I have a calendar where I write appointments.
I have a doctor’s appointment that I had to write on the calendar.
I have a physical whiteboard where I write a “to do” list.
A couple days ago, I wrote on my whiteboard: “put doctor’s appointment on the calendar”.
Today I put the doctor’s appointment on the calendar.
I have not yet erased “put doctor’s appointment on the calendar” from the whiteboard. I look at it and feel a little proud that I accomplished something today.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll erase my whiteboard.
What has worked best for me is making a small change and giving it more time to become default. If I change too much it is unstable and never settles into my normal, so when I make changes they are small and isolated from other changes. For example, I have automated my banking over the last year, but most of the changes are done at the end/start of a month and then carry over, so automating money into an account for my medications happened around November, before that it was electricity bills, before that yearly phone plan. Each one is in place long enough to not be disrupted by the next.
Yeah! I used that strategy when I started working out a couple years ago.