Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is about how not to forget little habits that
Speaker 1: you would like to build into life. By being smarter
Speaker 1: both about choosing habits and creating cues to do them,
Speaker 1: you can keep a streak going far longer than you
Speaker 1: might otherwise. I am a big fan of small daily habits.
Speaker 1: For the past few years, I've done a little bit
Speaker 1: of writing and a little bit of reading something big
Speaker 1: every day, well almost every day. I aimed to read
Speaker 1: the three hundred and sixty one chapters of War and
Speaker 1: Peace one chapter a day in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 1: I did indeed end on December twenty seventh. However, I
Speaker 1: also aimed to write one vignette from a character's day
Speaker 1: every day in twenty twenty two. At some point in
Speaker 1: December I noticed that my numbering was off, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: my December thirty first entry was numbered three hundred sixty four.
Speaker 1: So I guess I must have forgot on one day. Whoops.
Speaker 1: It can happen. But if you do want to do
Speaker 1: a big project broken down into daily steps, being as
Speaker 1: consistent as possible can help cement the habit. Part of
Speaker 1: that is figuring out how not to forget the habit.
Speaker 1: How can you be sure that every single day you
Speaker 1: will remember to do whatever you have set a goal
Speaker 1: to do. Life can get busy. We do what we
Speaker 1: absolutely have to do, but sometimes we can lose track
Speaker 1: of the things we want to do, or our circumstances
Speaker 1: change on a particular day and our normal cues can't
Speaker 1: help us. What then, the first step to not forgetting
Speaker 1: turns out to be choosing well. When people say that
Speaker 1: they have trouble sticking with things, I often bring up
Speaker 1: tooth brushing. Many people who claim to have trouble with
Speaker 1: habits do manage to brush their teeth quite frequently. Indeed,
Speaker 1: they may have multi year streaks going of brushing their
Speaker 1: teeth at least once a day, if not more. So.
Speaker 1: It's not that they can't stick with a habit, It's
Speaker 1: just that to stick with other habits, those habits need
Speaker 1: to be more like brushing your teeth. That is, the
Speaker 1: habit shouldn't take much time. It should be reasonably pleasant
Speaker 1: or at least feel good afterwards. You have a set
Speaker 1: time to do it, and if you leave your normal routines,
Speaker 1: you take your equipment with you. Ideally, you also don't
Speaker 1: view this habit itself as a particularly big deal. It
Speaker 1: is just part of life, and when that is the case,
Speaker 1: things can run pretty much in perpetuity. Obviously, a great
Speaker 1: many habits do not share all of those features. I
Speaker 1: like to tell the story of how when I was
Speaker 1: on a cruise once the cruise director got up and
Speaker 1: told us that all diets were officially kicked to the curb.
Speaker 1: I guess he meant that we should feel free to
Speaker 1: stop our good eating habits, whatever those happened to be.
Speaker 1: But he didn't get up and tell us to kick
Speaker 1: oral hygiene to the curb, or that, hey, we were
Speaker 1: having fun, so we should feel free to stop brushing
Speaker 1: our teeth. Indeed, I think people would have found that
Speaker 1: a little weird. No one above the age of ten
Speaker 1: or so gets upset about brushing their teeth on vacation.
Speaker 1: So if you want to build a new daily habit,
Speaker 1: it needs to be like that. Reading one very short
Speaker 1: chapter in a big book, or writing two lines of poetry,
Speaker 1: maybe meditating for four minutes. If it inspires a lot
Speaker 1: of resistance, it probably won't happen, and you will find
Speaker 1: ways to forget. But once you have chosen well, remembering
Speaker 1: is more about taking some practical steps. You need something
Speaker 1: to trigger mindfulness that you intend to do the habit.
Speaker 1: One good option is to choose a general time or queue.
Speaker 1: Maybe it could be with your morning coffee, Unless your
Speaker 1: morning coffee is more of an uncertain thing. Maybe you
Speaker 1: could tie it too brushing your teeth first thing at
Speaker 1: your desk, and then figure out what the queue will
Speaker 1: be on weekends. Since a truly daily it should happen
Speaker 1: on Saturday and Sunday too, Perhaps you can set a
Speaker 1: recurring alarm and then make a decision. If it can't
Speaker 1: happen at the alarm time, you immediately reset the alarm
Speaker 1: for a later time when you will make that decision again.
Speaker 1: Then it helps to have some way to track compliance.
Speaker 1: With reading a big book, this is somewhat apparent. Are
Speaker 1: you farther along than you were a few days ago?
Speaker 1: Or if you are writing daily entries in a word file,
Speaker 1: you can see how many entries there are. But for
Speaker 1: some things like meditating, maybe you record somewhere when you've
Speaker 1: done it, put it on your to do list for
Speaker 1: the day to remind yourself of it. I put rituals
Speaker 1: on my daily to do lists and cross that word
Speaker 1: off when I have written lines in my poems and
Speaker 1: read my ten pages of Jane Austen, which is this
Speaker 1: year's project. And yes I will note if I have
Speaker 1: done it on weekends too. A weekend to do list
Speaker 1: doesn't need to look like a weekday to do. But
Speaker 1: you probably have some intentions for the day, so better
Speaker 1: to remember them than not remember them. Or maybe you
Speaker 1: get an app that will remind you each day to
Speaker 1: say you've done something. Most of us do look at
Speaker 1: our phones on weekends, just as we do on weekdays,
Speaker 1: so you can forget, but it will be harder. In
Speaker 1: any case, adapting a new habit can be challenging. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we don't feel like doing things, But with some habits,
Speaker 1: it's also just possible to forget. Setting things up so
Speaker 1: it is harder to forget means that is less likely
Speaker 1: to happen, and eventually the habit will become just like
Speaker 1: brushing your teeth. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
Speaker 1: your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod.
Speaker 1: That's b E the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeartMedia dot com that Before Breakfast is spelled
Speaker 1: out with all the letters. Thanks so much, should I
Speaker 1: look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.