A couple weeks ago, someone at the office introduced me to the idea of the “Not-To-Do” list. Basically you write down all of your bad habits and time-suckers so that you can see them listed right there in front of you. Three of the items on my list, for example, are “drop my things all over the kitchen, leaving it a disaster,” “let the bed sit unmade all day,” and “overeat to procrastinate on weekends.”

I really love this idea because it allows you to identify the things that you do which bring you down, waste your time or energy, and are in general just negative habits that ought to be broken. We might know that we have some bad habits, but if we write them down on a piece of paper, then we’re forced to actually think about them and figure out ways to break the habits.

Because that’s the next step. Once you’ve identified your bad habits, you have to take action to change those habits into good ones. But you can’t just snap your fingers and *decide* to change your ways! The best thing to do is to divide your list into two columns (feel free to colour-code!): in the first column, write down the specific bad habit (be as detailed as possible), and in the second column, write down a few ideas for how to overcome barriers with that habit. After all, we usually take up bad habits because they’re really easy to get trapped into. So it’s important to look at several ways in which we can overcome those hurdles.

The third step is to hang your list on the wall or tuck it in your day planner where you will see it every single day. This is necessary to make sure that you see it and remember to follow your ideas.

The fourth and final step is action. Writing a list isn’t much good if you don’t follow it! By keeping it in a prominent place and listing the ways that you can break the bad habits, you’ll be able to make some really good progress. I don’t think it’s necessary to tackle everything all at once, by the way – if you have a dozen bad habits listed, take it one bad habit at a time. Some will likely be easier to break than others. But you’ll feel great when you see all of the things that you have managed to improve in your daily life.

Do you have a Not-To-Do list? What’s on it? How do you go about breaking bad habits (or turning bad habits into good ones)? Share in the comments section below!