The Habit Factor

Hannah's finally starting to get on a decent schedule with an easy bedtime (though this week has been an exception - crazy teething plus swim lessons mean that she's fussy and wired up, which is making bedtime tough again) and she's in her own room, which means that I can wake up in the mornings without waking her.  This has been good for several reasons.  First, I get to do my morning meditations, and drink my coffee in peace.  Second, I can actually start to do some of the things that are important to me again.

So I downloaded this app called The Habit Factor, and their thing is that it's the small actions, ie habits, that make up our lives, and help us achieve our goals.  So you use the app to input big goals, like losing weight, or writing a book (mine) and then you associate them with different habits, which you also input.  So I have the following habits already set up:

- spend at least 20 minutes in the morning working on my book

- meditate daily

- exercise daily

- log food in loseit app daily

- write in my various blogs 5x/week

- think about what I'm grateful for each day

- do 50 situps each day

- go to church at least twice a month

... and on it goes.

Each day you get reminders for the habits you wanted to practice that day, and they have all these nifty graphs and such that let you track how well you're doing.  And then when you input big goals, you can then link the habits to them, so you can start to see how the daily activities impact your big goals.

It's a pretty neat app, and it fulfills my great "I wish someone would invent that" need that I've had for years, which is that each day I write a to do list that has 10 of the same things on it, and then I have a few unique things each day.  Every day I write the same things over and over.  What I wanted was a tablet where you could create templates, like online or something, and have the 10 things you do each day on it already printed, and then have half the page blank for the other stuff.  Since I just have those things input as habits, I don't need to write them each day (though I miss physically crossing them off).  Attention somebody who is a graphic designer and has time on their hands: make something like this and sell it through cafepress, or whatever the kids use these days.  I'll buy it.

In the meantime, I'll cultivate the habits using the app.