I recommend checking out Elastic Habits, Stephen Guise’s sequel to his popular book Mini-Habits. In that book, Guise presents a technique for setting and tracking variable habit goals. For each habit, you set three levels of goals: Mini, Plus, and Elite.
For example, I’m giving myself the following elastic habit goals:
Publishing Habit
Mini: Click publish on anything [even if it’s just a quote]
Plus: Write and publish a brief note [like this one]
Elite: Write and publish a full essay
Inbox Processing Habit
Mini: Process one inbox item
Plus: Process a day’s worth of items [to keep up with the influx]
Elite: Process two days’ worth of items [to make progress on my backlog]
This approach insures against breaking your habit-forming streak while also challenging you to accomplish more.
Try it!
This is exactly what I was looking for.
I was thinking to myself one day "Doesn't posting a Tweet count as a daily post?" (since I have a daily publishing habit)
And these elastic habits helps me visualize that. This system reminds me a lot of video games that have different "star levels" to indicate how much you achieved, while still giving you a reward.
Rewarding yourself daily (even for the tiniest things) is super important for long-term sustainability. This also reminds me of an Alex Hormonzi YT video in which he explains "focus on the process, not the outcome."
His reasoning is that if you focus on the outcomes you're also thinking about what you don't have.
This leads to larger fluctuations in mood, meaning, that it's more difficult to stay consistent. Rather, by focusing on "checking your boxes" every day, or in other words focusing on the process, you can stabilize your mood and therefore become a more consistent individual.
In the case of elastic habits, these help you "check your boxes" much easier if needed and will sustain your long-term consistency.