How to Stick to a Daily Schedule

“A daily schedule can be a useful tool to help you enact particular habits every day. Below are tips that can help you achieve it.

1. Start with anchor habits

An anchor habit is something you do at a particular time of day that you're not at risk of skipping. It will help shape and structure your day. If you're consistent with an anchor habit, other people will get to know your schedule and know you're not available at that time. It doesn't matter what your anchor habit is, but it should already be invulnerable to disruption for you. Don't choose something like a workout as an anchor habit if you struggle to get that done, instead, pick an invulnerable habit.

2. Be very consistent for about three months

A schedule is a sequence of habits and habits get easier after a few months. With consistency and time, they become more automatic and take less willpower to maintain. Be very consistent with how, when, and where you perform daily behaviors until they reach this point.

3. Find a community

Join a community in which the schedule and or behaviors you're trying to maintain are normal. If you'd like to, interact in that community each day to help support you. For example, if you're training for a marathon, then you might join a community of people doing the same. It's much harder to keep up with any behavior or schedule if it isn't the norm for the people around you. Even just checking particular *** or Twitter accounts each day can help support a journey if active participation isn't for you.

4. Plan your rewards

Plan rewards and link them to the schedule you're trying to keep up in natural ways. Get to know yourself and what works for you. What do you want to do as a reward either during or after the daily behavior you're trying to maintain?

Tip: Whatever you like to daydream about doing can serve as a reward. For example, my rewards often involve researching travel (searching for the cheapest place I could fly tomorrow) even if that isn't an immediate possibility for me currently.

5. Use tools to support you, but not as your core strategy

Tools can help you maintain a schedule, but they don't magically do the work for you. For example, kitchen equipment might help support a cooking schedule, hiking equipment might help support an outdoor activity schedule, and so on and it can be useful to think of buying tools as rewards.

6. Do only what's really important to you

Life is too short to maintain a daily schedule that's not incredibly valuable to you. It's okay if you're motivated by avoiding a negative, such as if you're motivated to study to avoid failing an exam. You may not want to maintain a daily schedule your whole life. In fact, there's a lot of value to changing up your routines as well, like that doing so boosts creativity. However, there might be periods in which a strict schedule is the only way you can get done whatever it is you need to do.

7. Think differently

Try to maintain an "I get to__" rather than an "I have to__." attitude. This isn't about virtue, it's about utility. Thinking "I get to__" will help you maintain the consistency you seek.”

Read the whole article at Psychology Today

#Schedule #Consistency #Dedication

💬 What are some rewards you can use as motivators to stick to your schedule?