Don't Track Against Yourself

When we talk about making small changes, one challenge is that it can be hard to see progress. Small wins add up to big wins - but slowly. 

Enter the habit tracker. A way to stay accountable to yourself on the commitments you've made. Writing. Playing music. Painting. Journaling.

It can be as simple as a small calendar, with a box for each day of the month. Check off the days you showed up for your art. Leave the rest blank. (There are lots of beautiful ones you can find on Etsy, that you can color in over the month to create artwork out of your successes.)

Now comes the hard part. Looking at the data. 
And not using it against yourself.

Not beating yourself up for the days missed. But rather celebrating the days achieved. Getting curious about when you fell off. Asking quality questions about what got in the way. Deciding to tweak your systems - a different time, an accountability group, a pomodoro session, sticker rewards - and collect more data. Rinse, repeat. Keep refining the process, keep discovering what makes you tick, what draws the art forth. What makes you joyful in your work. Where you find satisfaction.

Letting failure be your greatest teacher, and not a definition of your character.

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Transcript

Hi my friends, welcome back to the podcast UM. I was gonna talk about something else today, but it's the end of the month. It's actually January 31st as I'm recording this and. I started this practice in January of tracking and as I was reviewing my tracking data for the month it sparked. A thought about how much this is like applies to the habits that we've been talking about here building, right? One of my biggest things that I'm always advocating for is not making giant plans. Giant swing for the fences, kind of things. Like I'm going to write my novel by the end of the month, but instead say I'm going to sit down for 5 minutes or 30 minutes, five days a week and work on something, right? That. All the research shows that what really leads to change, and what really leads to creation is having small achievable habits that you repeat. And once they come on repeat, then you don't have to work so hard at them. Then the work just gets done and gets created. If you're having every day to force yourself to sit down and work, having every day to fight an uphill battle just to get to the part where you're creating. Eventually your willpower is going to run out and you're not going to keep showing up, so. Making it a really easy win like one minute of guitar or one minute of meditation or you know Journal 5 sentences, things like that are really good place to start because an easy win gives your brain a dopamine hit if you celebrate it. So the next thing that I've been working on is tracking some of that data because. What I realized is when your winds are really small. It's hard to see the progress overtime and I have this habit tracker and it's like really simple. It's actually about like 9 different habits on a sheet of paper and there's little calendars of like 31 days right below each and so you can check off. You know, on the second I did 

this and I actually crossed out what this habit tracker was for, it was for a bunch of health things like sleep and drink water and wait till you're hungry. Start eating. Like tune into your body, which are all important things, but things that I don't struggle with as much sleep I do. But that's a whole separate thing cause it's not gonna get help by the tracker. I'm working on it separately so it wasn't something that I needed to track and I thought a lot about. What were the creative, um habits and processes that I wanted in my life more that I kind of kept picking up and then dropping. And that's a big thing for me is I love starting new habits. I'm laughing at myself. I say this because, like, this is pretty much my January 1st thing, right? I love starting new habits with energy, signing myself up for something, and then by the third day or the 2nd week it disappears and. Part of what's been so helpful about having tracked January specifically is, um, I'm have this chronic illness. We're not entirely sure what I have. Some people think it's Crohn's, which is an autoimmune. Some people think it's a digestive thing. It's an ongoing mystery in my life, but the point is that a lot of things wipe me out and make me really exhausted and make me really sick, and it takes me a long time to get better. Which is kind of classic autoimmune. So I just kind of shorthand, it's like this is a lot of what my life is, right? So I drove 3 days from Montreal to get to Pittsburgh and for like a week after I kind of had to lie in bed and work from bed because I just didn't have any energy, really wiped me out. I picked up a winter colds which are going around everywhere and I've just been in bed for five days and so. Looking back, you know, this is like the first day that I've been vertical in about a week. I bought groceries and wash dishes and took a shower. It's like progress, right? But like, when you emerge from that kind of a thing and again most people get a cold, again, things are different. Now. I know everyone who's got little kids is getting sick all the time because all the kids are getting their first 

colds and bringing them home. So it's been like this unusual thing. Most people, though, get one, maybe 2 colds in a winter, in a season. I've literally been sick pretty much every week this month, and some have been shorter, some have been longer. But it was really helpful to look at the habit tracker and realize, oh, the reason that everything fell off was because I was sick over and over and over again and. And So what I want to talk about is, um, I've started these things before, habit trackers, because I love tracking and I love data. And I've always stopped because I've always used them against myself. And so this is really what I want to communicate to you guys today is if you are going to track staff, there's sort of two ways that your brain can go about it. They can be the judge and they can look at that data and say, well, you said you were going to do five days a week and only did three days a week. So what the hell, you're just failing at life, right? Or it can be the scientist and put on its lab coat and go, huh? I really wanted to do 5 days but I only did three. I wonder why. Or like I've been doing. Ha. Like, I really had these goals. One of mine is music. One of them is my screen writing class. One of them is reading a novel or play. And like the reading I was doing twice a week. And then I started looking at it was like, actually really part of it is just looking at it every day. And like, I haven't read it all in a while. And then it reminds me that I enjoy doing that. And because I only do one page to get the check mark, it's kind of an easy win. So again, it's building a habit in a really gentle way. And some of that is just. Awareness. And one of the reasons that I started this specifically in January was because I'm in this physical therapy program because I've got tendonitis everywhere. Another reason we think I've autoimmune and I kept starting and stopping physical therapy and part of it was that I would exercise and then everything would get sore and so I would rest and then rest would become two days and then three days and then I would 

forget that I like, I just couldn't remember where I left off because I wasn't. Feedback loops that are quick, like if you do something the next day, it's kind of easier to remember. But if it takes 3 days or a week, you're my brain at least loses track of where I left off. And so I wasn't being consistent because what I was thinking was like 2 days of rest was four days of rest. Or what I realized looking at this is I was sick for most of the first week of January, so I stopped that. And then I was sick for half the second week of January. So I stopped then. Then it was sick for half. Like literally every week I was sick and it's. I just met with my physical therapist and I was able to say it's not the PT. I love the exercises. I want to be doing them. It's that I'm having this other systemic stuff that keeps knocking me on my *** and I can't get up and can't do this stuff. Similarly with music. Like two of my goals have been to play more guitar and sing. And it's been really spotty and not great. It got better when I was looking and I was like, ohh, it's been three days since I picked up the guitar. Cool. Like like let me let me pick it up for again. again. minutes is already a win, so it doesn't feel like I'm 30 minutes behind and now I've got to do an hour to catch up, right? That's the other way that people can use trackers against themselves. My only goal is to be consistent and to collect data and figure out why does it get hard. And then part of it too for myself is because I consistently get sick again. Hopefully this won't be forever, but right now. That is the reality and part of what happens is I think tomorrow I'll be better, tomorrow I'll do this, tomorrow I'll feel like I have the energy and tomorrow doesn't come until a week later and I get 2 good days and I'm sick again. So part of the question is, can I do one of my physical therapy exercises or can I do a stretch or can I do something very gentle that's not the whole thing. Can I sing in bed, you know, can I play the guitar at, like really finding things that. Um. Getting out of this binary that I live in, that I think a lot of people live in, where I'm either fully functional, happy, healthy, can tackle the world and do all the things that are on my list, play the guitar, read the novel, write the novel, 

write the script, perform audition, write everything, or I feel terrible and I can't get anything done and what is it to weave in a spectrum of? Like, I still feel really crummy today, and actually a lot of this didn't get done, but the podcast was getting done and it was this big lift of OK, can we put on makeup and. I put on a cute sweater. I've been living in this sweater, so I'm glad it looks good. But like I wasn't trying that hard. I just have really cute clothes right now. But you know, like, can I can I set up the the corner and sit down and not wait until I feel and feel like all my thoughts are in order? And I made this like perfect thing that I'm ready to talk about, right? Because it's important to me to be consistent with the podcast. So I knew if I didn't get it done, it wouldn't end up on the tracker if something that I want to do every couple of weeks. And that's helpful to me because. I'm about to turn the page. So tomorrow is the 1st of February and I'm thinking about, you know, doing this again. And I'm looking at the places I'd written down like meditation as a goal. And what's nice is I'm holding these goals very lightly. So with meditation, especially versus like music, music, I really want to be playing more of meditation. I've gone through phases of my life where I've meditated every day. I've been very consistent. I really enjoyed as a practice. I don't feel like I need it right now. So it was more curiosity that I had because all of these. Habits are things that I think will improve my life. Just I know I feel better, more engaged, more excited about life when I'm playing music, when I'm reading, when I'm doing physical therapy, when I'm writing. So these are all things that I put down with the curiosity and the question of if I do these more often, how will I feel at the end of the month? Will I feel more engaged? Will I feel? Do they feel like work? Am I expecting too much of myself, which happens a lot. Am I? And and so, like having meditation on here, it didn't feel like I had to do it to prove something. It was more at the end of the month, if I don't feel super saddled. Maybe meditation is the thing that I want to try more of. Or 

I didn't write as much as I thought that I would. Oh, that's really interesting. I know I feel really good when I write. What can I do to get out of my own way? Is it making an appointment to right? Is it making more writing dates with friends? Is it finding a coffee shop or special book or doing it with a cup of coffee in the morning? Right. Like habit stacking, they call it if you can do something. Like you'll do your physical therapy. What are they called? I call them revise because I think in ballet terms, but when you stand on your toes, their heel lifts essentially are calf raises. You can do those while you brush your teeth, right? You can do like a yoga stance while you brush your teeth. And that's the way. Since most people have a habit of brushing their teeth and they're gonna do it anyway morning and night, you can add an extra habit to it. Most people are having coffee every morning, so you can add a habit to a habit that already exists. It makes it easier for your brain to snap those habits together and make it a new habit. So. In that way, looking at oh, I really wanted to write more often. I only really wrote twice a week this whole month. And it's also just interesting. Even like, wow, I kind of thought I was writing more. And so data, if you can be really clean about it, if you can get out of the judgey and not look at and go, *** **** what is wrong with me? I keep saying I'm a writer. I say writing is important to me. I know writing made me, makes me feel better. Why am I not showing up for this? Right? That is when we use data and habit trackers against ourselves. And then we're just gonna end up losing on all sides. We're gonna feel ****** and the data won't help us, and we also will be able to move forward in something that we want. So the other reason that I think this is so important, and again physical therapy helped me realize this is. When your habits are really small, which is the perfect place to start a new habit right the one minute win. It can take a while before you really see a ton of progress. True of guitar, like, my goodness, I'm constantly astounded by how hard playing the guitar is. People who play make it look so easy, and I have no idea that 

you are constantly having to find new strings with your fingers in weird positions and hold those strings down and only hit four strings within 5 strings and then six strings with the storming hand. And then there's beats on top of it. And like strum patterns, there's so much happening, right? And so the police, when you begin, is literally just one chord strumming. Another chord strumming unot, right. You gotta break stuff down into really simple things. Very boring, very simple, easy things. Physical therapy is a lot the same way for me. Again, because I have this delicate flower of a body that cannot do really big hard things very quickly. I have to slowly build up my strength and my stability. So a lot of my physical therapy are these very simple, like isometric things where you're holding a pose, right? You're not necessarily lifting a dumbbell or doing something that looks really big. And because I was sick for a couple of weeks and didn't do my physical therapy, I've noticed that just in two weeks, standing hurts more, like my hip already has less. 

What's it called the core strength? Less stability in it. And so something as simple as standing is getting sore because I've got tendonitis about inflammation in my hips. And it's kind of a reverse of this, but this idea that, oh, I didn't feel like my physical therapy is 10 minutes every other day. It's not a ton. And still I struggle doing it. That's what you habits feel like, right? But it's not a ton. And yet not doing that for just two weeks means that my body is already going back to not being functional. It was just really great way of like, oh, yeah, just that 10 minutes. If I can just commit to doing it a little bit more consistently, how much stronger will my body be, right? How much better will my writing be if I show up? Three times a week instead of two. And if we can get into the habit of. Starting a new one every month and then looking at February and just make it a goal to do a little bit more, right. If you've been reading at night and it's been one minute, maybe you wanna go to. Honestly, it never is one minute. It's usually way more than that, right? But it is close to probably 10 minutes. And then I stopped. Maybe I want to stretch that time or maybe I want to add on how much time I spend writing. So there are ways that you can start to increase, but so much of this, when it works, is about being incredibly kind to yourself, to your life circumstances, to the ways in which. I feel like life keeps knocking me sideways and it's really hard for me, who loves to set a goal and have a plan and go out and execute. And very couple of years now, not just because of the pandemic, but because my health has really been tanking and I've spent a lot of time going to doctors trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. And unfortunately, going to doctors made me feel more sick because the testing was terrible and the medication was terrible. So anyway, it's been kind of a long couple of years of feeling really ****** internally in the world, going to hell in a handbag. And so I would set plans and then get knocked sideways and then reappear 2 weeks later and be like, what was my plan? What did I even want two weeks ago? Why does it matter anymore, 

right? And if you've experienced that, having something like this where again? I like that the wind isn't I finished my screenplay or I finish my novel. I will get to those as goals and wins later on. But right now what I need are habits that I can come back to. I want to be someone who writes consistently. I want to be someone who plays music consistently. I want to be someone who, you know, does physical therapy consistently. I want to be able to dance salsa into my 80s, and I want to be able to hike in my 80s and travel and. Visiting my aunt who I love dearly, who is and I'm seeing 40 years from now, the body really just changes fast and what I do now matters and it's this really helpful up close view of like. How quickly time moves and how much what we do now in small ways really, really matters for later. And so, yeah, I would invite you to, you know, there's tons of habit trackers on Etsy. There's tons of like free ones online that are really fun to fill in with colors, colored pencils and markers. This one is like a ticking of a box, which I really like, but like, look around and find one that really speaks to you. That's creative, that feels really fun. Use stickers. Like, I love using colored markers. I love finding different ways. I also write thoughts about things that I've learned and lessons. And then the goal is to keep these and. At the end of the year, like really have a every month look back and see what have I learned and see? Have those habits gotten more consistent? Are they bringing me joy? Are they making the life more full? The life that I want to be living more full? Are they leading me to a place where I am finishing my script? Are they leading me to the place where I am able to perform music? And if not, what's next? Is it then add in an open mic once a week, is it? Then add in. Recording myself singing a song and sending it to a friend every couple of days, right. There's always ways to iterate and figure out what's the next little step, the next scary thing that I want to do, and then how do I break it down to a really small thing? And then how do I do that? And 

the reason that I come back to the tracker is like, how do I do that? And then how do I forget about the goal? Because if you're doing a little little thing and the whole time you're thinking I got to climb Mount Everest, but today all I can do is walk across the living room and back, you're going to feel defeated. But if your thing is, I'm going to walk across the living room and back. I'm gonna celebrate the hell out of it and get a check mark, and my only goal is to do that five times this week and five times a week this month. By February the next month, you can set a bigger goal and then Everest becomes a thing you can think about maybe a year from now. But if you're at where you're at and where you're going is really far and really high and really hard for what you can do right now, you're never going to get there because it's too discouraging to look ahead. And so I think that's why I really love this idea of. You're always going to find points, midpoints or every quarter, every six months, every year, right, where you check in and you go, OK, Now I've built these habits. They've gotten easy or easier. Where am I still struggling? And also, are they getting me closer to what I want to be doing? And if not, what do I want to tweak? What do I want to add? You're going to course correct. This doesn't get locked in for the whole year. You can change the things that you know. If you decide reading is not a thing that you care about or like meditation might not be on here in two months, I'm still not sure that I want it. You know, again, it's like something that has served me in the past. I put it on because I was curious if it would serve me again. I don't know, whereas. I think music's going to be here all year. I really wanted to be here all year. But my screen writing class hopefully will be done in another month. And then it'll be like, well, maybe screen writing class becomes working on the screenplay that I'm finishing, right? So things can evolve. Things can become stepping stones to the next things. So I'm here again, being inspired by how I'm learning so much about physical therapy and rehabbing my body. And the slow and steady and the like slow accretions the the winds of like really little winds. Like how much my body has gotten stronger in ways that I didn't even notice because it felt like I was barely doing anything 

because I couldn't do a ton without inflaming everything. And it's this really fine line that I have to walk all the time with my body, and it feels really discouraging in the moment, and it's so helpful to have a physical therapist. Check in with who has me do like test to like how many leg lifts or heel raises can you do? And suddenly I can do like 7, where I couldn't even do one last time. And I'm like, wow, I can see that there's change, right. So having those things too, having places where you show up and you perform your music and you get to see like, oh, it was still terrifying and I still got off key halfway through and forgot all the words. But like, I got half the song this time, you know? And I didn't completely have a panic attack, right? Like, again, making the wins, looking for the. Wins in ways that aren't just yes, I performed on an Arena Stage at the end of this month, and I've completely transformed myself into that kind of a performer. Instead of being no, I practiced four days a week for this month, and then at the end of the month I was able to go to an open mic and do half a song. That's a really cool one. So. 

I feel like I've talked around this a whole bunch, but I'm really just here to encourage you to get curious about the things you want in your life, what it would look like to invite them in. What is the smallest little way that you could start living that version of yourself now, and then get curious about writing down when it gets done? Because I think the gaps are the most interesting thing, right? The days when you feel like gung ho and you're ready for it and you're charging forth and you're getting everything done, those are amazing. But part of what trips up is that we expect, we're always going to feel that way. And we don't make plans for the times. And we're going to fall completely off course because life throws us a curveball. And how do we get back and how do we get excited about or how or how do we show up and we feel like crap, and we're not sure it's ever going to matter, right? And all of those are the questions that can come from looking at what your data tells you about how you're showing up right now. So I love me a little bit of purple marker and some tick boxes, and you can see I've written all over mine everywhere and scratched out what they were for and put in my own category. So again, take something super formulaic and basic and think deeply about who do you want to be, what, how do you want to spend your time every day? What brings you joy, what, where, where you headed in life? And figure out if you can put that into something that you can track because that'll help you learn so much more about. Whether you're moving towards that person that you want to be and or if that's not even the thing you wanted, like sometimes so much of this is. I thought I wanted that. It turns out it really doesn't make me more happy. I didn't really need that. So I'm super curious for you guys and your exploration and this. I'm a total nerd and I love data and I love spreadsheets. So I'm going to go finish this one and start my February 1 and I look forward to hearing from you of how you are exploring who are you're becoming this year. Be well my friends.