10 days ago I started a new habit-change challenge. Sharing my tracker and all 11 habits I'm currently working on.
10 days ago, on September 15th, I started a new habit-change challenge.
In my last post on this topic, I wrote about why I decided to run this experiment on myself.
Right now I’m working on building a set of new habits and trying to drop the things that were hurting me.
I drew myself a “habit tracker” in a notebook and mark my progress in it every day. I know hundreds of apps exist for this, but I like the paper notebook and the “analog” approach here.
I have 11 items in total:
- Prayer — I’ve been starting my day with prayer for years now, so there’s no resistance here.
- Reading the Bible — same as with prayer.
- Physical exercise — I found a few TikTok videos with routines for improving spine health and posture. I do them for 5–10 minutes, several times a day. I really like the effect: I feel better and my concentration improves.
- Digital detox — I don’t touch my phone for the first 2 hours after waking up and for an hour before bed. The first hours after waking are golden time for creating something new and working on strategy; diving straight into operational tasks is a very unequal trade. Part of my digital detox is also a full stop on short-form content (reels and stories). I only watch YouTube.
- Writing — brought back the daily practice of writing at least a couple of lines: work on my books, text for social media, or notes for a future course.
- Watching motivational videos — every day I play different English-language videos in the background that add inspiration.
- The optimizer — the main idea is to spend 5–10 minutes every day improving the space around me — both digital (like sorting photos in my phone gallery) and physical (order on my desk or in the place where I live and work).
- Running — I go for an evening run, usually 1 to 2 km. It literally takes 10–15 minutes.
- Spanish — every day I listen to the most common Spanish words with translations in the background, trying to build a core vocabulary of 400–500 words. Once you have that core, learning the rest of the language moves very fast.
- Skincare — I try to use a cleanser, toner, and moisturizer every day. It helps me look a bit better, given how often I’m on stage, on podcasts, and in interviews.
- No food after 8pm — the first week of this rule was hard, but my body is already adjusting. I try to have my last “heavy” meal around 7pm, and if I really want a snack after that, I’ll have a smoothie or a piece of fruit.
As impressive as this list looks, I let myself live calmly and not beat myself up emotionally if I miss something.
I used to treat any gap in the tracker as a personal failure. Now I understand that these habits serve me — I don’t serve them. That’s an important psychological shift that lets me enjoy my life while still striving to be more productive.
The one thing I do try not to do is skip the same habit two days in a row. That’s how the flywheel of positive change keeps spinning.
Which habits are you working on right now? What keeps you moving forward?