How to Adopt Habits for Success

Your daily habits determine the quality of your life.

80% of what we do on a daily basis is our automatic actions, our routines and behaviors that we don’t even realize are habits. It’s brushing our teeth, getting dressed in the morning, what we eat, how many times we check our phone throughout the day, what we do when we get off of work, and everything else in-between.

Your habits determine what happens in your day. They are indicative of what you prioritize in your life– of what truly matters to you.

When you create habits of health and success, you’ll notice improved health and more success entering your life. For example, creating a habit of getting to bed by 10:00 each night with the lights off and your phone in the other room (and actually sticking to it!) will result in better quality sleep, more energy, and you’ll likely be in an overall better mood.

My life coaching clients know that I’m a big fan of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. In fact- here’s my book review. This book takes a deep-dive into actionable ways to create good habits and break bad ones. Best of all, Clear breaks it down into tiny steps that make it seem ridiculously easy. Throughout the book, he emphasizes the impact that small daily habits have on creating remarkable results in your life.

Atomic Habits suggests using a tool– the habit tracker– as a way to measure your habits and build consistency over time. I often use the habit tracker with the professional women I life coach when one of their goals is to improve daily habits.

The concept is simple. Using a habit tracker means logging your habits daily to track your progress, hold yourself accountable, and make it easy to immediately see how consistent you are with individual habits.

In its most basic format, you write down the habits you want to complete each day, and then, at the end of the day, you check off (or put an X, or shade in, or use colored pencils) to indicate if you completed that habit that day. As time goes on, the habit tracker becomes a clear record (or calendar) of your progress with certain habits.

Here’s why a habit tracker is a powerful tool for you:

It creates a visual illustration that reminds you to act on your habits.
It provides both motivation and accountability. When you see your habit “streak” you want to keep it going!
It feels good to succeed with your habits! It’s satisfying and fun to be able to check off your boxes each day and celebrate your positive habits.

Habit trackers are perfect for kick-starting a new habit or getting more consistent with a habit that you do every now and then that you want to make more routine or automatic.

I started meditating a few months ago. I was really enjoying it, but I noticed I was pretty inconsistent when it came to meditating on a daily basis. I would meditate some nights before bed, sometimes on my lunch break, and some days not at all. I realized I wasn’t reaping the benefits of meditation because I was so inconsistent with it. Well, I added meditation to my habit tracker to hold myself accountable and gain more consistency and– what do you know– I am now meditating every night before bed– and feeling a lot more zen as a result!

Here are some ideas of habits you could track:

Drinking __ ounces of water each day
Physical movement
Journaling
20 minutes of reading
Go to bed by _____
Take vitamins/supplements
Gratitude practice
10 minutes of cleaning
Text a friend

You can also include habits you want to avoid:

No Netflix
No online shopping
No coffee after 12:00
No soda

Research varies on how long it actually takes to instill a habit for good. But, from my work with my life coaching clients, I’ve found that about 2 months is a good ballpark number. So if you can use your habit tracker consistently for 2 months, these habits should soon be ingrained into your daily life!

There are plenty of habit tracker templates out there. You can find them just by googling “habit tracker” and you’ll see plenty. Here are 2 of my favorites: