In December 2021, I signed up for a program called Ship30for30.
The idea is simple. You join a community of (aspiring) digital writers with the goal of writing/shipping 30 atomic essays (short articles with 250 - 300 words) for 30 days. Although it seems doable, after a few days it becomes challenging to keep up and consistently publish every day.
The key is to overcome this initial inertia. Once that happens, writing (or any other habit you're forming) becomes a fun daily routine. Here is how you can do it:
Attach consequences to breaking your habits
While most days I enjoy the process, not all days are fun and rosy for writing.
Sometimes there are too many things going on in a day leaving me with no bandwidth for writing. Other days I don't feel like writing for unknown reasons and I put it off until the end of the day. These days will happen but breaking your habit should not be an option!
Maintain your habits by creating consequences through
External forces. Ask a friend or family member to hold you accountable for keeping your habit.
Internal forces. Create an internal motivation to keep going. Maintaining a streak does the trick for me. After publishing 10 atomic essays it was difficult not to continue writing. Now that I'm on day 27 it's even more difficult to break it.
Be specific about your goal
Set yourself a time frame for forming the habit.
Instead of saying "I want to X every day", say "I want to do X every day for the next N days". If you manage to do it for N days you can do it for the rest of your life. But it feels more achievable when you set a limit.
Answer a few questions to always remind yourself why you're developing this habit.
Why are you developing this habit?
What are the benefits of forming this habit?
What would a successful N days look like for you?
Create a list of 10 habits you'd like to develop and follow this system to improve your life by forming good habits.