Habits
When I started working out regularly back in 2016, I was always looking for motivation. Having worked with my coach for a couple of months and getting into the gym a couple of times a week, I could never really find my motivation.
Sure, I had the core motivation of not dropping dead before I was forty years old. I suppose that is a pretty good one, but when you're suffering from a pretty bad depressive state in general, it becomes less pressing, as grim as that sounds.
As I progressed, I started getting motivation. I saw my body, and my abilities, changing. I realized I could do this, and my coach continued to push me and reinforced my abilities. Still, some days were more difficult than others. I still plodded into the gym each day, did my thing, and pushed through. Some days were better than others.
What I didn't realize at that moment was that I was building habits. When it comes to motivation, it goes in waves for a lot of people. Some days you have it, some days you don't. Habits, on the other hand, are things that you are doing routinely. You do them regardless of whether you have the motivation or not.
There are mornings that I don't feel like going in for the morning WOD, but I do it anyway because it is a habit. My motivation is higher most days, but it is the habit that drives me every day.
There are those big habits we do. There are also little habits, and often these habits are the ones we neglect more. Whether it is because we forgot, or we just weren't focused on them. To tackle smaller habits, I have once again started "habit tracking." The idea is simple. Take a few habits you want to be more consistent on and use technology to apply "gamification" to them.
I learned a while ago you never want to have too many goals, or in this case, habits that you are focused on accomplishing. Instead, pick 4-6 to focus on and make them into consistent habits.
This month I just got back to consistently tracking these behaviors. I have six I picked out a while ago that I am refocusing on.
To track my habits, I use an app called Streaks, which is available for macOS & iOS. The app allows you to set up habits you want to complete, with the objective being to hit the habit consistently to build a streak of success.
One of the habits I have set up presently is to drink a minimum amount of water. This is something I am notoriously bad at, always neglecting to drink water consistently throughout the day. I use an app called Waterminder (this one is on Android as well as iOS) for tracking this. The app allows me to record not just how much I drank, but what type of beverage I drank. It adjusts the hydration value based on the drink type.
One of the great things about these apps is that they all connect to Apple Health. Whether or not you have an Apple Watch, you can leverage Apple Health. Using Apple Health, I can also use the Streaks app to track the number of steps taken by connecting it to Apple Health. It will provide automatic updates to the streak based on the number of steps recorded by my watch.
Some habits require me to update the Streaks app to indicate I completed them. Holding onto that habit marks it completed. The next day the page resets to let me do it all again.
My plan for the coming year is to add one habit to this list of six every month, and one habit gets moved to the "back" of the habits list. The one bumped will be a habit I am comfortable that I am doing it consistently. In January, the first swap will be to add a habit of reading daily, either fiction or non-fiction, but something each day.
The only thing missing is a habit tracker to track using my habit tracker.
