Flow Habits 

How to identify and align your habits with your values. (Stay to the end to receive your FREE Flow Habits Weekly Tracker.)

It’s sometimes easy to pick arbitrary habits. Someone says one habit is the secret to success, and everyone jumps on it. But do arbitrary habits align with our values?

It’s easy to adopt habits like:

• Waking early

• Cold showers

• Running 10 miles

• Posting 25 times

• Eating one kernel of rice per day

It has become normal to create habit routines based on the latest fads. But that does not move us toward our goals.

So, I have moved toward aligning my habits with my values. 

How so?

By looking at habits that, when accomplished, move me toward my best self. It’s the days when I am firing on all cylinders. When my spiritual, relational, mental, and physical well-being is thriving.

The best way to find those habits is by journaling with deep reflection. Take a moment and journal with the intention of creating your best day.

What do you do on those days? 

What habits shine through like the sun glistening off a lake?

For me, I might write a few sentences before getting down to the good stuff. But, to preface the process, it helps to do some value setting.

My values falls into three categories:

• Spiritual - Faith

• Relational - Family/friends

• Mental - Emotional

• Physical - Health

So as I journal, I am thinking of habits that feed all those areas. 

Here is what I ended up finding:

• Prayer and study

• Present time with family

• Journaling

• Mediation

• No phone in bed

• Reading

• Deep work

• Sleep before 11

• Water

• Calories

• 10k steps

These represent areas that bring clarity to my days.  It’s like a primer that makes it easier to flow creatively and mentally. 

Next, I take the list and start to refine it in terms of effort. I want to prepare myself for the extra planning necessary to complete some tasks. 

Here is the updated list:

It’s important to set the effort level because certain habits need more planning.

For instance, if I want to reach my step goal, I need a plan. It might involve parking farther from the store or taking an afternoon walk. Think of ways to succeed.

Tracking these things is possible on a sheet of paper or on most apps. The way I set it up there is a day for each column. 

Tracking on a weekly basis also frees up my to-do list from repetitive tasks. I can focus on getting critical tasks done while tracking habits elsewhere (like the FREE Notion template you are about to receive).

I like to keep track of my progress on these habits. So, I set a target for how often I want to reach my habit goals per week.

I am a big believer in compounding habits slowly. It’s not about forcing every habit no matter what, all the time. It’s more a matter of making progress over perfection.

After setting a target, this allows me to score how I did each week.

You can create your own score on paper or using apps. Do so by keeping count of how often you reached your habit goal and subtracting it from your weekly target. 

It’s fluid, so on particularly busy weeks, I can set lower targets. Allowing me to plan, or I can increase targets to push further. The goal is to use the score to motivate change and measure progress.

In data analytics, it's said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Measuring our habits provides metrics for improvement, allowing for tangible change to occur.

To summarize, flow habits are about tracking our habits:

• Identifying flow habits that align with our values through journaling and deep reflection.

• Tracking your habits using paper, notes, or an app.

• Keeping score of your results to measure change. 

Before you go, here is your link to your FREE Flow Habits Notion Template.

Thanks for reading,
Don

P.S. Reply back with any feedback on the Notion template or anything that comes to mind (the weirder the better).

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