Habits Don’t Need To Be Daily

When you think about someone who has really good habits, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s someone who does their morning routine every single day, which includes meditation, journaling, and some stretching. Or maybe it’s someone who completes their checklist, gets their email inbox to zero, and updates their to do list at the end of a work day. 

No matter the case, it’s likely that you see someone who has good habits as being really consistent on a daily basis. But why do habits need to be done daily? When we open our minds to seeing habits existing on different intervals, we realize how much more doable it is to stay consistent, and how many more opportunities there are to get into good habits.

What this suggests is that a habit doesn’t need to be done daily… It just needs to be done with reliable consistency. And consistency can exist on any interval of time. Yes you can do things daily, but you can also do them weekly, monthly, yearly, every other day, every other week, every 10 days, every 6 weeks, only on Mondays and Fridays, every 3 hours… The options are truly endless.

I have many good daily habits. I do some version of my morning routine, fill out my Self Improvement Scorecard every day, email my grandma, and do at least one session of Duolingo (among many other things) every day.

But I also have habits done consistently on different time intervals. I call my Dad on Fridays, have time on Tuesdays and Thursdays dedicated to follow ups for my business, I do a weekly relationship review with my wife, I do monthly strategic business planning and accounting, I go to the grocery store once a week to get fresh produce after a workout, and I use my standing desk when I take meetings throughout the day. All are good habits that contribute to my goals, and I do them all consistently but with different frequencies.

And while we're at it, here's another perspective - Consistency can even be situational and contextual. For example, I don’t really watch TV but can get caught up in it when I’m visiting my Mom, so I’m in the habit of leaving the room by 9 pm. Habits aren’t something you do all the time, but something you can count on doing when they need to get done.

At the end of the day, we want good habits for one reason - To get consistent doing the things that most generate the results we want in our lives. And those critical actions can be taken however much that you feel is most doable or most serves you.

It might be more natural for you to think about this through the lens of building good routines. Routines don’t need to be done daily, but they’re most useful when done with a reliable consistency. There’s a level of intentionality that goes into what the routine is for, what the action steps are, and how often you want to complete it. Habits benefit from the same level of thoughtfulness.

So try throwing away this bias that habits need to be done daily, that it can only be considered ‘consistent’ if it happens every day. Embrace the full spectrum that our actions take and cultivate the right habits, on the right intervals, that fuel your life. That’s not to say you can’t have daily habits, but know there’s a lot more to it, and oftentimes cultivating habits that exist on a different time interval is a good place to start.