With habits, how regular works for me?
(just click on the pondering pic to enlarge if needed)
Something I really believe is that there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ when it comes to planning (or to anything really) - we all have different lives, different priorities, different brains and so different things work for each of us.
If/when you’re trying to establish a new habit, think about which approach appeals to you most - below are a few options…
‘Don’t break the chain’: this is basically the idea of creating a ‘streak’, i.e. having somewhere that you’re ticking something off every day and so you don’t want to break your ‘chain’ of ticks (random fact: this is often credited to comedian Jerry Seinfeld and called the ‘Seinfeld strategy’ - but Seinfeld admits that he didn’t invent the idea!) Some people find that doing something daily is actually easier than less frequently ‘cos then they don’t have to decide each day whether or not they’re going to do it… but others find the pressure of keeping up a streak / chain causes anxiety and makes them more likely to give up if they miss a day.
Daily-ish: if doing something daily feels like too much and the idea of a streak or chain causes anxiety then maybe adding an ‘ish’ could take the pressure off? You might want to add some rules like ‘don’t miss more than 2 days in a row’ or ‘always do a Monday’ - though if rules don’t really work for you (maybe you’re a ‘rebel’ in Gretchen Rubin’s ‘4 Tendencies’ framework) then keeping it vague might work better.
Three times a week is a habit: this is one of Laura Vanderkam’s productivity principles (she talks about it more here) and is based on the idea that anything we’re doing 3 times a week is happening fairly regularly and is enough to make progress, but that 3 times a week might feel a bit more manageable than every day. Obviously we also need to think about how we’re going to decide when our 3 times are each week and if/how we’re going to keep track of that (maybe at a Planning Club session?!)
Update: Laura Vanderkam actually did a 5-min podcast on how she uses her weekly planning to remember to do her ‘3 times a week’ habits! Listen here
The main thing to keep in mind is that none of these approaches are guaranteed to work for all of us. It could be that none of the above feel quite right - or we might find that different approaches work for different tasks. Try experimenting to find what’s right for you right now… and if things don’t stick then remember that it’s not that there’s something wrong with us - it’s just the wrong strategy for us! How could you tweak it or try something different that might work better?
