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| I sat outside on the deck last night at 10 pm and was going crazy at how BEAUTIFUL it was out!! Humid, warm….Just a perfect summer night. I had to drag myself inside to go to bed. |
Holy guacamole, it’s July 1st. Sounds weird, mostly because part of me kind of still thinks it’s a strangely hot and humid March.
We are all in this odd time bubble of sorts, with time over the past few months sometimes feeling like it’s standing still, and other times feeling like it’s racing by. I think the general consensus on the street is that people basically wish that 2020 would hurry up and “get over with” already.
I saw this funny meme online recently about skipping and jumping through the fall holidays and onto 2021 that made me laugh:
I guess I don’t really care what YEAR it is, but I would like for all of the bad stuff happening this year to go away now. 😊
Anyway, since it’s July, we are officially half way through the year. It’s also a new month. I haven’t made any new July goals, and frankly, I would grade myself a solid B- or maybe even like a C+ on my June goals, so I won’t bother to get into those today. I should probably just basically roll June over to July and give it all another go. Ha.
However, my sweet blogger friend Coco (who lives in Manila, in the Philippines and has a fun blog I enjoy reading!) requested I write a little post about my habit tracking system. I’ve mentioned this in the past but never actually shared what I track.
I’ve been doing this for years in some capacity, but have really gotten into it more consistently in the last 1-2 years. Basically, I keep a big graph paper notebook and devote a page to each month of the year (if you want to see someone who is MUCH more creative and does a fancier tracking/planner system with pretty colors and designs, check out Sarah).
I just create a basic “grid” with boxes to check off, and then I just keep track of stuff that I do! Specifically, many items could be considered “habit related”, or things I’d like to monitor how often I am doing during the month. Why?? Mostly just because! It’s kind of interesting to look back on at the end of the month. Plus, it only takes me about 30 seconds each morning to do.
Here’s the new month’s tracker for July:
I alter it a little bit each month depending on if there are any new habits or goals I want to track.
Here’s how I did in June:
Read at least 10 minutes = 12/30. (yikes, that’s really bad.)
10,000 steps = 14/30 (however, I stopped wearing my Fitbit for some reason around June 20th. Need to dig out of gym bag, charge and start wearing it again).
30 minutes of exercise= 29/30
Floss= 30/30 (This was one habit several years ago that kind of kicked off this tracking system! It is now a fully ingrained habit that I never miss, but I continue to track it, just in case…)
Gratitude entry = 30/30
Highlight journal = 30/30 (see a way-too-long description of my highlight journal system here if you haven’t)
Beachbody= 26/30
Yoga/ stretch= 1/30
Walk outside= 26/30
Record workout = 30/30 (I like to keep track of actual workout done in iPhone note)
Read with kids = 9/30 (this is in addition to my 12 days of reading on my own, and we’ve read some good books, so I guess this helps my reading go from 12 + 9= 21/30)
Try new recipe= 0/30 (Hmm, guess I should think about doing this this month)
Wash face/ skin care= 25/30 (I think a few days I showered later in the day/evening so maybe didn’t count. This is another habit that has now become very ingrained.)
Work on storage room clean out= 0/30 (dang it)
Get outside at least 10 minutes = 28/30 (this is a rollover from winter, when I was trying to intentionally get outside for a bit. Much easier now to just naturally be out walking, watering flowers, garden, etc.)
Email inbox clean out/ inbox zero = 6/30
I won’t necessarily say that doing this always ensures that I will actually do these things- there have been many months where I just happily skip right over various undone items each day, over and over. But I think it does help to keep me accountable a little bit and keep things that matter to me more in the front of my mind. Plus it’s just kind of fun to look back over the year and see when I did more of certain things, or less of others, etc.
Do you track anything?? Or am I weirdo? 😉
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for the tacos we had last night. I made “American style” tacos, as Ivan would say (per the kids’ request)…just ground turkey with the taco seasoning, cheese and lettuce. I hadn’t had those in AGES (since we usually opt for the more traditional style Mexican food, for obvious reasons 🙂 But these kind of hit the spot!
GRATEFUL KAE 
I used to track more things but I majorly simplified after getting pregnant/having our son. I was tracking my workouts at the beginning of 2020 but then I stopped doing that when I had my SCH complication with my pregnancy and I had to be careful about my activity level. I was doing really good with walking nearly every day but then work got insanely busy in Mar/Apr and those walks fell off the map. I am hoping to add them back in if work calms down and my RA behaves (I've had time to take walks this week but haven't been able to as I have 2 bad flares right now – boo!). I do hope to return to tracking more things in the future but I need to get out of this more demanding stage of parenting… so maybe in like 3-4 years? Ha!
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third time trying to commentthanks for writing it down. I'll definitely give it a try as it seems doable and simple. We share a lot of goals actually, curious to know if it will help me to actually do more of those things that I care but often put it behind other priorities (like work which is totally shouldn't be the case).
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