8 Tips to Set Yourself Up for Success

I recently took a fabulous short online course learning how to develop the habit of meditation. It was run by Leo Babauta from Zen Habits – a master at the art of developing new habits.

Anyway it got me thinking that meal planning is really a ‘habit’ in itself. There’s the habit of keeping an ongoing shopping list, as well as the ‘habit’ of doing a weekly, fortnightly, or every few days shop – and planning for that.

So it makes sense that we can apply the principles of forming a new habit to help us succeed with our meal planning.

1. Make a commitment to start

One of the first steps is to promise to yourself that you’re going to develop a new habit. In the meditation class, we put our names into a spreadsheet as a form of public accountability. I found this really helpful in sticking to my new habit.

I really encourage you to pop your name in the comments below to make your own ‘public commitment’ to developing your new meal planning habit.

2. Start small – make it as EASY as possible

For meditation, we were encouraged to start by doing just 5 minutes a day. And if that didn’t work, or felt too intimidating to back it down to 1 minute or even 30 seconds. The most important thing was to make it as easy as possible.

Let’s face it. Forming or changing habits is HARD WORK to begin with. So the best way to set yourself up for success is to make it as small, manageable and easy as possible. I think of it as the first major step is just forming the new habit. Focus on this first.

Then once you feel confident you’ve ‘adopted’ your new habit, it’s time to start getting better at the habit. No rush though.

3. Allow a ‘takeaway’ or ‘wild card’ night – or two

You’ll have an idea how much volatility your schedule usually has. Since I moved to the country and there aren’t many nights we have a ‘better offer’ so I tend not to worry about this. But if you think it’s likely you’ll need a takeaway night or two.. be realistic and add them to your plan.

Another thing is if you know you have a tendency to get excited at the markets and ‘over buy’ like I do. Allowing a ‘wild card’ night where you just plan to use up the excess can work really well.

4. Allow a ‘buffer’ in your freezer

Your freezer can be invaluable for allowing a ‘safety net’ of a few serves or protein and a veg or two. This takes the pressure off getting everything right in your planning and shopping system.

5. Grow some herbs

If you have brown thumbs and no interest…ignore this tip!

Otherwise, think about starting small. Buying herbs tends to be expensive AND they have a habit of going bad quickly. We’ll cover tips to making them last as long as possible in week 3, but growing your own makes herb-keeping a lot easier.

I’d suggest a pot of rosemary or thyme as these are pretty forgiving. And a little bit goes a long way in your cooking.

If you have more space and enthusiasm, parsley mint and basil (in the summer) would be my next steps.

6. Plan some time for a pantry ‘spring clean’

We’ll cover pantry management in great detail next week. So no need to do anything with this yet. Just start making some ‘mental notes’ that it will be really helpful if you have a pantry spring clean some time in the not-to-distant-future.

7. Don’t expect to be ‘perfect’ from the first week

Perfection can be scary. And the thing is we don’t need to have a ‘perfect’ meal plan every week. Or even a ‘perfect’ system.

I prefer to aim for ‘mostly’ to keep it realistic AND make it much more likely that I’ll keep going, rather than giving up because it’s ‘all too hard’

8. Take the first step! Decide on your preferred ongoing shopping list method

Having an ongoing shopping list that you add to as you think of things is the best first habit to develop. As just this one simple thing will make a massive difference to how much time you need to spend ‘planning’. It also really helps you feel ‘on top’ of things.

Head over to Step 1 of A Quick and Easy Planning ‘System’.

Back to: Master Your Meal Plan Overview.