Your life is the culmination of your daily habits. What you do today and every day is the reason why your life is the way it is. It does not get much more important than that. It is so crucial to develop and track good habits.

At its simplest form, habits are things that you do on a regular basis. When somebody mentions habits, we instantly think of negative habits such as biting our nails, smoking or drinking. However, your life is actually made up of hundreds of habits. You can have habits that happen on their own without you even trying and you can have intentional habits. Whatever habits you fall into or work towards, that is what your life will be.

You can say that you are into fitness, that you like to read books, that you can play the guitar, that you are a runner, that you like to spend time with your kids, that you know alcohol is bad for you and that you like to regularly check in with your aging parents. You can tell yourself whatever you want. But do you actually live your life this way? Actions speak louder than words. Consistent actions speak the loudest. Whatever you consistently and repeatedly do, are the habits that are shaping your life.

I am obsessed with tracking things. I am a chronic tracker of all things important to me. Habits are no exception. I track my habits religiously, on a daily basis. I have a Habit Tracking App on my phone that guides all the things that I must do every day. This serves as my daily mission. It goes back to the principle of doing things that bring me joy, discipline and fulfillment. All of these things go on this habit tracking app. Life can get really busy and if you’re not intentional about the things you want and need to do, they can be forgotten and slip away for days, weeks and months. I also use the app to track getting rid of bad habits from time to time.

Streaks and Stacking Wins

I’m a huge sports fan and a huge fan of streaks. Whether it’s a winning streak or a personal streak, I can’t get enough of them. On a large scale, it is Joe DiMaggio getting a hit 56 games in a row or Cal Ripken playing 2632 games in a row or Gretzky with his 51 game point streak. Any sports fan will recognize the power and excitement of a good streak. A streak is an excellent way to develop a new habit. A streak gives you the motivation and determination to wake up and say, “I will do that thing again today”. As the streak grows, your confidence grows. As your confidence grows, your habit grows. As your habit grows, you grow. A streak can be used as motivation for the smallest of habits. Those small habits that we forget to do on a consistent basis. Streaks for me have been very powerful. It’s all about stacking wins and developing self-confidence.

The things that I consistently track will change over time. This is how we grow. If I want to try a new thing, I will add it to the app and track it for several weeks or months to ensure I keep practicing. There are some things that will remain on that list for eternity. Below are the habits/tasks that I am currently tracking.

My Daily Mission:

Write 500 words per day – This habit allowed me to write my first book, The Daily Mission. Many people that know how busy my life is, asked, “How did you have time to write a book?” I have 4 kids and work a full time job as a police officer. I used my Daily Mission to write the book. I developed the habit of writing 500 words per day. Some days I would write 500, others I would write 2000. After a few weeks, I increased my minimum words per day to 1000. Once the manuscript was done, I changed the habit to ‘Edit book for 30 minutes’. Near the end I was editing my book for 4-6 hours during the day and then working a 10 hour night shift. But it all started with writing 500 words per day.

Read for 45 minutes a day – This is my longest active streak at 563 days. It started out as 30 minutes per day to build the habit but I have increased it to 45 minutes now that the habit is formed. Some days I will read for two hours, some for 45 minutes. If life is too busy one day and I can’t read my 45 minutes, I will make up for it the next day and read for 90 minutes to save the streak. It’s my system and I’ve used it to read over 200 books over the last four years.

Track my food intake – Again with the tracking. I use the myfitnesspal app to track my food intake to hit my calories and macronutrients. This is not for everybody. This is something that keeps me on point and it works for me. This is MY list. My daily mission. My life. This particular habit is not one that I consistently have long streaks. It is something that I strive towards but there are just some days that it doesn’t happen. If I track it 90% of the time, I feel like I’m doing quite well. When I am really trying to lean down, I will get more consistent with my tracking. 

Play guitar for 10 minutes a day – I enjoy playing the guitar but it is one of those habits that if I don’t track it, I won’t do it. Maybe I’ll pick it up a couple times a month and strum away. But how good can you possibly get doing that? 10 minutes a day X 300 days a year is 50 hours of playing time. Usually I’ll play longer than 10 minutes once I pick it up. Again, if I miss 10 minutes one day, I’ll play 20 minutes the next day. I’ll keep that streak alive.

Workout every day – My current streak is 99 but during the COVID-19 pandemic I worked out in some shape or form for 300 days in a row. Working out is a habit I probably don’t have to track anymore. I have been doing it for so long that the habit is part of my DNA. I have to force myself to take days off. I no longer have to force myself to drag my butt to the gym because it is who I am. It positively affects not only my physical health but more importantly my mental health. It is a good day when I hit the gym or walk my dog or play hockey. Anything to move my body. I feel so much better afterwards and it bleeds into every other aspect of my life.

10 minutes of mobility work – As I get older, the aches and pains from working out and life are taking a toll. I am recovering from a significant back injury. I read the book Built to Move by Kelly Starrett earlier this year and it talks about how important mobility work is to not only improve your life now but down the road when we are older. This is my least favourite habit and one that is not yet ingrained. But I continue to do it because I know I will reap the rewards down the road. I would not do it if I didn’t track it.

Clean the house for 10 minutes a day – This is probably the nerdiest habit of all but hear me out. My wife is the one who does these deep cleans where she spends 3-4+ hours cleaning the house. I love walking in to the house and smelling that clean smell after she has been cleaning. She works hard to keep a clean house while working a full time job. I really appreciate her. We also have four children, so our house can go from clean to disaster in a blink of an eye. I never want to be that husband that doesn’t help out around the house. I recognized that if I clean 10-15 minutes a day, it makes a world of difference to my wife and to myself. It keeps me accountable. It’s a small amount of time that makes a big difference. I believe this method is way better than that husband who offers to clean for an afternoon once a month, but ends up going out to tinker around in the garage after about an hour. Again, once I get started, I usually go for longer than the timer.

Weigh myself every day – While the scale isn’t everything, it’s a good barometer to check the progress of my diet. I am currently in a fat loss phase and regularly weighing in can keep you accountable. This is the first thing I do when I wake up. I wake up immediately when my alarm goes off, brew some coffee and weigh in every morning. It’s an easy small win first thing in the morning that I build off of immediately. It’s the first win of the day and then I move onto the next habit/task. 

You’ll notice that the time requirement I have set for these things is quite small. When it comes to certain things like reading, cleaning and guitar, I set these low time amounts but they almost always turn into 2-4 times that amount of time once I get in a flow state. The hardest part about developing good habits is to start.

You’ll also notice that all of these things either bring me joy or bring discipline to my life. All of them have a positive influence on my life. The majority of them fill my bucket and bring me absolute joy. They’re not boring and they’re not things I hate to do, otherwise I would not do them. They all lead to my perfect day, as if it were my last day on earth. If I knew this was my last year on earth, I would still do these things on a regular basis. I would play guitar and sing at the top of my lungs. I would go to the gym. I would go for a walk with my wife and our dog. I would, without a shadow of a doubt, wake up early, make myself some coffee and read a book in peace and quiet while everyone else is still sleeping. To some, that last sentence sounds dreadful. To me, it is pure bliss.

Make a list of what you want to do, what you know you should be doing and what things will lead to your perfect day. Track them. This is your Daily Mission. Get that streak going. Start stacking wins. Watch how your happiness, discipline, motivation and sense of peace all improve after a week of doing this. Then a month. Then a year. What about 10 years? Our habits are the single most important factor that will determine what kind of person we are and what kind of life we have. Start small. Add 1 or 2 habits and start tracking them. Build on your mission as you go. I use the app Habit Tracker but there are many other apps and spreadsheets that can do the same thing. Just start. Right now.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying my new book, The Daily Mission.