Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to try tracking your habits. Checking in
Speaker 1: each day on whether you've done what you intend to
Speaker 1: do can be a helpful tool in achieving your goals.
Speaker 1: Habit tracking has a long history. Founding father and self
Speaker 1: improvement enthusiast Benjamin Franklin famously created a list of thirteen virtues,
Speaker 1: such as frugality, moderation, and temperance. In his autobiography, Franklin
Speaker 1: describes the habit tracker he created as a way to
Speaker 1: visualize his progress. Each week, he drew a grid in
Speaker 1: his note book with a column devoted to each virtue.
Speaker 1: In the evenings, he considered whether or not he had
Speaker 1: upheld each virtue. Over the course of the day, he
Speaker 1: filled out the grid for that day accordingly. Now, despite
Speaker 1: my admiration for Franklin, I will say that his virtues
Speaker 1: were a wee bit vague. I think many of us
Speaker 1: would benefit from tracking more specific habits, really behaviors. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's keeping your daily spending under a certain amount. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's reading to your children for twenty minutes, watering your
Speaker 1: plants or walking ten thousand steps. All of these sound
Speaker 1: more doable than just temperance, but vague or not, Franklin's
Speaker 1: grid provides a lot of inspiration. Whether you use a
Speaker 1: paper note booklet Franklin, or an Excel spreadsheet or an app.
Speaker 1: Habit tracking can help keep you on track. I think
Speaker 1: this happens for a few reasons. First, habit tracking can
Speaker 1: help to increase the frequency of a desired behavior, simply
Speaker 1: because the act of looking at your tracker each day
Speaker 1: may remind you to do it. Second, a habit tracker
Speaker 1: can motivate you to start and continue a habit streak.
Speaker 1: Let's say you want to write at least five hundred
Speaker 1: words every day. After a few days of adhering to
Speaker 1: this habit, you'll start to see a chain of check
Speaker 1: marks and your habit tracker. This can be extremely motivating,
Speaker 1: and you can make a game out of seeing how
Speaker 1: long a streak you can maintain. Third, tracking helps us
Speaker 1: visualize how often we do things, and by giving us
Speaker 1: hard data, we can take some of the worry and
Speaker 1: emotions out of things. People are in general bad at
Speaker 1: estimating how often they perform certain behaviors. This problematic estimation
Speaker 1: can lead to broad pronouncements like I'm always on email
Speaker 1: or I never play with my kids. But by putting
Speaker 1: hard data down every day, you can gain a more
Speaker 1: objective perspective. This can provide a surprising level of comfort
Speaker 1: and reduce guilt. You may be on email a lot,
Speaker 1: but you are not always on email, Or maybe you
Speaker 1: feel you don't call your parents often enough. By tracking
Speaker 1: that behavior, you may realize that you actually speak to
Speaker 1: them on the phone far more often than you thought.
Speaker 1: You see, you call them twice a week, and you'd
Speaker 1: like to call them three times a week, so you
Speaker 1: just mindfully pick up the phone a little more often
Speaker 1: than you would success now, I would suggest limiting how
Speaker 1: many habits you track. Even Benjamin Franklin knew that focusing
Speaker 1: on too many habits at once would be overwhelming. He
Speaker 1: chose to focus closely on one of his virtues each week,
Speaker 1: rotating through the entire list four times per year. Similarly,
Speaker 1: it can be helpful to choose a short list of
Speaker 1: habits to track for a designated period of time, maybe
Speaker 1: a week, maybe a month. When that period is up,
Speaker 1: you can review your data and decide if you'd like
Speaker 1: to track the same habits again or change things up.
Speaker 1: Try filling out your habit tracker at the same time
Speaker 1: each day, maybe before bed, and enjoy watching how your
Speaker 1: behavior changes or for the good stuff remains steady. I'm
Speaker 1: sure Benjamin Franklin would have a great aphorism to describe
Speaker 1: this feeling, but I'll just say that progress is motivational.
Speaker 1: A page full of check marks will nudge you on
Speaker 1: to great Thanks. 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 the number four, then Breakfast p o D.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: podcast at i heeart media dot com that Before Breakfast
Speaker 1: is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is
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