In 2020 I made good progress at both my AllSet Learning business and my Mandarin Companion business. From a personal standpoint, I lost about 20 pounds and started getting into working out. Big success!

A owe a big part of that success to a new habit I started (and stuck with) in 2020: Habit Tracking. I use a Google Doc Sheet to track my daily habits. Some are just binary “0” or “1” values (which I use conditional formatting to color code), while others track other numbers. Those “other numbers” include my daily weight. I didn’t record it every single day, but when I missed a day or two (and I frequently skipped weekends altogether), I filled in the gap with the average of the day(s) before and after the gap. Worked pretty well.

So here’s my weight graph for all of 2020:

The gray line is the actual weight numbers, while the blue line is an average of the past 10 days. Using this average is super useful. You can see how it’s far less erratic. When you suddenly gain a few pounds in one day, that blue line doesn’t flinch. This is encouraging; when you’re focused on the 10-day average, you know you can get the weight back down and keep the trend going.

“Holiday break” means I’m not going to the gym (for all of December, and part of January so far), and doing some exercise at home (pushups, etc.). I’m giving myself permission to be a little lazy for the coldest months of the winter, and the holiday season. But I’m not giving up this new habit. And I’ll be rejoining a new gym probably next week which focuses more on free weights, meaning I can start StrongLifts 5x5 program in earnest. I’m pretty excited about that.

Anyway, the point of this post is to encourage family and friends to try habit tracking. It’s really easy. You can use this Google Docs template or a local spreadsheet.

Here are some ideas for what habits to track:

https://jamesclear.com/habit-tracker

https://www.developgoodhabits.com/habit-tracker-ideas/

https://thepetiteplanner.com/101-habit-tracker-ideas-to-improve-your-life/

Happy 2021!