Get Established With Stable Routines
An activity that you perform at a predetermined point in the day and that you are not likely to skip constitutes an anchor habit. Your day will have more direction and purpose as a result. The time I eat lunch each day has become an important routine for me. At three o’clock in the afternoon, I always pull over for a lunch break lasting a full hour. This tends to help me to stay on track with my schedule and prevents me from straying off course; it acts as a solid backstop.
That time is off limits for things like consultations, guests, phone conversations, and other interruptions of any kind. If I fall behind on my timetable, I am well aware that I will need to make up the time by that point. If you are reliable in performing an anchor habit, other individuals will discover your schedule and understand when you are unavailable at a particular time because they will anticipate it.
It really doesn’t make a difference what your anchor habit is, but you should already have it to the point where it can’t be disrupted. One more illustration of this would be the time at which you tuck your kid in for the night, give them a bath, or send them off to school. You’ll be able to use those moments as anchor habits if you are already extremely constant with sticking to them. If you have trouble sticking to your workout routine, don’t make that one of your anchor habits because it won’t help you. To restate and briefly summarize, decide on a routine that is impregnable.
Maintain a High Level of Consistency
A routine can be thought of as a sequence of habits, and as time goes on, it becomes easier to maintain routines. The more consistently you do them over time, the more automatic they become, and the less self-discipline you need to keep them up. Maintain a high level of coherence in how, when, and where you carry out your day-to-day activities up until they reach this stage. The only way for behavior patterns to become completely automated is for people to maintain consistency in how and where they carry them out.
Join a Supportive Community
Join a group in which the routine and/or behaviors you’re attempting to keep up are considered to be the standard. Reddit is my go-to for this kind of thing because it hosts such a wide variety of groups that cater to very specific interests, but I know that other people prefer Social medias or other channels. Participate on a daily basis in the activities offered by that community if you feel it would be beneficial to you.
For instance, if you are getting ready for a triathlon, you might want to become a part of a community of other people who are doing the same thing. During the time that I was getting my psychology coaching, my classmates acted as an automatic community. It is a lot more challenging to maintain any behavior or schedule that is not the standard for the individuals that you are surrounded by. If actively participating in a journey might not be for you, even something as simple as checking specific Instagram or Twitter accounts on a daily basis can help to support it. Create curated lists of individuals to follow on social media.
Give Yourself Incentives
Create incentives and find natural ways to connect them to the routine you’re trying to maintain in your life. When I pump, I sometimes have the ability to watch videos on YouTube or scroll through my phone’s feed while I’m doing it. I pump for a total of half an hour at each session.
When there is a YouTube video that I want to watch and it is about 17 minutes long, then I know that I will have a pleasurable diversionary tactic for a little more than half of the time that I am pumping. When a new youtube clip from a channel that I subscribe to becomes available, I wait to watch it until the next time I pump. Because I have so much time to watch television while doing this, I don’t find it necessary to glance at my phone while I’m pumping.
Walks are another form of reward that I look forward to. Because I prefer to go for a stroll during the warmest section of the day, my preferred time to do so during the winter is first thing in the morning. Once more, you have another option available to you for an anchor reward.
Learn About Yourself and the Things That Work Well for You
What would you like to do as a reward either during the daily behavior you’re attempting to sustain or after it and when would you like to do it? A useful reward could be whatever it is that you fantasize about doing in your spare time. For instance, one of the things I do as part of my incentives is research travel destinations (such as looking for the airport with the lowest fare to which I could fly tomorrow), even if doing so is not technically possible for me.
Make Use of Resources That Can Help You
The use of resources can make it easier to stick to a routine, but they won’t do the work for you automatically. For instance, you could purchase blackout curtains to assist in getting your kids to sleep at a reasonable hour during the summer months. In the same way that hiking equipment might help sustain a routine for doing activities outside, kitchen ware might directly facilitate a routine for doing things inside. It is helpful to consider the act of purchasing instruments as a form of reward.
Limit Your Actions to What is Truly Valueble to You
It is not worth your time to stick to a daily routine that does not provide you with an abundance of things that are extremely valuable to you. It is acceptable to be motivated by the desire to prevent something unfavorable; for example, it is acceptable to be motivated to study in order to avoid receiving a poor grade on an exam. It’s possible that you won’t want to stick to a daily routine for the rest of your life.
In point of fact, there are a lot of benefits to switching up your routines, such as the fact that doing so can actually bolster your creative thinking. On the other hand, there will likely be times when sticking to a strict routine is the only way to complete all of the tasks that must be done. In circumstances like these, having the ability to effectively sustain a routine is hugely beneficial.
Give This Way of Thinking a Try
Instead of thinking of things in terms of “I have to,” try reframing them as “I get to” instead. Take, for instance, I believe, “I want to pump. It’s a blessing that I have a healthy supply of breast milk. I am getting sufficient nourishment and electrolyte balance, and I have the help of my partner to assist me in accomplishing this goal. It’s a stroke of good fortune that I have some these things.”
You are not required to think like Positive Nancy all the time, but you should make an effort to do so on occasion, especially when you are aware that you could benefit from doing so. This is not an issue of morality; rather, it is one of practicality. You can more easily achieve the consistency you’re going for if you keep telling yourself, “I get to .”