Habits Challenge: Lessons learned

We’ve come to the end of our four week Habits Challenge, and now it’s time to look back to see how it went. Every week had a different theme, starting with very small tasks and building up to more complex activities.

It was interesting to switch from one theme to another, trying out different ideas and theories. There were successes and failures, and quite a few lessons to learn from them.

Most of all, it felt like general positive progress to me. How did you get on if you joined in?

Week One: Small and simple

Week One was all about choosing a tiny new positive habit to add to everyday life, and doing whatever you can think of to make it easier for yourself.

I decided that I was going to carefully floss my teeth in front of the mirror every evening. I’m already pretty good about flossing, but if I’m tired at night it’s something I rush through and I tend to not watch what I’m doing.

To make it easier, I put the floss in front of my toothbrush, at the front and a little off-centre on the bathroom cabinet shelf. Now I can’t pick up the toothbrush without moving the floss, and one of the mirrored doors stays shut.

It feels like a slightly mean trick I’ve played on myself, but it does work well and my teeth seem happy too. And as my dentist says, you only need to floss the teeth you want to keep.

Week Two: Build on success

This week was all about adding a small new habit to an existing one, to link them together. If you already have a few good habits, this can often give you a quick win.

I decided to drink an extra glass of water every weekday. It seemed like a good idea to link it to making myself a morning work-time cup of tea because the water filter is next to the kettle, and the water glasses are next to the tea mugs. Convenient, right?

It actually turned out to be harder than I thought, as I tend to breeze through that task on near total auto-pilot while thinking about the day ahead. I completely forgot to even get a glass out on day two, and on day five I wandered off leaving the water behind, although I did drink it later.

Not an abject failure, but not as easy-peasy as it looked either. I’ve decided to persevere with it though, because it’s worth doing and will hopefully get easier over time.

Week Three: A bigger change

The theme of Week Three was to make a strong start on a big change, ideally something positive/fun and that you’ve never tried before. Some people respond best to a big change rather than small ones, and prefer a steeper learning curve.

My mini-project was to properly learn how to use the new bread machine, which involved reading the instruction booklet thoroughly and trying out a couple of the offical recipes. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery, but there are definitely a few important things to memorise.

It went very well, and I even managed to make a chocolate chip loaf cake in it that was rather tasty. It inspired me to get brioche ingredients for the following week, so I think taking a big swing at something new worked pretty well for me.

Week Four: Break a bad habit

For Week Four the task was to select a negative habit to work on, and choose one of seven different ways to make this happen. Breaking a bad habit usually means not doing something, rather than choosing to take a positive action, so it tends to need another approach.

I decided to ‘spend less time on social media’, and quickly realised that I needed to be more specific about what ‘less’ actually meant. I need to be able to use it for work, and chose to stick to set times rather than mindlessly scrolling.

The ‘do something else instead’ approach worked well for me, and I got back to doing a bit more long form reading and researching which I enjoy anyway. There hasn’t been any out of hours scrolling, and it didn’t feel difficult at all.

Habits Challenge roundup

If you joined in with this recent challenge, what did you decide to change each week? Did one week turn out particularly well, or did you struggle with anything?

For me, it’s identified several areas where I’d like to keep making an effort. Also, the task I thought I’d find the easiest turned out to be the most difficult, which just goes to show that you really don’t know until you try it for yourself.

One thing’s for sure, habits and behaviour change can be fascinating. I think I’ll be running some brand new Habits Challenges in the future too.

Enjoying this post? You may also like:

• Habits Challenge: Schedule
• Habits Challenge: Week 1
• Habits Challenge: Week 2
• Habits Challenge: Week 3
• Habits Challenge: Week 4

If you’re interested in some more free challenges, let me know.