Why tracking your habits is often not enough
Are you interested in health & wellness and do you like to try new things? I do. And I have tried a lot over the years!
Yoga and a yoga certification, courses on wild herbs, a certification in raw vegan nutrition,…. I always thought that the next thing would be the solution to everything, the one that would finally fix everything.
I don’t know about you, but for me it never was.
There is so much health and wellness advice out there. We try new stuff again and again.
At some point this year I was really frustrated. I just turned 50 and I have been struggling with sleep for some time. Waking up in the middle of the night, not being able to fall back to sleep and eventually reaching for a book just to pass the time. Of course being totally wired and tired the next day.
So I tried to fix it. Regular bedtime, dimming the lights, no screen before bed. And: trying to quit coffee! But I love coffee! And living in Costa Rica, one of the coffee countries in the world - doesn’t make it any easier!
But here’s the truth: I couldn’t tell if it was acually helping or not. Some mornings I’d think, yes, I definitely slept better without the coffee. Other days I slept crappy even though I had’t had any coffee the day before. I was guessing, constantly guessing.
The thing nobody tells you about healthy habits
I don’t know about you, but I don’t try a new healthy habit for the sake of it. I try them, because I hope that they’re going to help - better sleep, more energy, a steadier mood. But now be honest, how many new habits, routines or supplements have you tried, but you never actually knew if they did the job that they were supposed to do!
And yes, you can track your habits, routines and supplements. But does that help? Just knowing that you did the habit for 30 days doesn’t tell you if your mood improved or if you have more energy now. Not to mention, tracking can get really stressful! - squeezing in the meditation just before bed so you don’t loose your streak! - And that definitely did not help my mood, believe me!
So I built it
And that’s what made me build My Inner Balance: an app to track my sleep, mood, energy, habits and supplements. But not just to track for the sake of tracking. The whole point was to see connections. No optimisation, no streaks, no pressure.
And now I can finally see what works for me - not guess. Which habits make sense to keep, and which don’t.
Because we’re all different. The answer is going to be different for everyone. What works for me doesn’t necesarily have to work for you. We’re all unique.
So the question is not “have I been doing this habit so that I keep me streak?” - but “What actually works for me?”
That’s the question I built My Inner Balance to answer. If you want to try it for yourself, it’s for free on the App store!
