Toolkit on starting from scratch

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In this post, we will try to find out how to build better habits from scratch. I will also lay out my plan on how I am going to get up again and start running.

From 0 to 100 and back to 0

At the start of this year, I did not have any real good habits to boast off. I decided to change that. I started the process of building good habits to improve myself physically and mentally.

I started meditating 5 minutes a day and I kept doing it. I did it for 60 days straight (barring one-two days). I also started exercising along with this. I built a habit of exercising 3 days a week.

I always wanted to read and write more. I decided to do that as well.

Two weeks ago, I had formed the following habits:

Meditating
Exercising
Reading
Writing
Working on multiple side projects every day

I had built a really good system. Then everything broke two weeks ago, due to a problem. Except for meditation, I could not follow any other habit of mine.

I am back to level 0.

But I am very excited now.

Excited to document everything

When I had built all these habits, I was wondering that I never documented my process. This means that I may not be able to build all of them again if I ever fell off track. I want to prove myself wrong here.

While I build the habits again, I will document the process so that I know what to do the next time anything like this happens.

The Plan

Because of all the articles I read and videos I watched on how to build good habits, I learned a lot about how to do it. Here is my basic plan of how I am going to build all my habits again:

One at a time I have tried to build these habits earlier as well. The worst mistake I used to make then was that I tried to do everything at once. Read 1 chapter, meditate for 10 minutes, and go for a run all on a single day. Needless to say, I never built a single habit out of this. What changed this year was that I was focused on one thing. I am going to focus on exercising habit first.
Start small Doing a lot on day 1 makes your brain hate the habit. Instead, starting by taking small steps makes it easier for you to continue doing it. I am going to do light exercise for 5 minutes every day.
Do it at a fixed time and place every day Having a familiar environment for your daily tasks helps you in getting the mood to do it. It does not seem that it will work, but it actually does. I am going to exercise in the morning in my room.
Chain your habits Chaining your habits is a very good hack to remember following the new habit. For example, if you decide to exercise after brushing your teeth, you will better remember it. I will exercise after taking a bath.
Do it first Do not “I will do it later”. Do it right when you decided to do it. Postponing it will result in you forgetting to do it. The only days I missed my meditation were when I thought that I will do it after I complete one job.

Let’s see how it goes

I will keep doing it for 14 days and will update you about it in the next article.

Tools

James Clear’s blog [2] is the best to learn how to form good habits (or stop doing bad ones). Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit” [3] is a great read as well.

For exercising, “30 Day Fitness Challenge” [4] by Leap Fitness Group is an awesome choice as it removes all your options. You have to do just one thing every day, open the app and exercise.

Atom [5] is the best if you want to build a meditation habit. It brings all the above-mentioned points to action.