Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2: Today's tip is about how not to forget little habits
Speaker 2: that you would like to build into life. By being
Speaker 2: smarter both about choosing habits and creating cues to do them,
Speaker 2: you can keep a streak going far longer than you
Speaker 2: might otherwise. I am a big fan of small daily habits.
Speaker 2: For the past few years, I've done a little bit
Speaker 2: of writing and a little bit of reading something big
Speaker 2: every day, well almost every day. I aimed to read
Speaker 2: the three hundred and sixty one chapters of War and
Speaker 2: Peace one chapter a day in twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 2: I did indeed end on December twenty seventh. However, I
Speaker 2: also aimed to write one vignette from a character's day
Speaker 2: every day in twenty twenty two. At some point in
Speaker 2: December I noticed that my numbering was off, and sure enough,
Speaker 2: my December thirty first entry was numbered three hundred sixty four.
Speaker 2: So I guess I must have forgot on one day. Whoops.
Speaker 2: It can happen. But if you do want to do
Speaker 2: a big project broken down into daily steps, being as
Speaker 2: consistent as possible can help cement the habit. Part of
Speaker 2: that is figuring out how not to forget the habit.
Speaker 2: How can you be sure that every single day you
Speaker 2: will remember to do whatever you have set a goal
Speaker 2: to do. Life can get busy. We do what we
Speaker 2: absolutely have to do, but sometimes we can lose track
Speaker 2: of the things we want to do, or our circumstances
Speaker 2: change on a particular day and our normal cues can't
Speaker 2: help us. What then, the first step to not forgetting
Speaker 2: turns out to be choosing well. When people say that
Speaker 2: they have trouble sticking with things, I often bring up
Speaker 2: tooth brushing. Many people who claim to have trouble with
Speaker 2: habits do manage to brush their teeth quite frequently. Indeed,
Speaker 2: they may have multi year streaks going of brushing their
Speaker 2: teeth at least once a day, if not more.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: It's not that they can't stick with a habit, It's
Speaker 2: just that to stick with other habits, those habits need
Speaker 2: to be more like brushing your teeth. That is, the
Speaker 2: habit shouldn't take much time. It should be reasonably pleasant
Speaker 2: or at least feel good afterwards. You have a set
Speaker 2: time to do it, and if you leave your normal routines,
Speaker 2: you take your equipment with you. Ideally, you also don't
Speaker 2: view this habit itself as a particularly big deal. It
Speaker 2: is just part of life, and when that is the case,
Speaker 2: things can run pretty much in perpetuity. Obviously, a great
Speaker 2: many habits do not share all of those features. I
Speaker 2: like to tell the story of how when I was
Speaker 2: on a cruise once the cruise director got up and
Speaker 2: told us that all diets were officially kicked to the curb.
Speaker 2: I guess he meant that we should feel free to
Speaker 2: stop our good eating habits, whatever those happened to be.
Speaker 2: But he didn't get up and tell us to kick
Speaker 2: oral hygiene to the curb, or that, hey, we were
Speaker 2: having fun, so we should feel free to stop brushing
Speaker 2: our teeth. Indeed, I think people would have found that
Speaker 2: a little weird. No one above the age of ten
Speaker 2: or so gets upset about brushing their teeth on vacation.
Speaker 2: So if you want to build a new daily habit,
Speaker 2: it needs to be like that.
Speaker 1: Reading one very.
Speaker 2: Short chapter in a big book, or writing two lines
Speaker 2: of poetry, maybe meditating for four minutes. If it inspires
Speaker 2: a lot of resistance, it probably won't happen, and you
Speaker 2: will find ways to forget. But once you have chosen well,
Speaker 2: remembering is more about taking some practical steps. You need
Speaker 2: something to trigger mindfulness that you intend to do the habit.
Speaker 2: One good option is to choose a general time or queue.
Speaker 2: Maybe it could be with your morning coffee, Unless your
Speaker 2: morning coffee is more of an uncertain thing. Maybe you
Speaker 2: could tie it too brushing your teeth first thing at
Speaker 2: your desk, and then figure out what the queue will
Speaker 2: be on weekends. Since a truly daily it should happen
Speaker 2: on Saturday and Sunday too, Perhaps you can set a
Speaker 2: recurring alarm and then make a decision. If it can't
Speaker 2: happen at the alarm time, you immediately reset the alarm
Speaker 2: for a later time when you will make that decision again.
Speaker 2: Then it helps to have some way to track compliance.
Speaker 2: With reading a big book, this is somewhat apparent. Are
Speaker 2: you farther along than you were a few days ago?
Speaker 2: Or if you are writing daily entries in a word file,
Speaker 2: you can see how many entries there are. But for
Speaker 2: some things like meditating, maybe you record somewhere when you've
Speaker 2: done it, put it on your to do list for
Speaker 2: the day to remind yourself of it. I put rituals
Speaker 2: on my daily to do lists and cross that word
Speaker 2: off when I've written lines in my poems and read
Speaker 2: my ten pages of Jane Austen, which is this year's project.
Speaker 2: And yes I will note if I have done it
Speaker 2: on weekends too. A weekend to do list doesn't need
Speaker 2: to look like a weekday to do lift. But you
Speaker 2: probably have some intentions for the day, so better to
Speaker 2: remember them than not remember them. Or maybe you get
Speaker 2: an app that will remind you each day to say
Speaker 2: you've done something. Most of us do look at our
Speaker 2: phones on weekends, just as we do on weekdays, so
Speaker 2: you can forget, but it will be harder. In any case,
Speaker 2: adapting a new habit can be challenging. Sometimes we don't
Speaker 2: feel like doing things, But with some habits, it's also
Speaker 2: just possible to forget. Setting things up so it is
Speaker 2: harder to forget means that is less likely to happen,
Speaker 2: and eventually the habit will become just like brushing your teeth.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 2: here's to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you You can
Speaker 1: send me your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just
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Speaker 1: Breakfast Pod. That's b E the number four then Breakfast pod.
Speaker 1: You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
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Speaker 1: out with all the letters. Thanks so much, should I
Speaker 1: look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a
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