YAY! I’m still kind of excited about the new year, and some of the changes I’ve made.

As I’ve said before, the accountability posts help keep me accountable, so I’m going to keep doing them, with a few changes.

Weight went back down to the normal range. This is the first year in recent memory when I didn’t gain a lot of weight over the holidays. I count this as a HUGE win. But both Blaze and I made the decision to not make as much food this last month. Instead of left overs for weeks, we had left overs for days. We still made the days special, but I didn’t over eat like I usually do, and that was good.

I am doubly pleased with where my weight is because I didn’t walk as much last week. I came down with a flu-like thang on New Year’s Eve–achy joints, sore throat, and fever. Am all over it today, but had a couple of days where I just sat on the couch and napped and didn’t do much. I averaged 6.8K per day, which is higher than I expected it. Then again, I had a few days of 11K, then I got sick.

I wrote every day, even the days I was sick. It’s really lovely to have this streak going. I plan on continuing it. I’m a writer. I should try to write something every day.

Email. This is a new accountability thing for me to track. I need to get back on top of my email. Part of that means actually doing email every single day. There have been times when I’ve skipped doing email a couple days and then had to deal with hundreds of unread emails in my inbox, which was even worse.

My goal for the month of January is to tackle one of the four inboxes each week. By the end of January, I should be back down to between zero to three emails in each.

Part of my challenge is finding a time to do email. If I always do it at the same time every day, I’m much more likely to actually get to it. The problem is that I’m still searching for that time.

But here, in these posts, I’m going to admit whether or not I managed to do email every day or not. I did not do email every day this last week. I can blame being sick, but really, I’m still just struggling to get to it. This is very much a work in progress.

Today, I start with my new planner. And stickers, because stickers are important. The only thing I’m doing this afternoon is adulting and making phone calls. I have at least a dozen, possibly more, phone calls I need to make, appointments I need to set up, etc. For example, I need to get some help with my knee. It’s better, but it isn’t good. So I need to email my doctor to get her to give me a PT referral. (Hopefully she’ll just do that I don’t have to go into the office for an appointment.) Then I need to call my insurance company and figure out what my benefits are in terms of PT. Etc.

I’m still figuring out my new system. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’ll need to work this system for at least three months. Then, hopefully, the world will be opening back up and I can adjust my system accordingly. But only for an additional three months, because then construction starts, and I’m going to have to change everything over again.

One of the things I’ve found fascinating, and have taken some time to figure out, is the decision process behind what gets tracked where. I’m not tracking steps in my planner, because my Fitbit app does that. I’m not tracking eating veggies or doing yoga – I just do those things. I don’t need accountability for them, or credit.

Email, however, I need to track and do daily. The planner has a space for that. I’m also tracking the writing every day, because this is a new habit for me. Then the other things I’m tracking in the planner are reading for work and reading for pleasure.

My husband writes A LOT. I’m his first reader, and have fallen behind. For a long while, I could either read for pleasure, or I could first reader his stuff. I couldn’t do both in a single day, which frequently meant I wasn’t reading anything at all.

I now allocate 30 minutes to each. That is much more doable for me. I am slowly knocking things off my TBR list from him, as well as having some time to enjoy myself reading.

But these are new habits. I started them in December. I need to track them for now until they become better ingrained.

So how do you build habits? I start off with reminders and tracking until those habits are automatic.
Frequently, I’ll use daily reminders on my phone to get the habit started.