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In the end of October, I wrote an article publicly declaring that I will start a new 30 day challenge of journaling every single day. Fortunately, it went really well. I journaled every single day for a month and now I am planning to continue this habit of journaling. Here I am going to tell you how did I manage to pull this off on a regular basis.
This is my second 30 day challenge that I announced publicly in my blog. Previously, during the first half of this year, I wrote that I wanted to do a workout session every day for a month, but I was not consistent during that time. After learning a few lessons the hard way going through my previous challenge, I decided to implement them during this new one.
Be very specific about the things that you need to do
In my previous challenge, I did not describe very specifically what would I do during my session of working out. It was not only an obscure performance for the readers, but also for myself. The lack of clarity used to be an obstacle that was preventing me from commitment.
In this new challenge, I decided to be very specific about it. I detailed out the questions that I will be answering every single day. Aside from that, I also left some room for autonomy about the time when I need to journal. I do not want to pressure myself journaling only in the morning. I am more likely to journal in the morning, but I do not want to feel guilty if I do an afternoon journaling as well.
Remind yourself about it
I might consider this as one of the most important factors that helped me in my journaling process. We are constantly targeted with lots of information and responsibilities and forget to commit to what we initially resolved. In my previous challenge, I used to forget to workout. I simply had a lot of things in my plate and working out was not installed in my daily rituals yet.
In the new challenge, I used a daily reminder in Wunderlist as a trigger to journal in case I forget. If I did not have Wunderlist open, I could see the reminder in my email which I tend to check a few times a day.
This might seem as something not that worthy considering, but I could not disagree more. Having a reminder, especially in the process of forming new behaviors can be really beneficial. New behaviors are not formed that easily and a single reminder once a month is not sufficient. New behaviors should be actively performed until they are formed and become habits that you perform on an auto pilot mode.
Make it easy for you to do it
Another important factor in forming new habits is making them easy to do. So easy that you cannot say no to do them.
In my case, I used to prepare a few setups and keyword shortcuts that would make it easier for me to journal at times when I did not have that much time. I did not want to write the questions that I had to answer during my journaling process, so I made a keyboard shortcut using PhraseExpress. I also prepared the daily entries of journaling usually once a week in a new Evernote post, so that I could save myself time each day without having to create new notes, write the date and questions.
I am happy that this 30 day challenge was that successful. My goal is to keep journaling as something that I am committed to do on a daily basis. I might skip a day or two here or there, but I want to make sure that I stick to it in the long term.
After all that is said above, you should bear in mind that until something is not that important to you, it might not be that easy nor compelling for you to start doing it. In my cases, I wanted to exercise, because I wanted to be healthier, avoid back pain and burn fat. If you think that journaling is not important, please take a few minutes to read this wonderful article. You should have reasons for to make changes in your life. Having a purpose can massively improve your productivity
