Mistakes to avoid to turn those habits into your life
Ever since I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, I have become obsessed with building habits. I love learning about different habits that I can implement and I get excited to integrate them into my life.
Over the past years I have learned about habits, I have also come across a few mistakes that I have made that affected my progress with these habits. Honestly, I have a tendency to try to get things. I have a tendency to get so excited about these new habits that I’m learning and want to build them all at once. I also have the tendency to get impatient when the habits don’t show an immediate result.
But that is what I’m going to delve into in this blog post. I will share with you the 5 mistakes I made when building habits, that I now avoid.
Let’s get into this.
1 – Focusing on the “perfect” streak
The “perfect” streak is where you do a habit for as many days in a row. The moment you just miss one day, you break the streak.
However, it may be worth considering avoiding this mentality. Focusing on the perfect streak gives an “all-or-nothing” mentality meaning that if you slip up, you might feel like you have ruined everything.
Instead of focusing on a “perfect streak”, focus on tracking the percentage. For example, if you are tracking your habits within a month (30 days), and you missed doing the habit for 6 days, you still have the habit 24 out of the 30 days! When you calculate that as a percentage, it’s 80%!
RELATED: The Best Alternative to Habit Tracking
2 – Setting Unrealistic Goals
This is where you either try to:
- Start multiple new habits at once
- Starting big – for example, aiming to workout 6 days a week when you’re beginning this habit.
- Focusing on intensity – for example, aiming for 1-hour workouts every day.
Trying to do too much at the same time can feel overwhelming. For instance, if you try to start multiple new habits at once, it can be challenging to track and remember to do them.
When you aim to workout 6 days a week, it can feel overwhelming because you may not be used to having that big commitment just yet. And when it all doesn’t work out, we can feel down about ourselves.
So, that’s why it is important to start with small steps. Small steps forward, are still steps forward. You’d rather have small steps going forward, then staying in the same place or going backwards by trying to do too much in one go.
Instead of trying to start multiple habits at once, start with one or two. Then you can always build up.
Instead of aiming to workout 6 times a week, aim for twice a week. Then you can always add more days.
Instead of aiming to workout 1 hour a day, start with 20-30 minutes. Then, you can always add more time.
You may notice the pattern – you can start small and always build up as you go.
3 – Not being specific enough
These include goals and habits that are vague such as:
- Exercise More
- Eat Healthier
- Sleep More
For me, I need something to be specific for me to follow through. For example, I’m more likely to follow through on “Walking 1 hour a day” than “Exercise more”.
I’m more likely to follow through on “Meal prep my lunches once a week” than “Eat healthier”.
I’m more likely to follow through on “Go to bed by 11pm” than “Sleep more”.
Think about it: you can’t just put in the GPS that you want to go East, West, or even a specific suburb. You need to put an exact address in to go somewhere. Same thing with your habits.
RELATED: New Year Goal Setting Routine
4 – Expecting Instant Results
It’s pretty obvious when you think about it. You can’t expect to become fluent in Spanish by doing one Spanish lesson, and even 10 or 20. You can’t expect to become ready for a marathon after just one run.
When it comes to building habits, especially the lasting ones that fully integrate into your lifestyle, it will take time.
You don’t expect a really good cake or a good meal to be made instantly. It takes time to prepare and cook/bake. It’s the same concept when it comes to your habits.
It’ll take time to figure out how your new habits will integrate into your lifestyle. It will take time to figure out the patterns and see what works & what doesn’t when it comes to implementing a habit. Most importantly, it will take time, whether days, weeks, or months, for a habit to feel automatic.
5 – Neglect Habit Tracking
I don’t know why I said I didn’t like habit tracking before lol. But over the last year or two, I’ve found how helpful habit tracking is for the following things:
- Identifying your patterns
- Identifying what you need to work more on.
For instance, when you are habit tracking, you may notice that you don’t do your “waking up early” on days you have slept late the night before. Once you identify this pattern, then you are able to fix it accordingly. Another example is if you notice that you don’t workout on days when it rains (because you go for walks). Once you notice this, then you can find solutions on how to workout even on days if it rains (such as doing a YouTube workout).
Habit tracking also helps you identify what you need to work on more. For instance, if you are currently tracking 5 daily habits, then you may notice that there is one habit where you have multiple missed days. By identifying that, you know what habits you should focus on improving moving forward.
That’s why, without habit tracking, you miss the opportunity to track the patterns and improvement spots that will help you better implement them into your life and make it a lasting habit.
Take a SMALL STEP
Here are some small steps to avoiding these mistakes:
- Have a habit tracker – whether electronically or through a journal. I do mine through Notion.
- Be specific with the new habits you want to integrate – you know it’s specific when you have an exact number and task (for example, I will go on a walk 2 times a week over I will walk more).
- Start with just 1-2 habits to track and then you can always build up as you go.
- To help motivate you, reward yourself every 7 days for consecutively doing a habit. Even though it’ll take time to build a habit, it’s important to give yourself credit along the way.
- Start habit tracking for 7 days if you’re starting out.
To Wrap Up
Ultimately, tracking your habits and getting specific with your goals will better help you make a habit automatic and a part of your lifestyle. It’ll also help to not let perfectionism, unrealistic goals, and instant gratification take over. Again, habits take time to make them lasting and a part of your everyday life.
It is all about the small steps. Just like what I have mentioned before, small steps area great way to go because you are still going forward. Plus, you can always build up and add more as you go. I’ve actually got a whole book on Small Steps in the Free Resources Library!
So yeah, here’s to building lasting habits!
-Lauren 🙂
P.S I suggest reading these blog posts next.
- The Ultimate Beginner Guide to Creating Habits
- How I Transformed & Improved My Habits
- 5 Little But Effective Ways to Improve Your Habits
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hi, this is Lauren! I’m a lawyer from Melbourne, Australia. On laurenbarri.com, I create content on all things personal development, productivity, self-care, and habits! I am super passionate about these topics because of how they helped me in all areas of my life, and I want to share it with others!
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