Hacking Habit Development
Hacking Habit Development
Accidental Habit Development: A year of walking
I'm terrible at setting new habits. I've tried every habit app, journal method, hiding things, etc and I'm still at around 10% success rate of choosing a new habit and sticking to it.
One thing I've learned: I'm equally terrible at the habit of using habit apps.
Nearly by accident, I set a new habit in 2020 that has been consistent for 320 straight days: taking a walk. February last year, I set a (tiny) goal of walking for at least 10 minutes. Every day. I used the Streaks App, but connected to Apple Heatlh. Any time I started a walk on the Apple Watch, the time was automatically tracked in Streaks. No manual tracking required. Any time I completed a walk of 10 minutes or more, I'd get a push notification from Streaks happily encouraging me for completing my task and updating my progress.