We hope you and your family are keeping safe and healthy. Since a lot of people's schedules have disintegrated, it's never been an easier time to lose track of healthy choices and let everything go to Mordor.
The kids are on their tenth bag of gummies and up 'til midnight. You're on your second bag of "gummies" and the carpet is giving you life advice. The only bicep curl you've done was from grabbing the Uber Eats. The soup-of-the-day, every day, has been wine.
It doesn't have to be that way.
We have been experimenting with an old school habit tracker that's turned out to be a real game-changer (hat tip to our friend and mentor Mark Fisher). It's a simple Excel spreadsheet that takes under one minute to complete every night and tracks 8 achievable habits.
Give it a shot. At the very least it might keep you on the right side of sane.
👉👉 Download the spreadsheet
👉👉 Watch the accompanying video
Here are all the unique benefits we've noticed in just 5+ weeks of using it.
1) Creating a "contract" with yourself might be all the accountability you need.
Knowing that you’ll have to enter your score, every night, might be enough to stop you having that extra glass of wine or snack. It may force you off the couch to walk 6km to get 10,000 steps in - a habit you promised yourself you'd do twice that week.
It's gutting to break a handshake with yourself. The fact that the habit tracker exists, might be all the motivation you need.
2) It puts you in a "lead" position, not a "lag" position.
An example of a lag position is trying to complete the habit tracker at the end of each week, or only weighing yourself at the end of a weight loss challenge, or only counting your sales at the end of the month. These are hope-for-the-best strategies but the damage has already been done.
A lead position - completing the spreadsheet every day - means you can pivot and change strategy in real-time. For a few days, I (Kevin) was struggling with water consumption. Since I was updating every day, and therefore being in a lead position, I was able to pivot. I changed my strategy and started chugging a glass of water the moment I got out of bed.
3) Targets are great. Flexible targets are good enough right now.
Setting a Goldilocks target (not too easy, not too hard) will keep you on track most of the time. And most of the time is good enough. If you target 4 workouts per week, you might not hit that every single week, but it'll probably never be 1, maybe never just 2.
If you target 8 drinks of alcohol every week, you might have 9, 10 or 11 some weeks, but just by setting this goal it will likely never be 20. Unless, the world is truly ending, then let's congregate at the Scarborough bluffs with a 2-4 of Pabst, a tasty Cohiba, and we'll light that habit tracker on fire.
4) You stop checking social media as much
Social media itself isn’t bad, per se, it’s the addiction to it. When you see a red “1” on your phone, or go looking for heart notifications, your brain releases a mini-hit of dopamine, which can make you feel good in the moment - your mom likes your post! But it can also get you hooked and there are side effects to that - loss of focus, attention, anxiety, stress, and addiction.
Although minor, you can get a similar effect when completing the habit tracker. You can get that sweet rush of dopamine simply from seeing the box turn green when you complete a habit.
Give it a shot for just a week and let us know how you did. If you have any questions about it, holler back. We are here for you.
Kevin & Victoria
