Small Daily Habits That Stick
Making the bed will not change your life. Doing one small thing on purpose every day, including the days you do not feel like it, is practice for the bigger things.
Quick answer: Pick three small things you can finish in a few minutes each, keep the list where you will see it every evening, and tick them off the same day. In CharacterSheet these are your dailies: every one you tick trains Willpower.
Keep the list to three
A long list of habits feels productive for a week. Then one bad day leaves seven boxes empty, and the whole list starts to look like an accusation.
Three is enough to matter and short enough to finish on a bad day. Add a fourth after a few good weeks, not before.
Make each one finishable
"Read more" is a wish. "Read ten pages" is something you can tick. Good daily habits are small, specific and done in minutes:
- Make my bed
- Read ten pages
- No snacking after dinner
The last one is a habit of not doing something. Those count too, and they are often the hardest.
Check the list at the same time every day
Pick a moment in the evening and look at the list then. It is early enough to still do what is left, and late enough to know how the day went.
Paper and Reminders both work
A sticky note on the fridge does the job. So does a list of repeating reminders in the Reminders app on your iPhone. If either one is working for you, keep it.
What neither does is make the habits add up to anything. A ticked reminder disappears, and yesterday's sticky note goes in the bin.
Dailies in CharacterSheet
- On Home, find the Daily willpower card and add your dailies. You can have up to five.
- Tick each one as you do it. Every tick trains Willpower, the sixth stat.
- Set an evening time in Settings, and the app reminds you then if any are left.
- A day with none done costs Willpower some XP, so the stat reflects how the week actually went.
Three small things a day
Tick your dailies and Willpower levels up with the rest of you.