Second Cup: How not to forget your habits

every day, well almost every day. I aimed to read the three hundred and sixty one chapters of War and Peace one chapter a day in twenty twenty one, and I did indeed end on December twenty seventh. However, I also aimed to write one vignette from a character's day every day in twenty twenty two. At some point in December I noticed that my numbering was off, and sure enough, my December thirty first entry was numbered three hundred sixty four. So I guess I must have forgot on one day. Whoops.

It can happen. But if you do want to do a big project broken down into daily steps, being as consistent as possible can help cement the habit. Part of that is figuring out how not to forget the habit. How can you be sure that every single day you will remember to do whatever you have set a goal to do. Life can get busy. We do what we absolutely have to do, but sometimes we can lose track of the things we want to do, or our circumstances change on a particular day and our normal cues can't

help us. What then, the first step to not forgetting turns out to be choosing well. When people say that they have trouble sticking with things, I often bring up tooth brushing. Many people who claim to have trouble with habits do manage to brush their teeth quite frequently. Indeed, they may have multi year streaks going of brushing their teeth at least once a day, if not more. So. It's not that they can't stick with a habit, It's just that to stick with other habits, those habits need

to be more like brushing your teeth. That is, the habit shouldn't take much time. It should be reasonably pleasant or at least feel good afterwards. You have a set time to do it, and if you leave your normal routines, you take your equipment with you. Ideally, you also don't view this habit itself as a particularly big deal. It is just part of life, and when that is the case, things can run pretty much in perpetuity. Obviously, a great

many habits do not share all of those features. I like to tell the story of how when I was on a cruise once the cruise director got up and told us that all diets were officially kicked to the curb. I guess he meant that we should feel free to stop our good eating habits, whatever those happened to be. But he didn't get up and tell us to kick oral hygiene to the curb, or that, hey, we were having fun, so we should feel free to stop brushing our teeth. Indeed, I think people would have found that

a little weird. No one above the age of ten or so gets upset about brushing their teeth on vacation. So if you want to build a new daily habit, it needs to be like that. Reading one very short chapter in a big book, or writing two lines of poetry, maybe meditating for four minutes. If it inspires a lot of resistance, it probably won't happen, and you will find ways to forget. But once you have chosen, well, remembering

is more about taking some practical steps. You need something to trigger mindfulness that you intend to do the habit. One good option is to choose a general time or queue. Maybe it could be with your morning coffee. Unless your morning coffee is more of an uncertain thing, maybe you could tie it too brushing your teeth first thing at your desk, and then figure out what the queue will be on weekends. Since a truly daily ha it should happen on Saturday and Sunday too, perhaps you can set

a recurring alarm and then make a decision. If it can't happen at the alarm time, you immediately reset the alarm for a later time when you will make that decision again. Then it helps to have some way to track compliance. With reading a big book, this is somewhat apparent. Are you farther along than you were a few days ago? Or if you are writing daily entries in a word file,

you can see how many entries there are. But for some things like meditating, maybe you record somewhere when you've done it, put it on your to do list for the day. To remind yourself of it. I put rituals on my daily to do lists and cross that word off when I've written lines in my poems and read my ten pages of Jane Austen, which is this year's project. And yes I will note if I have done it on weekends too. A weekend to do list doesn't need

to look like a weekday to do lift. But you probably have some intentions for the day, so better to remember them than not remember them. Or maybe you get an app that will remind you each day to say you've done something. Most of us do look at our phones on weekends, just as we do on weekdays, so you can forget, but it will be harder. In any case, adapting a new habit can be challenging. Sometimes we don't feel like doing things, But with some habits, it's also

just possible to forget. Setting things up so it is harder to forget means that is less likely to happen, and eventually the habit will become just like brushing your teeth. In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod.

That's b E the number four then Breakfast pod. You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast Podcasts. At iHeartMedia dot com that before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much, should I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.