How to create a good habit easily (yay!)

Daphne helping me with my blogging

If you’ve ever had a blog, you will know that writing a blog post can be the easiest and most fun thing in the world, or the hardest, most time-consuming and procrastination-causing task you’ve ever done.

Everyone starts off with good intentions and a fair bit of excitement, but when you decide that yes, you do want to be a writer and commit to a weekly blog post (or fortnightly, or twice-weekly, whatever it is for you), sometimes it’s a hard task to even think up a topic let alone write 300-1,200 words (depending on how long you want your post to be).

Enter this fun new challenge I am doing, which can be for blogging or virtually any other habit you want to get better at.  Bad habits seem to form easily and without you even noticing, but good habits?  They are way harder to set in place – why is that?  Maybe for the same unknown reason that chocolate lures us more than broccoli (although I love broccoli a lot, but still).

The fun habit-forming challenge I am talking about is this:

The Daily Habit Tracker

I printed off a single calender page from Microsoft Excel.  This one little piece of paper is going to transform my month!  Basically you cross off the square for each day that you do the habit you want to cement into your life, and the goal is to have a string of unbroken Xs for the entire month.

I decided that to help with my blog post issues of late (whereby I leave it until the last minute and then stress myself out coming up with a post; I do believe this doesn’t compromise my quality, but I would like to approach my blogging in an easier fashion!), I would focus on writing blog posts every day for a month.

If I can write 31 blog posts in 31 days (and let’s give myself a maximum of thirty minutes to write one, so I don’t spend all day on it), that gives me a lot of banked work to be able to focus on writing my books for weeks on end instead of stopping and starting.  I do find it best to focus on one thing at a time.

This will also build momentum with my writing, and at the end of the month I can feel proud that I achieved what I set out to.  I am so excited by this ‘new’ idea that I have already started thinking what my next focus could be.

There are so many things to choose from, in all areas of your life, such as:

30 minutes a day walking

X number of sets of strength training

30 minutes a day weeding the garden

Healthy food prep once a day (for the next 24 hours)

10 minutes of yoga

A no-spend month

Declutter/tidy/organise/mend things etc for 30 minutes a day

Journal for 30 minutes a day

30 minutes a day writing your book – imagine how proud you would feel after a month, with fifteen hours work done – that’s a lot of writing!

The goal is not to break the chain of Xs as you complete your chosen action for the day, but say you missed one or two days of the month, you would still achieve a lot.  The beauty of having a calendar page to cross off is that having that page of Xs being completed would encourage you to keep on going and not let a blip ruin your intention for the month.  Whereas if you weren’t tracking on paper and missed a day you may feel tempted to give up.  Sort of like breaking your diet so you quit it altogether

This blog post is the first one I am writing in this challenge, and it’s flying out of me!  I am excited to see what else I can write about with my daily blog post, and you will be able to read them as the months go by!  I know that batching tasks isn’t a new thing, but it sure feels like it’s shiny and fresh to me right now.

Perhaps you don’t feel able to commit to a month; it feels like a big hill to climb and you don’t want to start then fail because it will only compound other things you have dropped out of in the past.  Well, what about doing ten days?  Seven days?  Two weeks?  Three weeks?

Pick a number that feels good to you and start today.  17 sounds pretty good to me – I quite like the idea of a completely random number that no-one else would choose!  Have fun with it, make it feel light not heavy, and look forward to feeling so proud at the end of it.

I suppose this idea is similar to a child’s reward chart when they get stars for brushing their teeth, reading a book, being nice to their sister…  why not a grown-up version for yourself?  You could even include a reward if you want.  For me, the reward would be completing my month of linked Xs, but we’re all different.  If you would like a coffee date out with yourself, a massage or new book at the end of your challenge please be my guest.

I’m already thinking that for my next challenge my 30 minute daily habit will be addressing a hot spot in my home each day.  Bigger, messier hot spots like my sewing room will require multiple days or even the whole month, but smaller areas like the cupboard under my bathroom sink might get done in one 30 minute burst.

Exciting!  Who’s joining me?  Let me know what you are thinking would be a fun challenge.  By the way, I wrote this post in 27 minutes :)

~~Fiona~~

PS.  I’ve just reopened my e-Course ‘Create your dream life as a successful author’ as a home-study program.  It takes quite a lot of energy and time to have live rounds so I won’t be doing another for a while, but I’ve many emails from ladies who want to join.

It’s still an excellent price for what you get, and to be fair, the home-study version isn’t all that much different from the live rounds.  You receive a new training module (both written PDF and MP3 audios) each week for six weeks, four bonuses each week for six weeks and two Q&A audio recordings each week for six weeks, plus lifetime access to the private Facebook group where you can interact and be inspired by other authors-to-be.  I am also currently available in this group to answer questions.

If you would like to find out more about this new home-study program you can take a look here:  http://bit.ly/writersuccess

And if you dream of writing a book but have no clue where to start, I warmly invite you to join my FREE writer’s encouragement club where you will receive motivation and action steps to inspire your creative mind.

I’ve had great feedback from the emails I send out and many women have told me they’ve started writing, and with joy!

Join the free writer’s encouragement club here:  http://eepurl.com/c0kN39