The habit of tracking habits

After years of adding one habit after another, I came to face something: the only habit I was really tracking was the habit of tracking habits.

Meanwhile, the basic things in my life were going sideways. I was fulfilling the habits I tracked with half-measures, getting good at marking whether I did them that day, telling myself I would make up for it tomorrow. The next thing I knew, I was tracking nine potential habits at the same time instead of focusing on one or two.

I think many people fall into this trap, and I think it is a form of laziness. When tracking your habits becomes the thing — from measuring the grams of your food intake to ensuring you have a pre-workout "buy-in" of pushups and pull-ups, and everything in between — you can see how easily you are bullshitting yourself. How is this making you any better? It's not. It's a performance. You are focused on keeping track of your tracker.

So I let go of everything and decided to see what happens.

My personality is such that I am all about finding and making time for things, not the other way around. If I say I am doing something, I do it. By stopping all this tracking and seeing what really sticks in my daily life, I have found something worth pursuing. To plan what you want to do, remember it, and just do it without putting a checkmark after you are done is not only liberating — it feels like you are getting the real work done.

You know what you need to make happen. If a day goes by and you cannot make it happen, it is better to forgive yourself than to do what I used to do, which was be disappointed because I "lacked the discipline."

By not tracking these habits I wanted to engrain, I am actually doing them day in and day out with ease, and feeling fulfilled because they are just part of my life. When I fall short for whatever reason, it is alright. I will get to it the next day or the day after. For most things, it is not the end of the world. Doing this makes me feel more present and balanced, and I do not miss all the bullshit inputs I was going through before.