Making habits stick 👀

When planning a new habit, the first major hurdle always seems to be showing up consistently. Developing a routine can get very difficult. Here the accountability partner comes into play. Said partner can be a close friend or relative with whom you will share your plans.

Let’s say you want to get up at 6 every day. Then you would tell your accoountability partner: If I don’t text you good morning by 6:10, I owe you 10€. This being only an example, as you could set the boundaries where you want.

How I made use of it 🍵

When I was studying for the medicine entry exam, I wanted to study at least for one hour before school started. However, I found this task very difficult and rarely managed to get up on time. When I stumbled across the idea of an accountability partner, I asked my friend Lukas if he would like to fulfill this position. For him, there would be a Cappucino on the line for each time I wouldn’t text him by 5:30. Knowing he could only profit from this scheme, he agreed.

So each morning I would get up on time and study suffiecently as I did not want to pay Lukas a coffee.

Make it fun 🎲

After some time, Lukas came to me with also wanting to get up at 5:30. So I became his accountability partner as well. If you share this project, it adds a whole new game factor to it and you can motivate each other.

Over the last year, this had a tremendous impact on me passing the medicine entry exam and also helped my friend a lot.

Obtaining new habits can be quite challenging, however with some tricks and introducing gameification, it can help you start off right.