker:

• Put it someplace you’re sure to see it several times a day. I posted mine on the inside of my front door at first, but later simply kept it on top of my desk, which worked equally well.
• You can optionally write milestones for your goal in the blocks for dates. (In the example above, I have April 30 marked as the date I wanted to start actually using the app I was building.)
• Mark your habit tracker by the end of each day. You should not be thinking back and marking days before. You might not be able to remember whether you did the habit on a previous day, and more importantly the daily act of marking your tracker provides a little extra motivation and reward for doing the habit.
• Never ever mark a habit done before you’ve actually done it. Accountability – even only towards yourself – is huge, and if you give yourself that little dopamine hit before actually doing the work you’re sabotaging your own success.

Here’s the habit tracker printable PDF for the full year of 2024. Don’t let the thought of empty days or months that may have already passed by keep you from getting started – far better starting late than never!

• 2024 full-year habit tracker (printable PDF)

Habit Tracker Apps

If you’re not set on tracking habits using pen and paper, habit tracker apps offer a number of benefits:

• They’re better at tracking multiple habits – You could use two of the above printouts for two different habits, or use a multi-habit paper habit tracker that span less time, but habit tracker apps are the easiest way to track multiple habits for an unlimited time.
• They offer more features – The simplicity of paper habit trackers is nice, but the best habit tracker apps offer simplicity plus optional extras like reminder notifications, tips and tactics, different ways of visualizing progress and more.
• They’re always easily accessible – Having your habit tracker within constant, easy access can be a huge boost to productivity if you take advantage of it. (One great strategy is to get into the habit of checking your habit tracker instead of your usual social media app when you find yourself free or bored.)

Most habit tracker apps follow one of two formats. Grid-style habit trackers show circles for days you’ve done a habit or Xs for days you’ve missed it over the past several days. List-style habit trackers show your habits, their weekly goals, and the number of times you’ve done each habit that week. I prefer the list-style trackers – not every habit needs to be done every day to be successful (weight training for example), and seeing big ugly Xs for missed days in those cases is unhelpful and counterproductive.

Habit Tracking Tips

Whether you use a paper habit tracker or an app, it’s helpful to be clear about the concrete actions your habit entails. Here are some good and not-so-good examples of action-based habits for different long-term goals.

Action-Based Habits for Goals

Anything resembling research or gathering of information doesn’t “count” as doing the habit in my own book. It’s all too easy to fall down the internet rabbit hole of endless links and distractions, and there’s a real risk of spending hours or days “preparing” for the goal or habit without making tangible progress. Some goals undoubtedly require research or prep, but I recommend making that initial research phase as short as possible – set a hard deadline for it and get to the actual action of the habit, even if you don’t feel completely prepared.

One other thing to consider is the minimum amount of work that makes your habit “done” each day. This can be either an achievement-based criteria or a time-based one. Here are some examples for the same long-term goals as above.

Achievement-Based vs Time-Based Criteria

For all of the above habits except perhaps the last one, I think time-based criteria are ideal. Achievements like writing a blog post or learning language phrases can vary tremendously by the circumstances, and it’s neither fair to yourself nor helpful for motivation to consider a habit “undone” simply because you couldn’t complete a harder task than usual or had trouble concentrating that day. Far more important is even on an off day to put in the time you’ve promised. And if you consistently dedicate that time towards your habits you’re sure to make progress.

One important rule for time-based habit achievement is to dedicate that time exclusively to the work. No checking messages as they come or having a look at Instagram. That’s why it’s best to keep your target time span short enough that 1) You’ll have enough time to do it on most days and 2) You can maintain focus for its entirety. Thirty minutes is a good duration to eventually aim for, but even ten minutes is a worthwhile start. Put your phone on focus mode, start a Pomodoro timer, work exclusively on the habit until the timer finishes, then mark that baby done for the day. (And if you find yourself wanting to keep working after the timer’s finished more power to you!)

Track Habits, Achieve Goals

Whether you decide to use a printable habit tracker like the PDFs above or a habit tracker app like Motidayt, tracking habits is one of the most effective ways to live a more productive, purposeful life and make progress towards goals. It’s been such a huge help in my own life for everything from keeping fit to progressing on creative projects I can hardly imagine these last couple years without it. Give it a dedicated effort for just a few weeks and I believe you’ll find it powerful as well.

The post Full-Year Habit Tracker (Printable & Free) for 2024 appeared first on Motidayt.