They say you are what you do, really, you are what you do repetitively. I’m learning that habits are better than goals, or at least more effective in helping you reach goals, than goals alone.

If you’ve been around my social media, or my newsletter at all you’ve also heard me talk about how I am trying to approach my writing with only one goal, or habit, or intention — touch it every day. The thing I love about this idea of just touching something is that it feels light rather than heavy. There is no set word count goal, there is nothing I can fail to achieve. I only fail by not doing it. Touching it doesn’t have an obligation to it. I can open the blank document and stare at it for a few minutes and maybe re-read what I wrote the day before and I’ve done it, I’ve touched it. Or I can sit down and write 5k words and that is also having touched it. This system gives me complete freedom, while also enough accountability and responsibility to my goals (and dreams) to move them forward. It’s impossible to touch something every day and not make progress. It may be slow progress, but it will be progress and that’s all that I need right now.

I’ve extended this concept into other areas of my life, like laundry — just touch it every day — and I’m finding it incredibly helpful. Yes, my laundry is rarely all completely done, but it’s never completely neglected with this method either. Yes, this method won’t get me a published book tomorrow or even next week, but I’m never neglecting my dream to have a published book. And that’s something, in fact, right now, it’s everything.

So, often in life it’s easy to neglect our dreams (not to mention our responsibilities) in the rush of daily living. Life crowds out the life we want. But, this concept of touching the things I value (or the things I am responsible for) every day keeps me intentionally moving towards the life I want, rather than just settling for the life I have.

This past month I started using one of the common habit trackers found online. It was fascinating, but I wouldn’t say it went well. Here’s what I learned… First, I got a little carried away and put too many things on my “habits tracker.” I learned real quick that it wasn’t realistic to do everything every day. But, that led me to wanting to make some adjustments to the typical habit tracker. The typical habit tracker you find online is made up of a series of boxes and the goal is to “not break the chain” (i.e. color in one box each day and try not to skip any days). This is great and helpful, but I found myself wanting something a little different than a “habit” tracker per say — I wanted a way of tracking repetitive tasks even if they weren’t repeated every day and I also wanted a way of just curiously exploring how often I did something without feeling the pressure (however self-imposed) of “not breaking the chain.”

So, I created my own version of a habit tracker with two different sections. The top section functions much like the traditional habit trackers you see online. The top section is for tracking those things I really do want to “touch EVERY day”, these are the most important values, the habits, the daily repetitive tasks. I limited this section to ten things, although really that’s probably still too many.

The second section is for something different, this section is for those things I just want to get curious about and visually keep track of how often I do them. There is no pressure in this section, these are not things that need to happen every day. These are things I’d like to focus on, things I say that I value and I’m curious to find out how much I am valuing them with my time right now (or not). The bottom half of my page is for things like extended learning, new projects I’m not entirely sure about yet, an app that I think I might want to build, or a practice I think might be healthy for me to engage in. At the end of the month I want to be able to look at this section and say things like, “Hmm, I say I want to do that, but I didn’t actually make any time for it this month and rarely ever filled in any of those squares. Why is that? Is it really something I want or not?” or things like, “Wow, I did this a lot more often than I thought I would, is it something I value more than I thought I did, or am I feeling some external pressure to do it? Is it something that needs to be moved to the top of the page or is it not how I want to be spending my days?”

Basically, the bottom half of the page is a way to get really curious about my days and my life, to ask myself what is it that I do repetitively and is that what I want to be doing?

Then I created another sheet. This one is for things that I want to touch every month, and every quarter. This page is for things that aren’t truly “habits” in the traditional sense of the word, but they are things that I want to do repetitively, things I want to incorporate into my life on a monthly or quarterly basis. Two examples of things on my monthly list are: research agents (that’s something I don’t need to do every day, but I’d like to spend some time each month finding agents I can query), and do yard work (again, doesn’t need to happen every day, but should happen every month). An example of two things on my quarterly list are: query 10 agents (that’s my own personal goal for each quarter of 2020), and host some sort of gathering with friends (because I tend to be a hermit and need reminders to socialize).

Anyway, as I created this I thought maybe others might benefit from it too. I hope it’s helpful for you and I’d love to interact with you about how it works out (or doesn’t work out)! It’s all a giant experiment for me too, so join me and we’ll perfect it together :)

DOWNLOAD Beth Stedman’s “Touch it every day” habit tracker printable