Once you have a goal how do you go about achieving it? How do you really know if you are on track? Using a 90 day habit tracker was not my first introduction to tracking habits. Keeping a food diary was the first tracker I ever used.
Soon after I was introduced to a weekly tracker for my goals and later the 90 day habit tracker. Today I daily track many different habits.
Some of the habits I have tracked in the past have been easy to slip into and I’ve created a routine quickly. Other times I have found that it has taken much longer. One thing that is clear is when I track I am more likely to succeed in reaching my outcome.
Naturally, it is reaching goals by changing habits that are important. Recording your daily activity towards the goal is one way to stay on track.
Know your ‘why’, the reason for your goal.
Having a goal to do something does not come down to the length of time to create the habit but the desire to achieve the goal. Having a strong ‘why‘ to achieve a goal is the reason you succeed or not.
A strong why tugs at your heart. It is part of you and your core beliefs. Your why is the purpose, the reason you want to achieve a goal. Your why will help you stay focused in good and bad times as you strive to achieve your goal.
If you’re unsure of your goal or still finding clarity on your goals. I recommend spending time thinking about how you would spend your ideal day. This helps you identify and break down what is important to you. It can help you decide on those important goals, so you can create your life.
When you know what you want it is easier to put into place good habits to help you achieve it. First of all, write down your goals and then break them down into action steps. When you break down your goals you can see the steps you need to take to achieve them.
To make habits stick you need to commit to change. This is where using a tracker like the 90 day habit tracker can help. All too often change does not take place because it is hit and miss. One day the action happens another day it doesn’t. When you track you see it is easier to see patterns of behaviours and adjust accordingly.
Tips on creating a habit for 30 or 90 days.
The reason to commit to tracking your habits for 30 or 90 days is 30 days is enough to see if it is something that is serving you. 90 days is enough to have a habit become part of your way of life. A routine.
Commit to daily activity – consistency is important and doing one thing every day helps to engrain the habit.
Keep it simple – keep it simple. Make it a simple action that will help you achieve your long term goal. For example, read for 30 minutes a day. Reading is excellent for personal development and a good habit to have to improve writing skills.
Stretch yourself – make the action big enough to allow you to grow and develop the required skills. For example, write 500 words a day about the book you want to write.
Create a trigger – A trigger is something you do regularly that you can attach this new habit to.
I started walking 10,000 steps a day. When I started this, I created the trigger of walking every day immediately after work, before going home. If I went home, I ended up not walking. The trigger helped create the routine.
A trigger that leads to a bad habit for me was when I had a cup of tea in the afternoon I always looked for something sweet to eat. The habit of eating a biscuit with a cup of tea. To break the habit I brought dates and had one of those with my afternoon tea. Dates are sweet. I still ate something sweet. Eventually, I stopped reaching out for something sweet when I drank tea.
It is important to know your triggers as triggers can make or break habits.
Have an accountability partner – one way to help you create successful habits is to have an accountability partner.
I have a friend who wanted to start at a gym but hates to work out. She chooses to invest in a personal trainer not only to give her guidance but also to help her stay accountable to her fitness goal.
Surround yourself with people who remind you more of your future than your past.
Dan Sullivan
Tracking creates self-accountability. One of the best ways to track is with a tracker.
Why track your habits.
When you use a 90 day tracker to track your habits it helps you stay accountable to yourself. Tracking helps you work out if you have any challenges or barriers which may be hindering you from progressing towards your goal.
Using a tracker is a visual cue that can help you take action towards your goals.
You have many habits that you don’t track. Cleaning your teeth, having morning coffee at about the same time each day, finding out what happened today on the news, and writing 500 words a day. These habits have become part of your routine. At some time in the past, you did these often enough to turn them into part of your routine.
When you have a goal you would like to achieve, there are many things you may need to change or strive for. As you create new habits, tracking is one of the best ways to record the changes. It’s a visible way to record your progress.
What gets measured gets managed.
Peter Drucker
When you track you can see how you are moving towards achieving the goal you set yourself.
If you notice that you are not taking the action you set yourself. You can adjust the time of the action. See if it needs to be actioned at a different time of the day.
I like to work out in the morning. A mixture of powerwalking and aqua classes. I realised by tracking that Tuesday didn’t suit me going to class as I started shift work early that day and it put too much pressure on me. By monitoring, I realised to achieve success on this day I needed to change the time of the action.
That is the beauty of tracking your habits. Tracking helps you identify patterns of behaviour. The simple system of tracking can help you take control of your actions and steps towards your goals.
Why 90 day habit tracker.
A life goal is a larger goal and many habits may need to be changed for you to achieve it. When you know your end vision and it is broken down into actionable steps it is easier to see how obtainable it is.
When one of your habits becomes routine, another habit can be commenced. By building habits upon routines, slowly goals become more achievable. This article on how to stack habits is a good place to start finding out about creating routines by building upon habits.
After successfully tracking for 90 days, the habit may be set, and you can commence another habit that will help reach your ultimate goal.
The rhythm of daily action aligned with your goals creates the momentum that separates dreams from super achievers.
Darren Hardy
The one thing I say is, ‘every day aim to do something towards your goal.’
One of my goals is to have a successful blog and every day I ensure that I write 500 words and mastermind with other bloggers.
Back to you. Have you
- Defined your goal. If not this post on core values may help.
- Written down your goals and worked out the actionable steps to help you achieve them.
- Started tracking your goals.
- Overcome the obstacles with the help of resources, friends, and accountability partners.
- Turned the habit into a routine and set a new good habit to create.
- Repeat.
It is great to have goals. Yet, to achieve goals, you need to create habits.
Well thought out and comprehensive article. I like the idea of the trigger, hadn’t thought of it that way before. 90 days seems like a long time but we do things we’re not aware of for 90 days in a row so why not be aware? 🙂
Although 90 days does appear a long time, like the seasons, it goes quickly. By consciously planning, the small changes made can become routine, with one trigger setting off another. Triggers become the key that set off the chain reaction to change. Thank you for your thoughts.
I love this idea! It’s true I believe some habits do take longer than 21 days to establish. I tried to get the downloadable 90 day habit tracker, but it says 404 error not found.
Thank you Elle, sorry for the error, I’m updating the website. Here is the link to get the 90 day habit tracker.
https://lifestyleanytime.aweb.page/90-day-habit-tracker