Tips for forming a Habit 

Have you been thinking to start doing to-do lists and never got around to it. Or you did it for a few days and stopped doing it after some time and then lost track of it?

You can use a checklist to remind yourself till it becomes a habit. I have this used effectively. Print the following sheet. Paste it some where on your desk where you can see it every day.  Every day you were able to make a to-do list, put a cross mark. As you start tracking your progress, you will be more motivated. Do this for a 3 months. If you manage to do a task for at least 50% of the time during each month, most probably you will continue improving.

I found this format can be useful in various ways. You can use this as checklist for any other purpose - to track or trend of anything . I have given some examples which may be useful for some .

example 1: Open Issues for the project: This can be used to track an important project.
example 2: Stock Price: If you are a stock market enthusiast
example 3: Tasks/day: If you want to analyze how busy you have been each day
example 4:  No. of Meetings: If you feel you have been spending lot of hours in meetings at work, you might want to track and analyze number of meetings you attended for a month and take corrective action. 

I am a 'metric' fan and like watching some trends to implement a process improvement. 

You can be innovative and use this kind of tracking sheet for various purposes. 

Month: November 2002

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