Creating New Habits
I’m currently in the process of trying to create new habits in my life. Currently I’m trying to drink more water and become todo-oriented. What I mean by this is that I’m trying to bring my structure to my day, and have a daily list of tasks that need to be completed.
I’ve never had an easy time sticking to lists. I think it’s because my life typically isn’t hectic enough that I cannot remember everything I need to do. Most of the time there are only two or three big tasks I need to work on in my life, which isn’t very hard to remember. Drilling down those individual tasks proves equally simple — it’s rarely if ever hard for me to determine the order of sub-tasks required to complete the overarching, or “parent task.”
However, the reason why I want to become more list-oriented is because there are things I would like to do, like blog more, which aren’t urgent enough to always be on the top of my mind. I think I blog a decent amount, but I definitely would like to do it more; once a week, at the least.
What seems ironic to me is that I want to start using todo-lists to help myself create new habits, yet the act of making todo-lists is a habit in and of itself that I struggle with. I think many startups fail simply because us as humans have a hard time forming new habits. I’ve heard that it takes a full month of performing an action to turn it into an action. That must be a really daunting number for many startups out there, especially ones on mobile where distribution is extremely difficult to master.
Right now I’m using Any.do on Android and in Chrome. It’s the best todo-list app I’ve found out there because of its deep integration’s with Android and Google Calendar. What I really appreciate on Android is that it goes further than just pushing a notification for time-based tasks you’ve set, but it actually overlays a view over the bottom half of your devices display. That’s definitely much harder to ignore than one notification stacked under a bunch from other apps. I’d definitely recommend checking them out — the app is also available on Mac OS and iOS.
Anyway, I think I’ve rambled on long enough without any good overarching lesson for this post. I feel that I have more to say on this top of lists and habits, but I’m not sure what it is yet. I’ll keep you updated.
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