Making your New Year’s resolutions stick with a habit tracker
This New Year, I believe many of us have made New Year’s resolutions. According to U.S. News & World Report, 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions quit by the second week of February. I have been setting New Year resolutions for many years and tried many ways to help me stick to them. One of the best ways I have found that helps me achieve my New Year’s resolutions is using a Habit tracker.
My fitness coach from FitJunction.com once told me that to achieve any goals; we must set two types of goals: an outcome goal and a behavior goal. An outcome goal is what we want to get, such as losing 10 lbs in 3 months. A behavior goal is an action that we must do consistently to achieve the outcome goal. For example, to lose weight, I will work out every day for 30 minutes.
One of the tools that can help us stick to our behavior goal is a habit tracker depicted in the picture below.
A habit tracker is a table we can use to track our habits. We cross off each day after we did a routine. As time goes by, a chain of Xs starts to appear. The longer we stick with the habit, the longer the chain. And the longer the chain, the more likely we stay motivated and stick with the habit.
According to a research result published in the European Journal of Social Psychology by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from University College London, it takes an average of 66 days for a new habit to be formed. Once we have developed a habit, it is likely to get easier to stick to it. For example, we have a habit of brushing our teeth in the morning. So when we wake up, we almost automatically go to the bathroom and brush our teeth.
I have used a habit tracker to make new habits myself. One of them that I am proud of the most is going to a gym at 5 pm. In the beginning, I had to put a lot of effort into stopping working ( I was a workaholic back then) and go to the gym. But after I did it many days in a row (I would say a few weeks in a row), it has become my routine. When it is around 5 pm, I will automatically wrap up my work, get my gym bag, and go to the gym.
To do some things consistently and make it a habit, we need to love what we do; otherwise, we will quit eventually. But if we do not love what we do initially, we may want to find a good reason to do it and use it as motivation. For example, I want to live a long and healthy life, and exercise is one of the ways that can increase longevity. So that is a good reason for me to make exercise my habit. Nevertheless, I have finally found a type of exercise that I enjoy (Zumba!), so I could make exercising my habit with less resistance.
I hope you found this article helpful and would encourage you to try it out. Feel free to comment or share your thoughts in the comment section :)
