🧱 How to Build Lasting Habits

The Sunday Night Review #146

Hey everyone,

I’m going to continue the recent theme of writing about habit and identity building this week with some practical tips.

Around 6 weeks ago, I was starting to get into this new habit of writing 300 words a day.

After around a week or so of doing it, I was still really pumped about it and still thought it was a great idea, but I felt like I needed to tick something off each day once I’d done it. I wanted a nice bing noise on my phone or something.

So I asked someone at work who I knew would have some advice for me. Being the legend she is, Bhav said “I’ve tried every habit tracker out there, the best one by far is Streaks.”

So I immediately downloaded the app. It cost £5, but I knew as I paid that £5 that it could genuinely be a life changing investment if it enabled me to keep up my habits.

Oh boy was it a good investment.

Just in case you’re expecting a sales pitch here, I have no affiliate deal or partnership with Streaks, it’s just a sick app that I’m recommending for anyone who has habits they want to keep up.

Streaks is so simple. You can just add a habit you want to build or track, and how often/on what days you want to do it, then it appears in a nice layout like this.

These are my 6 daily habits. I know, 6 feels like a lot, but honestly I am really vibing with this system right now.

I built this up slowly after starting doing cold showers over 2 months ago and made sure to make each habit super easy to do each day. The point was not how hard each one was, the point was that each day I did something:

1. Hard (cold showers)

2. For my health (run/workout/stretch)

3. For my work (write 300 words)

4. For my relationships (call, voice note or plan something)

Then I’ve added in the no scrolling because I have a bad late night scrolling problem and also meditate for 3 minutes because I want to become more mindful.

I never would have thought I’d be able to do each of these things every day (and I don’t 100% of the time) but because I’ve spent some time thinking about the kind of person I am trying to be, I take each of the 3-10 minute habits quite seriously.

They’re not only actually helpful, but they remind me who I want to be. This is my history for each of the 6 habits in the last month.

If you read last week’s email, you’ll notice I broke my 75 day cold shower streak, because on Friday I woke up early to drive out of London and ended up not showering the whole day lol. But I’ll beat it again soon enough.

Anyway, it’s really nice to see it laid out like that. I try to never miss 2 days in a row, but as you can see, I’m far from doing these things every single day. But it’s better than nothing.

But the real super power of Streaks is adding a homescreen widget.

Ignore the background of me passionately hugging my friend.

You can see the Streaks widget really nicely, and as I go through my day I just get constant reminders to do each of those things.

And importantly, when I tick something off, I get a nice bing.

Anyway, here’s a link to the app on iPhone and the Mac version (which is also really good).

I recommend testing it out with whatever habits you want to build or keep. It could quite literally change your life.

Have an epic week!

Tintin 👨‍💻

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