Hey Reader

Let me know if you can relate, but I find that often times the biggest reason for me "falling off" with my habits and goals is getting bored 😂

At the start, we're excited for the newness of everything, the potential of hitting our targets and making ✨ all the changes ✨

But once the novelty wears off?

Suddenly that routine we were excited about starts to feel stale.

Completing habits starts to feel monotonous.

Our goals that we set off on eagerly now just seem like another thing on the to-do list.

It's not necessarily that our goals have changed or that we’re any less capable of reaching them. It's just that the sparkle has dulled, and without that initial excitement carrying us along, it’s way easier to lose momentum.

This is where I used to get stuck all the time 😝

I’d start strong with a new system, slowly lose interest as the weeks went on, eventually just falling off completely.

This is pretty much never because the goal isn't important to me anymore, but because the day-to-day actions just got boring.

My most recent victim has been my Life Admin Gamification. While levelling up has been fun, the tracking of the tasks has gotten repetitive.

Knowing that this is a common struggle of mine though, I'm committing to approaching things differently.

Let's have a look!

The idea - Use novelty to get back on track

Rather than expecting ourselves to stay excited and motivated towards a habit forever, we can use novelty as a tool to reignite our motivation when things start to stall.

A great example for this was when I got a new water bottle 💦

Was this because my friend had gotten one and I had FOMO? Maybe 👀 But the surprising thing was how much the new bottle got me excited about drinking water (which had previously been considered one of my nemeses)

I went from having effectively no water a day (at least in the form of glass-of-water) to easily getting 2 litres a day.

After a while, as it usually does, that novelty wore off and my water consumption returned to its lower-than-ideal amount. But this just highlighted the power of "new" to me.

Do I want to buy a new water bottle every time I start to fall off on my hydration goal?

No 😅 That feels a little wasteful.

But! There are other ways I can bring some novelty to water consumption to help me out:

• Try different water flavourings
• Alternate between different water vessels
• Add fruit slices

Different types of newness will work better for certain people, but this can help break us out of the monotony that's causing us to let habits slip.

But what about the Life Admin Gamification?

I'm still committed to the idea of gamifying my life as a way to help encourage me to live in a more balanced way, I'm just adding some novelty to it.

The part that I was finding the most difficult to keep up with (because I was bored 😂) was definitely tracking my task completion.

This also ties in with my current difficulties in keeping up with habit trackers. Regardless of whether it's a weekly or a monthly tracker, I just can't seem to bring myself to fill them in 🤔

Rather than keeping on with the tracking system I've been using, I've recently jumped into an app called "Finch". This isn't a sponsored email or anything, I just wanted to let you know about what I'm using at the moment.

Lowkey, I think this is the cutest productivity app I've ever seen 😂

The long-story-short is that you have a little bird (called a birb on the app) and by completing the habits and routines you want to hit you can help your bird go on adventures.

It's free, it's fun, and most importantly...it's new and exciting to me 😈

Already my habits and routines are feeling fresh and exciting again. Plus, I want to help Bernie grow up and have adventures.

If keeping up with your habits is tricky and you want to give Finch a go, we can be friends over there! Hit the button below and I'll send you a Micropet on the app. Every birb needs a Micropet, right? 😂

As said, it's free and just a bit of fun, but I'm enjoying how it's made me excited about my habits and goals again.

Let's take action

Thinking about an area of life that's feeling a bit stale or a habit you're feeling stuck with, ask yourself:

It could be a new tool, a new location, a routine refresh, or like mine just a new way of tracking your progress.

Let me know how you're thinking about changing it up 😄

Until next time!

- Jess

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