I have utterly horrible executive function. Diagnosed and everything. Sitting here on HN right now avoiding boring spreadsheet work to finish my day out.

It’s not easy for anyone to develop these style of habits and routines. It’s just hard mode and takes much more effort for folks with executive dysfunction.

The first rule is choose one thing and stick to it. With realistic goals. Mine was: I am going to walk at least 6,000 steps a day. No matter what. Zero excuses.

Since schedules are insanely difficult for me I set none. If I remembered I still needed to walk and I could do it in the moment I simply prioritized it. It’s surprisingly easy to fit in 10 minutes of walk in throughout your day, even when working a desk job. It could simply mean pacing while on conference calls.

Another rule was “if I fail to achieve it one day, I must achieve it the next” to avoid the “all or nothing” mental trap.

This was to the level of getting into bed, checking step counter, and if I was under target literally getting out of bed, putting clothes back on, and walking until I hit it. I had all sorts of technical widgets to enforce this and help remind me.

It totally sucked for the first couple months. Then it started to just become a thing. Then I ramped it up to 12k/day until I hit a weight goal.

It’s the best thing I ever did for my mental health since it started a snowball in other areas of my life. I was able to swap out a few days of steps for an hour workout (beginning with a personal trainer to force me to show up 2 days a week minimum). I was and still am constantly 10 minutes late to my session but no matter what I show up to them.

The weeks I miss them due to schedule conflicts or travel I feel much worse mentally. And it’s easy to give into the anxiety and panic over not having enough time in the day to fit it in after procrastinating on other items. You also start to realize that those other items are probably not as important as you thought.

I find routine and habits over schedule and calendaring are hyper-important for my dysfunction and have leaned into that. It’s more of a “this thing before that thing” sort of deal vs “at 3pm I do the thing” since the latter would go off the rails immediately.

It’s possible. Just the hardest thing I’ve maybe ever accomplished in life so far.

Gonna be different for everyone and you probably need that one moment of clarity to get the initial motivation. The motivation will go away, but the habits and discipline will probably stick around.

Been using this same method to build habits and routine into other areas of my life now as well.