Habits are recurrent behaviors, usually performed on an unconscious level. They're acquired through frequent repetition. The word "habit" often gets a negative connotation, but there are both good and bad habits.

Right now, we're talking about instilling a series of good habits as a way of creating routines that can keep you clear, motivated, and focused. These habits don't make more work for you, because you keep them fun. They're things you want to do.

What should I pick for habits?
When you choose your habits, make sure they're things you want to do. You can spend your entire life judging yourself for not doing things you feel you should do or you could do. Start with habits that you look forward to doing and give you pleasure, but that you might forget to do in the course of a normal day.

Most habits tend to be things that give you energy and add to your well-being. I like to choose things that I always want to do during the day but never get around to doing.

Start by making a list of as many good habits you can think of. They could be things like making your bed, eating more vegetables, eating five meals a day, doing yoga, or going to the gym. Then, shorten the list to your top ten habits.

What if you find that keeping up with ten habits is overwhelming? What if you find you could spend the entire day doing the ten habits you created for yourself? In that case try re-evaluating you habits. Are you taking on too much? Keep them simple. If you're taking on too much, try cutting down the number to eight. Even five is better than none. I have a friend who has a list of 20 or so habits. Every day she makes sure she works in five or so.

Remember, habits become ingrained with repetition. Once they do, you might not even have to think about making sure you do them after awhile. Once a habits is naturally a part of your routine, and clearly something you're going to continue doing, you might not have to track it as closely. Then, you can replace it with another habit you'd like to instill.

How can I use my Palm handheld to keep track of my habits?
There are great benefits to keeping your habits on your Palm handheld. When I first started to track my own list of habits, I created a chart in Microsoft Excel and printed that out. I colored in a box each time I accomplished something. The problem was that the piece of paper would get torn up by the end of the week. It was great fun to color everything in, but tracking the piece of paper became a chore. I had one more thing to track.