Today I’m going to tell you how to build daily habits by turning routine into a game. Become super productive and give yourself a foundation and permission to explore things that YOU want to do.
1. Get a calendar to hang on the wall. Buy yourself a full year wall calendar if you can find one. Having the full year displayed at once is not terribly important, but I’ll explain and you can decide if a month-by-month calendar works for you. If so, fine. (Works fine for me because I got one for free. I tore it apart and taped the months to my door.) Get calendars on Amazon.com or try FreePrintableCalendar.net.
2. Get colored markers. At least 4 colors is recommended but you can start with a single one if you’ve got it. Here are some markers on Amazon.com. Get some fat and fun markers with distinct colors.
3. Get started.
Getting Started
Pick something something you need to do every day as a habit. For me, a nice starter habit was: Consume 2 tablespoons of Oat Bran every day. (This was when I was experimenting with the Dukan diet.) And hey, Oat Bran is sort of brown so grab a brown marker.
Draw a horizontal line across the first day that you meet your goal. Let’s pretend it is Monday as an example. The next day, when you have the Oat Bran again, continue the horizontal line over Tuesday. Continue on Wednesday. What you should be building is an unbroken line clearly indicating your success over the last 3 days.
Your goal: Don’t break the chain. Wrap that line all around that calendar and don’t break it.
Now, when you pick something as simple as this, and do it for a week or more, you will be addicted. As you strengthen the muscles of self-disciplined, that’s when you grab your black marker and practice playing piano for 15 minutes a day. (Insert your target habit and color here.) Draw that black line on Today, right under the brown line for Oat Bran.
The next day, another 15 minutes of Piano, another serving of Oat Bran, and another black and brown line respectively. (Note to self: Don’t get Oat Bran in the piano.) Just keep on going. Add as many things as you like but I recommend you ease yourself in one at a time. When you run out of colors, try to get more markers, but in a pinch you can use words.
What if my habit isn’t daily?
OK so what do you do with things you can’t do every day, like lifting weights?
Answer: Multiple Vertical lines that cross through all the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, for example. Not frequent enough for you? Time to break out the candy-cane lines. (Since this is corner to corner, this really only works best with one single habit color.)
The point is the make it fun and to challenge yourself to keep those lines going. And don’t worry if you break some chain at some point, especially if you have a lot of other chains on those days! The point is to see how much work you really do, and have incentive to continue being an all-star at your huge number of positive activities.
After a while, the lines aren’t important anymore. It is about putting something on that calendar on every day. You’ll be damned if you let a day go empty.
When I first started this, here were my colors:
Red – Exercise or Diet
Green – Having a clean environment
Blue – College
Brown – Oddball notes for infrequent activities ranging from Piano, to performing Favors, going to the Doctor, or going out on Dates. I view this as mostly interchangeable. At some point random activities just become Track D in your life.
Black – Exceptions, such as working late and not being able to work on my chains
I always want to add more things onto the calendar, and lots of things really, but I don’t feel bad about not doing it because I can clearly see: I’m really busy. I’ll need to swap things out to make room.
Reward Yourself
So guess what all this does for you? I bet you thought it was to be super productive. Well sure, but equally important this frees you up to take some time off. Yep. When you see this massive array of colors streaming into your retinas for something like 21 straight days, believe me you will feel A-OK to write “Me Me Me Me” on a Saturday and do nothing but play video games.
One of my favorite axioms David Allen coined was, “If you put all your [work] in one place, you will go on a diet.” Indeed; True in every aspect of life. I realized that I was overworked and needed to set aside time for myself.
The Approach to Lines
There are many ways you could go about arranging your colors. I chose to build a foundation like this:
Physicial Health -> Cleanliness and room to work -> Primary Goals -> Extracurricular.
I felt very much at the time that unless I was treating myself correctly through diet and exercise that my other lines would crumble, so Red (Exercise or Diet) was always my first line drawn. You might feel differently about this and that’s just fine. If your goal is to write for 15 minutes every day before you even have breakfast, then go for it. Make that your first line of the day. Others (maybe the most wise among us) would start their day by watching inspiring films or comedies.
Any way you go about it, always make it a game. Draw an especially thick line or braid if you worked at it really hard that day. Make it meaningful by try to keep it simple. Give yourself permission to doodle on each day instead of drawing lines. Do what works.