A way to build habits
As 2025 was starting, I decided to exercise more. Here's the strategy I used:
-
Choose an action that you'd like to do daily. For me that was doing a 1 minute plank, 15 push ups, and 5 pull ups. Aim low and make it realistic to avoid getting discouraged.
-
Hang a physical calendar in your room. Unlike an app or website, it's hard to forget about something on your wall.
-
Whenever you do your action, draw an x on the next blank day in your calendar. This is very rewarding, because you can marvel at how many x's you've already drawn.
-
When you're not feeling well, skip days without guilt. Being too hard on yourself would discourage you from continuing.
-
Once you feel better, just do your action multiple times in a day. Each time, draw an x on the next blank day in the calendar until you catch up. If you're motivated, you can keep doing this to get ahead and build a buffer of x's.
Following this strategy, I did over 365 minutes of planking, 5475 push ups, and 1825 pull ups in the year of 2025.
Another thing that helped me is having a physical pull up bar at home.
