Establishing a certain level of dependability in any area of life—be it fitness, workplace efficiency, or personal development – generally hinges on a growing collection of routines or habits cultivated over time. The difficulty of sustaining this dependability may stem from a lack of measurable milestones or accountability partners. Tracking habits can help you focus on the behaviors you want to adopt, stay motivated, identify the areas of your behavior that need more work, or on the other hand, eliminate behaviors you have already mastered.
The development of a system to track your habits is a way to foster the reliability needed to achieve enduring results and, ultimately, to make a lasting improvement.
1. Set Achievable Goals
Establishing system is, first and foremost, about goal setting, system approach begins with the formulation of goals that can be defined in clear and achievable terms. Goals that lack definiteness may bring about the distraction of focusing on other goals or abandoning the system altogether at the first difficulty. Goals should be described in a way that is specific, clear, defined, and practicable.
Strategies for defining goals:
- Set simple goals: Change “become healthier” to “walk for at least 30 minutes a day, and run 3 times a week.”
- Do not set too many goals in your system to avoid frustration. Select goals which you can integrate in your current routines.Measuring progress: Ensure you are monitoring your progress using simple metrics like time, number of occurrences, and completion rates.
When you set specific goals, you give your behaviors meaning and a direction to aim. This becomes easier to track and makes sustaining the behaviors more likely.
2. Use of monitoring behaviors
The practice of making behavioral tracking a habit has been shown to be particularly good at fostering behavioral stability. When you track the behaviors you do every day, you find out how well you are doing the behaviors, why you do the behaviors, and how to do the behaviors without losing your focus.
Behavior tracking methods to use
- Use of habit tracking apps/ habit tracking journals. For example, Habitica, Streaks, and checkable calendars are great to track daily goals.
- Use of spreadsheets: For your behaviors, create a daily completion box in your spreadsheet.
- Use of bullet journals: If you prefer non-digital methods, bullet journals are a great way to track your behaviors in whatever design you prefer.
Sustaining behaviors is easier when you reinforce your commitment and track your progress. You will be motivated more to reach to the goals you set.
3. Analyze Your Behaviors and Analyze Your Patterns
To assist with habit tracking, analyzing your habits and patterns should lead to refining your habits and patterns. You should push yourself at each point to get your habits to where your goals lie with your desire to succeed. You should hope to push yourself more with each period of the phases of habit tracking, analyzing, and refining your goals.
Your Behaviors and Your Patterns – Analyzation Process
Examine Your Patterns – Examine your habits and your patterns to see if there are patterns (trends) to your habits, such as days where there is a significant drop in participation where there are significant gaps of inactivity. Are there some days where the patterns inside the habits are more difficult to achieve the goals of the habits inside the patterns?
Determine the presence of External Barriers – Examine your habits and your patterns to see if there are external issues that directly contribute to the poor external behavior. Are there more external factors that make it difficult vs. the presence of Factors? (factors that lie external to the patterns (the habits) )
Change Underlying Assumptions – Change the goals that drive your external behavior. For instance, most people might say that a habit of exercising daily is very difficult to achieve. Because of habit tracking, people find that the external goals have been set lower than what would lead to achieving the habits of the pattern. Change the goals of your external behavior to be focused on achieving the goals that are framed outside of the habits of the patterns. In other words, the effort to actually exercise should be more limited.
The analysis of your behaviors and the patterns you form as a result of those behaviors will lead you to take more actions as it will have been examined and the actions will be consistent.
4. Construct Accountability and Incentives
From an organizational behavior point of view, motivation and consistency are linked through accountability. Establishing an external reward system makes staying on track to complete tasks easier.
Ways to Enhance Accountability:
- Set up an accountability system: share your goals with a friend, colleague, or mentor and have them ask directly what you have done to meet these goals.
- Engage with your goals: Connect with communities or groups on social media that focus on goals.
- Give yourself a reward: Set a reward for yourself for achieving your goals, like a dessert reward for a week of successful goal-related behaviors.
Enhancing external accountability provides a sense of duty and makes maintaining consistency easier, especially when motivation is low.
Conclusion
Consistency, in conjunction with habit tracking, is a practical and powerful approach to achieving goals and building and sustaining positive habits. Clearly defined and realistic goals, along with habit tracking to establish and evaluate habits and accountability to shift goals, will support positive habits and goals in order to stay on track. Habit tracking will promote your ability to identify barriers to habit formation and correct them in a timely manner, allowing your habit to remain a stable aspect of your daily life. With the appropriate mindset and tools, you will be able to develop the consistent habits necessary to build your personal growth and success.