How to Keep Habits Going During Travel

By Leo Babauta Keeping up with habits can be difficult when you’re traveling, because all of your normal triggers are gone. I’m in the middle of a long stretch of travel (2 trips, traveling 19 out of 23 days) and I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with habits while traveling. Let’s take two quick examples: Exercise. Let’s say you normally go for a run or do a workout after you drink coffee, process email, brush your teeth, and eat breakfast … if you’re traveling and in a hotel room, you might wake up later than normal (after an exhausting flight or day of sightseeing) and go out for coffee and check your email in the coffee shop (for example). Now when will you run or work out? You usually do it after a certain sequence of events, with your breakfast being your main trigger for the habit. Without the trigger, the habit doesn’t happen automatically. Healthy eating. Let’s say you tend to eat a healthy breakfast of steel-cut oats, nuts & fruit at home, right after taking a shower … but when you travel, you don’t have the same meal in your hotel room after you shower, and maybe you’re in a hurry, so you grab something quick & easy (and less healthy). You’re walking around all day and grab a pizza for lunch (rather than the healthy lunch you normally pack for yourself). The change in your routine has changed your healthy eating habits. Yikes. And this happens with every habit you have,...
Source: Zen Habits - Category: Life Coaches Authors: Tags: Habits Source Type: blogs