Habit Tracking February

This post is to document the tracking of my habits for the month of February 2020 according to my habit tracking system.

Here the overview of how I tracked against the habits I aimed to follow this month:

• Exercise and Stretching: Similarly to January, I was again able to exercise quite regularly. This included both running and playing RingFit. However, I found that I still became very stiff when exercising a few days in a row. I also got back pain which I attribute to my scooter - which does not have suspension and solid rubber wheels and which I have been driving quite extensively to get to and from work. I got my back checked out and in an x-ray they found some mild form of osteoarthritis. My doctor told me there is no cure for this but I suspect that exercise and stretching may help control the condition. I will need to find out in the next few months what exercises to do for this.
• Emails: I managed to stay on top of my inbox quite well throughout the month.
• Meditation: While I was getting back into meditation at the end of January, I didn't follow through with this in February.

Overall I think I need a effective system to help my stick to my habits. Interestingly, I believed I successfully adopted a new habit all without the help of my fancy paper and pen tracking system. Namely I went to the dentist and as usual got a telling off for not using an electric toothbrush and not flossing. This time I went straight to JB Hifi and bought an electric toothbrush and started flossing, which I did every day since. I wonder what made it easy for me to adopt this habit, yet I haven't succeeded with any of the other habits, I struggle to follow for the previous eight months.

One element might be habit chaining. Before I go to bed (and after I wake up), I brush my teeth, and after brushing my teeth (in the evening), I floss. It is also very clear what needs to be done. Whereas for my other habits, I often have different options; what exercise do I want to do; what meditation will I do. Maybe I should strive to reduce variability here and follow the exact same pattern every day. For instance, mediate right after I wake up, then exercise, then check my email and then practice touch typing; finally apply upright go before I go to work. Let's see how I go.

I also continued my journey to having all my quotes organised. I got all the quotes into a database but now work on how I can easily view and edit these; specifically assigning tags to the quotes I have imported from Kindle.