Habit Tracking August: A Complete Failure

I have previously posted about a new system I have adopted for tracking my habits. In the month of July, I think I did reasonably well in sticking to the habits I have set out to adopt. My system is designed to make it easy to enter data (simply use a marker pen) and to provide an immediate visual overview of how well things are going.

For July, it is easy to see that there is a lot more green than there is red or yellow. I didn't do perfectly but I managed to exercise, mediate and learn quite regularly as can be seen in the below image.

Alas in the last month, things seemed to have gone horribly wrong:

• I only managed to exercise four times in the entire month
• I didn't manage to wake up at my desired time (5:30 am) even once
• I only meditated five times and not at all in the second half of the months
• I didn't follow through with my learning (a small touch typing exercise) in the last 1.5 weeks of the months.

I think the success in sticking to my habits is a good reflection of how well I felt in the past month. I was struggling with a cold for most of the month and for the past week my wife and I went to New Zealand for business travel which complicated realising my habits.

I think it is very interesting that my ability to stick to habits correlates with my well-being. I wonder what is the cause and effect relationship here; I would assume that it would go both ways; that I am better at sticking to my habits when I am feeling well but also that sticking to the particular habits I choose makes me feel better.

I think I especially need to find a better way for struggling with a cold; maybe do some very light exercise rather than none at all. But I am also conscious that, when feeling unwell, one of the best things to do is to rest and not to stress out about all the things we ought to do.

Interestingly I think I also gained some weight in the past month. I weighed myself at the gym of the hotel were we were staying and I weighed 76 kg, which is I think a few kilograms more than I usually weigh. I am thinking if I should start tracking my weight as well as an additional metric to track how well I am doing overall.

Image credit: The Digital Artist