Building habits during lockdown
If time was currency, then many of us would be very rich right now. We all have things we said we’d love to do if we got the time – well now many of us do have the time and then some – how are you using it?
Many of us will be using this time to make better choices for our health. Heck, with our mortality being reminded to us daily, it would be hard not to be conscious of your health and how the choices you make impact it. With many people either not working, on reduced hours or working from home, most of us have much more free time than we normally would. Now is the perfect time to start creating behaviours and habits that will serve your health in years to come. But how do you make those habits stick? How do you make sure that once all this is over the behaviours you’ve adopted don’t just dwindle away over the following weeks and months? I’m going to share 3 tips right here.
1. Have them fit into your regular work schedule
Now many people’s routines are up in the air now, with more free time than we know what to do with. But we are creatures of routine and habit, we like routine, so it’s important to create one. Now when creating a daily routine in lockdown, plan the habits you aim to maintain for the foreseeable future at a time when they would fit into your regular work schedule. For example, if you are currently walking daily and want to keep walking daily when you go back to work then start walking before your normal work time now. Don’t wait until you start going back to work to try and get up 30 minutes earlier for your walk, begin now and it will be easier once you go back. Similarly, if you have taken up an instrument, started writing or drawing daily, get into the habit of doing it whilst you’re cooking dinner or during some other task that you will do day to day once you return to your normal schedule. That way instead of turning straight to Netflix after your day at work, habit will pull you straight to your guitar.
2. Remove Potential Roadblocks
Now we all have potential roadblocks that stop us from achieving what we want for the day. Whether it’s Netflix, Instagram or YouTube we all have things that seemingly pull our attention and leave us wondering where all our time went. Make these things hard. I mean make these things more hassle to do than the alternative. For example, if you wake up and scroll through Instagram during the time you want to be going walking simply because a notification popped up and you just couldn’t resist but look at it - put your phone in another room when you sleep. Too much YouTube at night which is stopping you going to bed early and getting a full rested night sleep – turn off the Wi-Fi 30 minutes before you go to bed and engage in some other activity. Watching too much Netflix during the day which is stopping you from reading or gardening or making something – take the batteries out of the remote and put them somewhere hard to get! Simple – just make the thing you want to do easier than the things that distracts you.
3. Be Consistent
Consistency is key. But obviously for habits, consistency is literally everything. Without consistency, it’s going to be very hard to create and cement these habits so that once the distractions and rush of daily life return, you can maintain them. Hold yourself to a high standard and make yourself accountable for doing the things you want each day. Or better yet, create a network of people so you can hold each other accountable. If you know of a family member or friend wanting to make healthier life choices, then you can be each other’s biggest motivators, don’t let them down.
Time is currency, once you go back to work, you don’t want to look back wishing you’d done more than just watch Netflix. Do the things you’ve always said you’d do if you had the time.