6 Tips For Keeping Your Good Habits

How good are you at keeping to your good habits?

How often do you default on doing it?

Can you easily get back to your good habits?

What do you do to get back to them?

As I’m writing this story, I haven’t been able to wake up at my usual 4:30am for about a week.

I haven’t been able to commit to my daily activities like: writing, journaling, learning towards my 3 new skills, working out, and meditating.

As a result, I’m less motivated and less productive.

I can’t pinpoint exactly which one(s) of the activities above make the most difference, but as a whole, it was a powerful routine that helped me build and maintain momentum. And I’ve lost it.

Here are some tips that worked for me in the past and I’ll try to apply them again, and hopefully, they can help you too to keep your good habits:

1. Mark Completion Or Non-Completion Of A Habit In A Calendar, Or In An App

Now I know this sounds childish. All I can think about is the little stickers our parents would put on a calendar when we succeeded at brushing out teeth for example.

That’s universal, right?

But the key here is to also note the things you haven’t been able to accomplish too. And make that calendar visible for other people to see too. You don’t want to show them you didn’t do it. You also don’t want to have this “failure” in your face every day.

2. Measure All The Little Things

Not all habits are measurable, but for those that are, measure every little thing and you’ll see progress. And that’s very motivating to keep doing it.

For my 3 new skills, I’m following my Ultimate Skill-Boosting Worksheet to track my progress.

For workouts, I track repetitions and sets, plus weight and muscle size.

3. Make Your Habits Public, Or Find An Accountability Partner

That one I’ve been really bad at recently. I’m thinking of potentially making my habits calendar public, or maybe even my skill-tracking worksheet.

If you have a mentor or mentee, share your habits completion with them.

I think I was reading that Zdravko Cvijetic or Benjamin P. Hardy was phoning someone else just to be accountable for doing their habits. I think this is brilliant.

4. Perform Your Habits With A Partner

Stepping it up a notch here: perform some or all of your habits with a like-minded person. I wake up too early to do most of my habits with my wife, or anyone else, really, but I know doing it with someone else is powerful, that’s why some people go to the gym together.

You don’t want to let the other person down by not doing it.

And this works for any habit, not just working out.

5. Don’t Let Yourself Be Overwhelmed By The Own Goals You Set Yourself

I think that’s the biggest problem for me currently. With the book and vikingboutique.com releases earlier this months, and my game coming up next week, I’m actually quite overwhelmed.

But I’m at fault here. I forced myself to release the book and the store when I was not ready to promote them. And I’m heading the same path with my game, but thankfully I hired a company to handle that for me.

My advice: don’t make yourself too busy that you can’t keep up with your good habits. Good habits are good for a sane mental state and ultimately make you more productive.

6. Make Sure You Get Enough Rest

Building on the above point: rest is very important.

I sleep between 6 and 6 1/2 hours per night, but with 2 naps on average per day. This works great for short periods of time, but I try to sleep about 8–9 hours straight at least once a week.

But I needed more this weekend. I sleep 8 hours both days and napped a few times each day. That should give me the boost of energy I’ll need for the week.

Conclusion

Falling behind on good habits happens to everyone. And it’s not a great feeling.

That’s why when we realize that it’s happening to us, we need to do something about it, but we don’t always know what.

So I say make your habits “public”, mark your calendar, measure everything, perform them with someone, get enough rest and don’t overwhelm yourself. That should help you stick to your good habits.

You can do this!

Thanks for reading! :)