What’s helped me stay consistent are constant reminders.
Just a few months ago I wrote up a status bar script for dwm that tracks my daily review streak on Anki, and since doing so, I’ve not missed a single day.
While not tracking streak, I wrote another that reads my job application log then prints the count of applications submitted over the last 7 days to the status bar. It’s somewhat demotivating being reiminded of the raw quantity, but it is far worse to see the 7 day history begin to dip.
I’m working on another status bar element to track progress made toward daily Sentence Mining goals and to furthermore keep track of how many days in a row I’ve met that goal.
A better way to handle tracking job applications may be in a similar vein to my plans for sentence mining, where I have to reach some threshold each day for the day to count toward the streak.
Clearly, I’ve found streaks to be an effective metric to keep myself on track to achieve my goals. I will continue to write more status bar scripts for my other goals.