Photo by placdarms Yesterday I wrote about habits and how I’ve found the daily frequency to be the most effective. However, in spite of the power of daily habits, there are some things that just don’t work well every day, and should be weekly or monthly. I thought I’d offer a few brief things that have worked well for me with non-daily habits:
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Schedule it. And schedule it for a specific day of the week or month. If you just set your goal as “do X once this month”, you’ll get to the end of the month without having done it.
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Ritualize it. Habits are often things we don’t inherently enjoy, so it’s easy to put them off. One thing you can do to get over this is “attach” your weekly or monthly habit to something that you do enjoy. Like balancing your checkbook at the coffee shop on Saturday mornings after you get that delicious cinnamon bun.
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Track it. Just like daily habits, tracking your weekly and monthly habits forces you to think about the things you’re not doing. Don’t make it complicated, just have a notecard or a corner of your whiteboard where you mark whether you did each weekly or monthly habit.
If you have other tips for keeping up with weekly or monthly habits, I’d love to hear them.