How to Habit Track
Editor’s Note: This post is brought to you by Johna Jenkins, a nurse practitioner, and the co-founder of our sister brand A Plan for Health.
Creating healthy routines and habits is one of my favorite forms of self-care. While they’re less fun than your traditional means of self-care, habits help ensure I’m present in the moment. Habits make life just a little bit easier, allowing me to better care for myself and my loved ones.
Knowing habits are important is only one part of the equation. You have to find ways to maintain those habits over time, making them second nature. Today, I’m sharing 5 ways I use the A Plan for Health habit trackers on a daily and weekly basis.
Vitamins and Medication
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this. If I am not feeling like myself, I can easily glance at my sheet and see that I wasn’t doing all of the things I “should” be doing in order to take care of myself well (usually skipping my vitamins!).
Kid Responsibilities
I tear a sheet off of our Habit Tracker Notepad and have my son tape it to his bathroom mirror. You could also tape it next to the door you leave for school. I have one child but he has several things to keep up with!
Studying the Bible
Because I want to make sure my mind isn’t distracted when I immerse myself in God’s word, I tend to keep putting it off all day because I want everything to be “perfect” for sitting down to read my Bible — it seems I’m almost always distracted! But that time rarely comes and then the day has gone by and it was never done. It’s something that’s very important to me so I’ve started tracking it in our Weekly Tracker Notebook.
Chip Away at an Overwhelming Task
Force yourself to focus on something you don’t want to do, but your future self will be SO glad you did. This could include cleaning up the photos on your phone or computer. I simply need to delete out many pictures that are accidental screenshots, blurry photos, duplicates, etc. Setting aside 10 minutes every day to do this until it’s complete is the quintessential eating an elephant one bite at a time. It is crazy overwhelming to do all at once, so making yourself keep up with doing it once a day can get it done faster and the pain is spread out.
Learn Something New
For a very long time, I have wanted to learn about stock investing. But from where I sit right now, it looks like Mt. Everest. I don’t even understand the lingo. So I got a “Dummies” book on investing and committed to 15 minutes a day of reading on this. It may take me a year to get through the book but I won’t miss 15 minutes a day and by this time next year, I will have educated myself on something completely new.
We have two ways of keeping up with your own habits: our Weekly Tracker Notepad or the Weekly Tracker Notebook. You can use these tools for daily, weekly, or even monthly tracking! For things that occur less often, I outline the box on the day(s) that it needs to be done.
These tools can be used for routine or habit that helps you and your family live a more balanced life. Here are some other ideas of habits or tasks to track daily, weekly or beyond!
- Journaling
- Meditating
- Exercising
- Food Intake (calories, macros, etc)
- Water intake
- Checking on friends and family
- Watering plants
- Walking the dog
- Blogging
- Symptoms
- Focus on a hobby
- 10 minute “pick up” around the house
- Clean out email inbox
- Flossing
- Check on your financial status (investments, checking account, credit cards)
- Steps
- Skincare
- Cleaning (Laundry, dishwasher, etc)
- Pay Bills (pick a certain day of the week to do this all at once)
- Updating your Daily Welness Tracker!
What are some of your daily and weekly habits? Share below!
