Tracking my habits

 Finally, we're out of quarantine. Just in time for lockdown!

But all is not lost. At least we've been able to get out for a walk today. We wore our masks while we were out just to make sure that even if we passed someone outside the 2 meters, we weren't likely to breathe on them. The last thing we want to do is pass this virus on, even if it didn't really affect us - the next person may not have been so lucky.

In my New Year blog, talked about how I was going to attempt to track some new habits I wanted to put in place in order for me to achieve more this year.

I've kept it at the forefront of my mind since the New Year started and I've tried to put a routine in place.

Sadly though, I'm notorious for planning to do things and often not getting around to it. And so, in order to give my self a reminder, I've designed a little sign that I can frame and put up in my office as a visual reminder.

Years ago, I read a book by the writer Zig Ziglar, in which he talked about people who never got around to doing what they said they would, so he changed his business cards to a design that would be a good reminder and he changed the shape of his business cards to a circle and had the word TUIT printed across the middle of it. Everyone he gave his business card to, now had a 'round tuit'. So when someone said that there was something they were going to do when they got around to it, he gave them a card and said something along the lines of, "Here you go, now you've got a 'round tuit.' You can get on with it now.

And so that's what I did this morning for myself. I'm going to put it somewhere that I can see it every day to keep me on track with the habits I want to instil.

So how am I doing so far? Really well I have to say. The only areas I haven't completed so far, are the walking one as we've been in quarantine up until yesterday so we weren't allowed out. So one of the first things on the agenda was to go for a walk this morning, which we did.

I also wanted to start getting back into my healthy eating regime as I've started to put weight on again since we finished our Slimming World course last year.

I did fine until yesterday. The seal on our oven door somehow managed to split in half and instead of cooking food, the heat escaped through the seal and instead of having a cooked meal, we ended up with the hottest kitchen in our road!

And because we had nothing out of the freezer to prepare, we ended up ordering fish and chips to be delivered. I don't know how many syns the fish and chips was but I've written it down as more than I'm allowed and so that column became a fail.

And do you remember how I said I was going to try and kerb my frivolous spending habit? Even though we've been in quarantine, I still have access to online retailers and because of that, I'm still able to spend money on spur of the moment purchases.

So far this week, I've seen a couple of things that I'd normally have bought. But because I'm crossing off that part of the tracker, it was at the forefront of my mind.

What that means in actual fact, is that I'm £30 to the good. So this morning I've been to an ATM machine and drawn £30 out and I'm now putting it toward something I really want.

As you can see from the photo below, the tracking for me is working quite well.

However, I'm well aware we're only 6 days into the New Year and it's still a novelty. I'll see how I'm doing at the end of the month and let you know how it's going!

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