Three Times a Week is a Habit

Did you know that three times a week is a habit? I learnt this recently from Laura Vanderkam in her book Tranquillity by Tuesday and it has really changed my thinking about things.

Have you been trying to start a new habit recently? Maybe you’ve promised yourself that you’re going to do it every single day and then when it doesn’t happen on one day you tell yourself you’re a failure. Just because you miss one day you give up altogether. Perhaps you’ve been filling in a habit tracker and feel devastated that there will be a gap because you missed a day so you decide to throw in the towel.

Many books I’ve read on the subject of habit formation talk about repeating a habit every single day, but I don’t think that’s always the answer. In our busy lives it’s probably unrealistic to decide to do something every single day. Committing to performing a new habit every day of the week may be setting yourself up to fail. Something will always get in the way of that daily commitment and as that’s your rule and you don’t measure up you give up.

One of the things that I’ve been beating myself up about recently is not walking every day. I like the idea of going out for 30 to 45 minutes after work Monday to Friday but it just doesn’t happen, particularly in the winter. I always seem to manage to go out on a Saturday and Sunday for more than an hour. Unfortunately when it comes to the weekdays I may just do it on one occasion because, as expected, life gets in the way. I feel too tired, the weather is rubbish or I just want to get on with cooking dinner because I’m hungry.

Since reading Laura Vanderkam’s book I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to beat myself up about not walking every day and my aim now is to walk on a Saturday and Sunday and one day in the week, which is doable. This means it’s easy to achieve my goal. If by chance I walk on another day as well that’s a bonus, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t. If I only go three times a week I count that as a success.

So over to you. Is there a habit you’ve been trying to adopt but because you couldn’t do it every single day you gave up trying? Why not go back and review that habit and think about doing it three times a week instead. In my book that counts as a win because at the moment you’re probably not doing it at all, so in fact your total is zero times a week. Therefore doing it three times a week is a great deal more than what you’re doing it at the moment. Something to celebrate? Definitely.