10 simple habits you need to track in 2019

The New Year is a great time: the calendar displaying '01', the first month of the year, suggests having a fresh start.

Ditch the dusty December calendar! It's time to channel that fresh-start feeling into a year of awesome.

The holidays may be over, but the motivational wave is still cresting. Let's ride it and ditch those "wishful thinking" resolutions of the past.

Sure, we all start with fire in our bellies – that gym membership beckons, the dream career seems within reach. But motivation is a fickle flame.

What we truly need is the steady engine of habit to propel us forward.

Habits are the building blocks of our identity. They shape who we are, day in and day out. Without them, our resolutions fizzle faster than a sparkler on the 4th of July.

According to Coach.me, the usual suspects for New Year's resolutions are the self-improvement all-stars: meditation, daily workouts, and kicking the bad habits (like that nightly glass – or two – of wine).

But wait, there's more! Here are 10 fresh habits to cultivate for a truly epic year...

Wake up early

There are tons of confirmations in favor of starting a day with the early morning routine.

Waking up with the sunrise is the natural mechanism within our circadian clocks.

If we disregarded artificial light and the presence of all the gadgets, we would synchronize with solar time easily.

In case you experience the setbacks, do not let it affect your progress.
If you are ready to power through it, you will surely get “unstuck” as the quantity eventually turns into quality.

Drink more water

The ugly effects of dehydration are easy to recognize, such as dull, dry skin, weakness, or dizziness.

Water revitalizes, so drinking 8 glasses daily is essential for physical well-being.

You can track the performance of this simple task by setting a reminder on your phone to root a habit.

Controlling water intake comes naturally after a maximum of four weeks.

Learn To Speak A Foreign Language

Joining the multimillion-strong community of Chinese/Spanish/German/French, etc. speakers is a rewarding experience.

Let alone the exciting idea of visiting the country and understanding what local people say, there are benefits that, according to recent scientific research, language learners can enjoy, like memory quality improvement and an increase in attention span.

When becoming bilingual, you exercise your brain, boost your concentration and polish your analytical skills to perfection.

Write a Journal for at least 10 minutes a day

Whatever your ideas, it is worth writing them down before you forget them. Who knows, maybe this way of managing your thoughts will be a perfect mind-mapping solution to help you find a path to success in the new year.

Take advantage of the benefits that social media can give.

They keep track of your stories. The skill of presentation, as well as storytelling, has become a dominating trend.

Creating a powerful online presence by introducing engaging stories boosts your creativity and makes your business visible to a wider audience.

Probably the best way to start a new year is to concentrate on work-related habits that increase your personal productivity because they are the hardest to cultivate and most significant to keep.
They enhance your professional profile and bring long-term positive changes.

Set priorities for your day

Results are achieved more slowly when you constantly encounter obstacles. You might be in a situation where you don’t hit your goals.

To prevent chaos at work, there is a simple solution: make it a habit to set daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly priorities. Sounds boring? But rewarding, to say the least.

Identifying what is important for the current day will save you time. Any tasks, especially those comprising epic multi-stage projects, need clear priorities.

It helps be more responsive and efficient, and based on the experience of those who troubled themselves with tracking prioritizing, it does pay off.

Write to-do list

Visualizing what you plan to do helps you get things done more efficiently. It is proven that people manage better when they have written down what they need to do.

Moreover, once you see your list of tasks marked or color-coded to label their urgency, it will likely help you feel in charge and never fall behind.

Fortunately, the choice of software for sorting out your priorities is huge. We would suggest apps that have multi-functional options. For example, TMetric can be applied as ‘all-in-one’ software: a task planner, a time tracker, an activity scanner, and a report generator).

No Screens After 10pm

Apps that track your consumption of online content are becoming more popular, and it is clear why, especially in the evenings traditionally associated with having quality time with your family.

Besides, the limits you put on the screen time will be rewarding in terms of sync with a healthier sleep routine, which, in turn, will increase your productivity and overall well-being in the morning.No email before breakfast

Striving for zero inbox can be a noble mission but starting your day with trying to accomplish it might be a very unwise decision.

Managing the email before breakfast will exhaust your determination to stick to the daily to-do list and consume precious time.

Treat your morning as a launching time for your productivity, and do not let the email routine become your hurdle.

No Facebook at work

Social media is integrated into our daily routine, but it does not deny that some platforms, like Facebook, become just a source of aimless scrolling and distract you from the priorities you smartly set beforehand.

Creating distraction-free work environments is easier said than done, but with a simple trick of tracking time, things transform.

Make the time tracker your accountability partner, and the issue of unnecessary presence on social media in terms of utilizing your work time will be solved automatically.

Whatever habit you want to include in your 2019 list, remember that the best way to build a habit is to follow these three steps.

Link the habit you want to build to a habit you already have

We do not know much about our brain.

But we do know it has neuroplasticity, which means that every time you make a repetitive decision, it gets physically wired into your brain and forms neuronal connections.

Take advantage of this amazing adaptive mechanism and anchor the habit more easily by linking it to the habit you already have.

For example, if you wake up early, it will be easy to develop a habit of filling this hassle-free time with meditation/exercise/eating a healthy breakfast, etc.

Keep your habit at this ‘baby stage’ tracked and monitored

It will help it grow faster. Many people have had the experience of tracking their habits on and off for some time.

If you give up, it means that you did not find the right assisting tool. Digital time trackers seem ideal for those planning to see through their time usage.

Keeping track of your online activity will increase your business productivity by generating reports on time utilization and giving you an overview of your working routine in detail.

Once you get hold of your timeline, it will be easy to incorporate healthy habits into your day.

Reward yourself in between

Craving for rewards is imprinted in the psychological patterns of human behavior: we tend to maintain a positive habit easier in case the benefits we expect are reachable.

Thus, you should never ignore rewarding yourself while building a new habit.

For instance, if you learn a new language and make progress, take a break and buy yourself a ticket to the movie: you might even hit two birds with one stone by going to the best movie theater and practicing further if the movie goes in the original with the supporting subtitles.

Final thoughts

When fully armed with good intentions and efficient assistants, we commit to cultivating new good habits faster.

Do not look back on the list of New Year's resolutions with disappointment; just make 2019 the year you do not change your mind about becoming the new you.