Every year I get a new planner because I like to feel like I have my life together. Yes, it’s an illusion, but I get to personalize the planner anyway I want to, so it’s all good.
In this year’s planner, I put a habit tracker. There are a few goals that I have for the year and I thought the habit tracker would be useful for them. One is one of my half-assed resolutions. I want to read at least 5 days a week. I color those days with light blue.
I also want to increase the duration of my workouts. I try to exercise at least 10 minutes most days. Those days are purple. Fifteen minute days are pink. Twenty minute days are red.
And I also want to be more consistent with my sleep schedule. The days I’m in bed, lights off, TV off, phone off before 12:30 AM are dark blue.
Now the thing is I track my sleep and my workouts in my phone. But the habit tracker gives me a different kind of visual record. I can see everything all at once, color coded and easy to interpret.
In January, I read every day except for two. I worked out every day except for four and most of those workouts were at least fifteen minutes. Filling in those squares really motivated me to keep filling them out.
The same could not be said for my sleep goal.
I didn’t make it to bed before 12:30 AM nearly half of the month. I couldn’t get a streak going longer than four days. And there are too many times that I stayed up too late two nights in a row.
Sleep has always been a challenge for me. It’s gotten worse in the last few years. And my bad habits are surprisingly resistant to the slightly self-competitive nature of the habit tracker. I like besting myself. I like creating long streaks and then trying to break them. Hell, I’m well on my way to hitting 1,000 straight days on Duolingo for the second time.
But when it comes to my sleep habits, I just can’t seem to find the groove.
Of course I’m not giving up on the habit tracker just yet. I think that in this case, with this goal, it just needs a little more time.
Rest assured, I’ll put my bad sleep habits to bed.
No, I’m not apologizing for that.
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