Get Those Good Habits Rolling!

Let’s get in to some healthy habits. I don’t know about you, but I find starting up a new good habit to be really, really hard. I feel motivated and accomplished for about four days, but then I get lazy and revert back to my old ways. A month later I look back at my failed attempt to better myself and feel like an undisciplined underachiever. 

I think this is something everyone goes through sometimes. 

While studying in psychology, I took a class entitled Motivation and Emotion. It was one of my favourite classes, actually. One of the things covered in this class is the difference between instant and delayed gratification. It occurred to me that I was having so much trouble forming new good habits because there was no immediate reward, only hopes of a better future life. 

To figure out some sort of daily reward system, I turned to the internet. I stumbled across the post-it note system. Have a series of post-it notes with numbers counting up from 1, put them in an unavoidable spot (like your washroom mirror), and each day that you complete your new habit, remove a note. 

It’s like the sticker reward system daycare teachers everywhere use to train preschoolers, only in reverse. 

After a little bit of research, I found that an average adult will take about 3 weeks of consistent daily habit forming activity in order to solidify that habit into the daily routine. So, I made up 21 post-it notes, numbered 1 to 21, stuck them to my mirror, and away I went. 

In this picture I'm 5 days in to a habit I'm trying to start. These post-its are stuck to a hallway closet door frame. Fingers crossed! 

You know what?? It worked!! After 21 days of post-it note-ing, the habit stuck *har-har* 

I’ve used this system over the past couple years to remember to take vitamins, go running, start getting ready for bed at a decent hour, etc. It works for anything you want to start doing daily. 

I’m yet to find a helpful habit forming tool for things that don’t need to be done every day, such as the workout I have been failing to do four times a week for the past year. But hey, I’m not Wonder Woman, I don’t need to be perfect.