While I’ve had considerable success with maintaining a morning routine, I’ve struggled to institute daily rituals for later in the day when I’m sometimes tired and generally less fresh than in the morning.
For example, I’ve tried to adopt an “end of the work day” ritual to gather loose ends and prep for the next day. But I would generally either shirk it or forget it.
I recently realized that part of the problem may be that my wrap-up ritual is too ambitious for the time being: too lengthy, complex, and difficult. That makes it daunting, which is why I avoid it or it “conveniently” slips my mind.
So I’m going to try starting small. First I’m going to build what habit-formation author Stephen Guise calls a “mini-habit.” My minimum wrap-up ritual will just be to bookmark messages and open browser tabs I want follow up on the next day. (I scheduled a daily alert on my computer to remind me.) Such a small “ask” of myself isn’t daunting, so I’m much more likely to consistently follow through with it on a daily basis.
Once I get a long-enough daily streak of doing that, it will become more automatic and reliable: it will be a habit. Then I can use a technique developed by behavior scientist BJ Fogg called “habit stacking.” I can “stack” a new mini-habit (for example, I could create a to-do list for tomorrow) onto my now established one (bookmarking messages and tabs) by using the latter as a “cue” to perform the former.
By repeating this process, I can build an ambitious habit stack one easy mini-habit at a time.