In September of last semester, I made the decision to start exercising again after a long time. Before the pandemic, I used to exercise, mostly focusing on endurance, but I had never really focused on building muscle mass. I've always enjoyed the beginning of a routine because it's where you demonstrate how much you want to continue with that habit. In my case, the problem was not maintaining the routine, but rather the moments when I had to break it, like holidays, vacations, rest days, etc.

I've tried various habit tracking apps over time, but none of them convinced me because they made it seem forced, with strict rules or complex methodologies. Last year, I started exploring the idea that I might have ADHD, although I'm not officially diagnosed. I strongly considered that I might have ADHD, so I started researching the topic. That's how I came across ADHDJesse on Twitter (I still call it Twitter even though it's now X). One day, I saw that he recommended this app called Polar Habits.

When I saw the welcome screen, I knew it would be a great tool for me. The philosophy of Polar Habits is as follows:

"In Polar Habits, there are no streaks to break and no chains to feel bound by. You don't start all over again just because life got in the way or you slipped up yesterday. Instead, you're encouraged to bounce back, regain your momentum, and keep moving forward!"

I really liked this philosophy because it helped me consolidate the idea I already had. Many times, we break our routine because we don't have control over many things around us, and it's likely to happen due to external factors. But the key is not letting that day or week when we break the routine stop us. In the end, what matters is the days that we went for it and tried.

Another thing I like about Polar Habits is that it's SIMPLE. You create a habit you want to follow, optionally add a description of what the habit is about and why you want to do it, and that's it. Now all you have to do daily is mark whether you completed the habit or not. No streaks, no strikes, nothing. It's just that simple. You did it or you didn't. It doesn't matter why or why not. That's not important, and it also avoids the need for me to justify or explain myself or even feel bad. It's like saying, "Today, I couldn't do it. Oh well."

Throughout this year, I've been using Polar Habits for a specific habit: tracking my consistency with going to the gym. I feel that it's easy to get lost or demotivated after missing a day or several days, or not seeing quick results. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that good things take time. Things don't happen overnight. I know it's a cliché and it has probably been heard before, but I believe that implementing a habit is not a short-term thing. You have to commit and adopt a mindset to follow that habit and reach your goal.

Throughout this year, like everyone else, I've had ups and downs. But having a record of my consistency has helped me on many days to keep going. Seeing that I've been going to the gym for 50 days motivated me to continue. Or the fact that for some reason, I missed a day and a week, but seeing that before that moment, the graph was going up, with that motivation, I was able to recover several times and even surpass the progress I had before.

Recently, I added the habit of reading. When I had my internship at Google during the summer of this year, 2023, I had the opportunity to meet a great person I didn't know before, Hyrum Wright. If you don't know him, he is one of the co-writers of the book "Software Engineering at Google", which is highly recommended in my field. I had the chance to talk to him and ask him some questions. The one that stuck with me the most was, "What habit would you have liked to develop from a young age?" He told me that the ability/habit he would have liked to develop from a young age was the ability to sit down and read. He said that nowadays, sitting down for 15 minutes to half an hour without phones and just reading is rare, if not difficult. So, I started that habit. I set a goal to read at least 15 minutes every day that I could.

I set a timer for 15 minutes and start reading. I mark the part where I stop and close the book. Later, I take notes on what I just read to see if I actually learned something or if I just read for the sake of reading. I'll talk about my ways of concentrating on what I have to do in another blog post, but since I started that habit, I've read almost 5 books in 2 months. For some, it may be little, but for me, it's a great achievement considering that I didn't even read one book in the first half of the year.

If you're someone who wants to start a new habit, the best advice I can give you is "try it". Your habits are yours and no one else's. Use the tools you can and organize it the way you want, but make it your own. There will be moments when you will likely lose track of the progress you've made. So, I invite you to check in every now and then and see the progress you've made. If you've made progress, congratulations! Give yourself credit for your efforts. If you haven't been able to make progress, don't beat yourself up. The fact that you've thought about it means that you want to improve some aspect of your life. Just take a look at the things that might be preventing you from achieving your goal and think about the actions you can take to remedy it.

I hope you liked this post. It's the first one I've written on my website, and I hope it has been helpful.

Thank you very much for reading :)