Establishing Habits

So this habits thing is getting to me. I've been back to reading blogs again lately and everybody seems to have a list of things you're supposed to do to get yourself together.

Healthy Habit Changes
10 Morning Habits
7 Habits of Highly Happy People
21 Habits of Happy People
50 Habits of Highly Successful People

The best thing that I can think of for me is something that I keep seeing on multiple sites. Having a morning or nightly routine, or both. So this is what I'm going to spend most of my habit real estate on. I'm going to build a morning routine and a night routine, drink water, and exercise. Thank should take care of most of the 20 habits. The only thing left to do is to keep track of how well I do with each habit.

So there are two types of habits I'm trying to track, "yes/no" habits and "how much" habits. Yes/No habits, for example, are either completed or they are not. I either got 6 or more hours of sleep or I didn't. I either worked out or I didn't. How Much habits are a little more interesting. Today I ran 2 miles, yesterday I ran 1 mile, tomorrow I will run 2.5 miles. How you choose to measure your goals depends only on you. When I first started running I only recorded if I ran or not. The more I ran, the more I kept track of other information for each run.

There are a bunch of different ways to keep track of habit info. I'm using these ones. They're all digital, so I don't have to worry about where I wrote stuff down. That's always been a problem for me before. Out of sight really does mean out of mind sometimes.

Yes/No Habits
Joes Goals - lets me add individual habits and check them off when you do them each day. it keeps track of how many habits I did in one day and how many days in a row I did (or skipped) a certain habit

How Much Habits
Daytum - lets me add items to do and quantities for each item. also makes graphs for when, how much, or what I did

Nike+ - I could really just use Daytum to keep track of when and how far I run, but this is sooo much more fun. it lets me interact with other people, set goals for myself (miles run, calories burned, speed) and challenge other runners. Things like this are for when you already keep track of basic information and want to try a little something extra (or just like the extra incentive - message boards are a great accountability tool)

You can also make your own checklists and graphs on the computer or by hand and use those to track your progress. Some of my favorite graphs have been ones I colored on graph paper in school. But for now I'm gonna use these. They work. Joe's Goals is programed to come up every time I get on the internet. Can't get much more of a reminder than that now can I?