How Tracking Can Help You Implement New Habits – The Walking Example

 Starting new habits is probably the most difficult part of the transformation process. In past posts, I’ve talked about how it takes time and repetition for your brain to begin to create new neural pathways that make these changes become routine and increase the chance of success. Tracking your habits can help you to maintain that routine in order to reach your goals. To see how it works, I’ll use the example of adding walking to your daily routine because this is one of my intentions for my leg rehab. Keep reading to learn more.

About Tracking Habits

Tracking your new habits simply means keeping a record of how often you complete them. Using our example of walking, it makes sense to determine a goal for how frequently and how far you wish to walk. Perhaps you want to start out with a half mile each day. Therefore, you would need to track your progress each day to determine if you walk and how far you make it. You’ll need to decide on a method for tracking and have a measuring device such as a pedometer. For myself, I try for 10,000 steps per day.

Benefits of Tracking

You gain several benefits from tracking your habits and progress toward your goals. Doing so lets you know if you’re on track or if you need to modify your objective. It also provides you with motivation to keep going. If you’ve met your goal five days of the week and can see visual evidence of that, you’ll probably be more inclined to keep going for the other two. Tracking strengthens habits by increasing their chances of regularity. The more you practice a habit, the more ingrained it becomes. Plus, the evidence tracking provides can increase your confidence because you’re able to see just what you can do and are capable of.

How to Keep Track

There are so many ways to keep track of your goals. With walking, you could set up a simple check list using a pencil and paper. You’d simply write down whether you walked each day and for how far. Some people like electronic spreadsheet versions of a paper checklist. I use my planner from A Pilgrimage to Self. Still others prefer an app on the phone or other device that keeps track of an activity’s frequency, duration, and length. A Fitbit or other fitness device is ideal for keeping track of your walking goals.

Tracking is a fantastic way to implement new habits and to increase your chances of making them stick. It can work for our walking example, but it’s also quite useful for other types of goals you’d like to make in your life.

What goals do you want to make for the last weeks of the year? With the holidays upon us, I’m looking forward to my exercise routine! Let me know in the comments what habits you’ll be tracking.

Until next time...

Cheers!

Lisa