This summer I started four new habits. I started them a week apart because I was feeling too impatient to spread them out more. I knew it would be better to start them at least a month apart but I couldn’t bear to wait on any of them. Like Alice, I give myself very good advice.

First there was the habit of working on my side-hustle. This is not actually habit material. The tasks are too diverse. There are potential habits within the project that I could establish – posting on social media daily, for example – but “working on my side hustle every day” is too broad. Instead, what I need is weekly planning time where I plan out how to include tasks from my side-hustle into my week.

Habit number two was writing daily. I happen to be practicing that habit right now. This habit is starting to be more regular but has not gotten to the point of a daily habit.

Reading interesting non-fiction daily, however, was the easiest of the bunch to get started. This was something I was just waiting for an excuse to get used to. Deciding I was going to make a habit of it felt like getting permission from myself to spend time on it. It feels great that reading is now so easy and so much more common in my daily life.

Lastly, I wanted to get into the habit of cleaning a little extra daily, beyond what I was already consistently cleaning. I’ve realized now only part of this goal is really suited for a habit. Extra cleaning involves what I think of as “conquering new areas” of the apartment and “maintaining the conquered areas”. The maintaining part is much more suited to being habitual – there’s not a lot of planning or decision making involved and most of the component micro tasks are the same from day to day. The conquering new areas, as well as somewhat infrequent tasks like cleaning the bathroom or vacuuming, are more suited to being planned tasks. Due to my attempt to lump all the “extra cleaning” into a single habit, I haven’t managed to establish this regular cleaning habit yet – but I did learn from my first attempt!

So, my summer self successfully gave my present self two habit gifts: reading nonfiction and writing. The two that weren’t successful both taught me why they weren’t ideal habits as I originally conceived of them. Learning, learning!