Helllooooo. I know I’m struggling to keep up habits as we enter year TWO of covid-disruptions, so this month’s challenge will be focused on HABITS.
ALSO February this year is a perfect 28-day month where all the weeks run from Monday -Sunday! WHAT A NICE LOOKING RECTANGLE!
Habituary will run from February 1st to February 28th.
The goal is to create and/or reinforce a daily habit. This can be focused around movement, social connections, finances, reading, self-care, family, work - whatever you like and would like to create a daily habit for.
Habituary will have a special forum badge and even a STICKER for people that complete the whole month, that will (probably) be cat themed.
Basic rules:
Keep it simple. Don’t over complicate things, don’t attempt 12 new habits. Pick one, don’t make it so hard you’ll automatically fail. Think “stretch for 5 minutes every day” not “stretch for one hour every day”.
You must establish your own rules about what your daily habit will be State them in the first few days of the month to get us kicked off in the right direction.
Each weekend you will report how you did on your challenge for the week on this thread . You can report on where you’re at, and what your biggest challenge and victories of the week were. Then, you’ll put your predictions/goals down for the week ahead.
If you want, build in a celebration at the end of the month. It’s nice to have a reward!
You can restart anytime. If you fall off the wagon, have a crisis, or just realize your habit isn’t working, restart! There is 0 shame. Doing stuff is hard right now. Keep trying!
Who This Challenge is For
Anyone who wants a little public accountability and discussion about building habits. If you liked any of our previous challenges and want to keep it going, here we are!
What do you get out of participating?
Community support
A CUTE forum badge for participating in the weekly check-ins
And if you do all 4 week check-ins, you get a STICKER mailed to you.
If you’re in to participate (or on the fence and need encouragement), comment below with your goals for Habituary.
I’m In. My goals will be in pursuit of my 2021 goals/bingo. All of these are continuations of existing habits, not new habits.
1- 5 of 5 weekdays, go for a walk
2- 3 times per week, strength/PT workout.
3- Read one book this month minimum- habit base- read nightly before bed
4- Categorize my amazon purchases in mint (let this lapse this month, it’s a headache).
I’m IN for this shiz. These are also squares on my 2021 bingo, lolz.
Daily habits for the entire month:
-foam roll every day
-listen to music for 30 minutes every day
Oooh remembered another one:
-5 lunges on each side every day. Not looking forward to this, so gonna do it in the shortest month of the year
Bonus habit, but for only one week:
-play flute for 30 days.
My daily habit goal is: Clean all dirty dishes by the time I go to bed. No dirty dishes are to be left in the sink, counter, table, fridge, or other random/non-kitchen spots.
Mine is walk Woody every day. He gets walked every day already, but I’ve been leaning more on Sweaty to do it sometimes and haven’t quite been holding up my share. It’s hardly an onerous task, just one I let slip a bit if I’m tired and Sweaty offers to pick up my slack. But doggo could use a bit more exercise, and extra bonding time is always great. No time minimum or anything (it’s always AT LEAST 15 minutes once we actually get out, generally well above that), just a leash walk by me any day. Family walks where Sweaty comes along DO count. If it’s truly hellish weather (it doesn’t really get bad enough here that I anticipate this happening, but still) I can sub at least five minutes of focused indoor training/exercises up to two times.
Ooh, this is perfect timing, as there’s a couple of habits I’ve been trying to get used to tracking.
I’m aiming to, each day:
do 1 minute of core exercises. Trying to regain a little of the strength I used to have here, plus keep lower back pain at bay.
Read at least one page (when I read, it’s usually more like 50 pages, but sometimes I end up in ruts for a week or so where I don’t want to progress with something that feels a little harder and read nothing so the goal here is to prevent that.)
Continuing a habit I’ve already got going feels like cheating somehow, but nevertheless: I plan to practice Russian every day, which I define as some combination of drilling vocabulary and grammar, reading, conversing, or listening to podcasts.
I want to get rid of something every day in February (whether that’s finding trash to get rid of, declutter on Buy Nothing, or sell). If I run out of things to discard, I will deep clean an item I already own.
For February, I want to make movement habits my priority (especially as I’m finished with my official PT appointments for the most part). I’d like to do three of the following four each day:
I want to solidify a good morning routine. In deference to picking ONE thing, my goal is just to exercise each day.
Right now my morning looks like such:
Wake up
Breakfast/coffee
Feed animals
Get on compy for work
My breakfast/coffee routine will be significantly shortened compared to before due to spouse sleeping later than me now that he’s not working for the man. I’m hoping this allows me to get a workout in between “feed animals” and “hop on compy for work”, plus a quick shower if I get really really sweaty. I also will probably get out of bed earlier, because I had been lazing about in bed when my brain woke me up at 8 every morning until my spouse got up at 8:30.
TLDR I should have almost an hour back each morning
Acceptable activities include a bike ride (stationary or real), walk, run, yoga, weights, punching the punching bag… really anything that is “exercisey.” I want my default to be stationary biking because I gotta start making progress on that virtual tour du monde, yo.
(let this lapse this month, it’s a headache).
