Building Habits You Can Keep Without Forcing Yourself

Do it every day#

A habit you do every day is easier to build than one you do 2 or 3 times a week.
When there are no gaps, it’s easier to get back the feeling you have while you’re doing it.

For example, I could never keep up strength training 2 or 3 times a week.
So I changed it to “on days I don’t do strength training, I stretch at home,” and moving my body in some way every day gradually became normal.

Especially until you get used to it, I recommend lowering the bar a little if you have to, so that you “touch it every day.”

It’s also important to adjust it to a level you can do every day.

When I was memorizing 30 English words a day,
the harder the words got, the longer it took to learn 30.
On top of that, lots of words with similar meanings got mixed up, so the load of memorizing became pretty heavy.

So I stopped insisting on 30 a day. I cut it to 15 to 20, or made some days review-only.
Even with a smaller amount, I kept “touching it every day,” so in the end the habit never broke.

Keep a record#

• Stamp a calendar
• Put a circle on a Gantt chart
• Stick on a sticker, and so on

I recommend recording what you did that day in a simple way, so you can see it at a glance.

Putting a circle gives you a sense of accomplishment, and you start wanting to keep filling in each day’s blank.

I like analog because it feels like I really did it, and I want to keep it where I can always see it, so I record in a planner that has a habit tracker.

Of course, recording in an app is fine too.
For my reading log, I use an app because it makes it easy to look up books.

My list of English books read extensively

I even made a habit-tracking app you can manage on your phone: A Dream I’d Had for Years Came True in One Week

Add some variety#

After about three weeks, “boredom” starts to creep in.

So for exercise, I change the exercises I do, or change what I focus on that day.

On days when I’m motivated I do more, and on days when I’m not, it’s okay to just touch it a little.

For example, when I want to write a new blog post but have no ideas and my hands won’t move, I just tidy up an old post.

I also add exception rules like “it’s fine as long as you touch it in some way,” which beats not doing it at all.

Even within the same genre, I think changing what you do little by little is the trick to keeping at it.

One is finding “fun” and “comfort” in the activity itself.#

I don’t actually like moving my body.
But exercise is good for my health.

After I felt that moving and sweating leaves me feeling refreshed, my body learned that it’s a hassle until I start but feels good once I do, so I became able to shut out that “ugh, what a hassle” voice in my head.

Feeling Tired Feels Good

I think finding fun in the activity, and feeling that “good feeling” again and again, becomes the driving force for keeping going.
People want to do more of what feels good, after all.

The other is noticing 1 mm of change.#

With things like memorizing words or reading books, once you can see what you’ve built up, like “I learned this many” or “I read this many,” you don’t want to waste that effort, so it’s easier to continue.
With words, you’ll find “Oh, I learned this word yesterday!” in a book or a movie.
It’s easy to feel that what you’re doing means something, and that becomes motivation to continue.

On the other hand, things where you can’t feel much change are hard to keep up.
If you build a daily habit aiming only at results, your spirit breaks all at once during the stretch where you can’t see any change.

So, even within the same routine, I think it’s good to catch the change: “today I learned one new thing,” “I tried one new thing.”