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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is about how not to forget little habits that you would like to build into life.

By being smarter both about choosing habits and creating cues to do them, you can keep a streak going far longer than you might otherwise.

I am a big fan of small daily habits.

For the past few years, I've done a little bit of writing and a little bit of reading something big every day.

Well, almost every day.

I aimed to read the 361 chapters of War and Peace one chapter a day in 2021, and I did indeed end on December 27th. However, I also aimed to write one

vignette from a character's day, every day, in 2022.

At some point in December, I noticed that my numbering was off, and sure enough, my

December 31st entry was numbered 364.

So I guess I must have forgot on one day. Whoops, it can happen. But if you do want to do a big

project, broken down into daily steps, being as consistent as possible can help cement the habit.

Part of that is figuring out how not to forget the habit. How can you be sure that

every single day you will remember to do whatever you have set a goal to do? Life can get busy.

We do what we absolutely have to do, but sometimes we can lose track of the things we want to do.

Or, our circumstances change on a particular day, and our normal cues can't help us.

What then?

The first step to not forgetting turns out to be choosing well. When people say that they

have trouble sticking with things, I often bring up toothbrushing. Many people who claim to

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