2022 was an incredibly frustrating year where so much of the friction of the pandemic came to fruition. After 8 years of almost daily recording I stopped, as so many habits either imploded or went dormant as I attempted to create a better method to lock in multiple long term behaviors. At the same time, massive multi-month long experiments refused to yield satisfying conclusions to mental change.

On the plus side, my coauthored book on Houston came out and we did a lot of promotion for it, which got me used to speaking in front of audiences, as well as interviews on radio and TV. I reconnected with a number of old friends, which unfortunately also caused me to have a bit of a existential/midlife crisis, where I saw my life over the last decade or two as locked in a cycle of constant almosts - almost good enough, but not quite enough to break through.

HABITS

• Added an eye care habit. While working at my computer I look away from my screen every 20 minutes at an object at least 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Initially I thought this was just a lifestyle guru thing, but my optometrist confirmed that it does help slow the decay of my already bad eyes. It also seems to help with the light sensitivity I tend to develop with long days in front of a computer.

• Introduced micro workouts between work sets. Interlacing short workouts between Pomodoros locked it in by providing a break that also boosts focus.

• Used Bixby routines to craft better morning and night time routines. Had my phone auto block social media apps in the morning and auto launch a gratitude app. At night my phone goes to black and white mode.

• Reinitiated my old habit of drinking a glass of water as soon as I wake up.

• Started a walking habit.

PERSONAL RECORDS, CHALLENGES, & NEW HIGHS

• Several breakthroughs in meditation.

THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS

• Attempted another habit in a day experiment. This time involving visualization, which seemed to significantly effect the automaticity angle of the SRHI.

• Alternative forms of long term behavior creation. It turns out there’s more than one way to skin a habit.

• Did another (third) tally clicking challenge for mental states. In this case it was another attempt at resilience training for 5 months, a brutally taxing regiment of tracking all negative arisings throughout the day.

• Attempted another habit in a day experiment. This time involving scent and targeted memory reactivation.

• Tested quitting a habit using alternating days in order see if it was easier and more efficient to fit within the Star Engine.

• Experimented using the tally clicking system to train two things at once. I used both a finger clicker and a smart watch, which worked quite smoothly.

• Experimented with a floating habit. Tying a habit to an alarm that could be set for the week gave more flexibility to the habit especially when it inevitably has to be moved around

• Experimented with falling in love with an action. Created a scale and a protocol that I started using. Needs work.

PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE

• Wrote, queried, pitched, and revised a book proposal on using behavioral science to better train meditation. Thus far submitted to about 70 agents.

• Started coaching clients in meditation and habits/productivity.

• Got quoted in two articles. Described some of the science behind affirmations.

• Had several posts on Reddit go viral with 350k - 450k views each.

• Started on another book proposal on meditation, a compendium of techniques for any occasion.

• Was invited to give talks on both my Houston book and on resilience to the Houston Stoic group and my theory of using dog training to measure and become a Stoic Sage.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

• A lot of previous habits fizzled out, collapsed, or went dormant.

• Lots of depression.

• Attempted a low stakes language learning habit. This just did not stick after I had a basic setback in getting course material.

• Attempted a Sandford Bennet bed routine when waking up. I want to write an article on this - Bennet was a Ye Olde School self-help guy who wrote in the early 1900s. One of his books was on a full body workout conducted in bed, which he credited with revitalizing his body and reversing aging. There are some interesting behavioral mechanics and interactions here. I think this can act as a transition between sleep and wakefulness, but it just didn’t stick.

MISCELLANEOUS & APPLICATION

• Watched as Lydia leveled up a basic running habit to run a 2 full marathons and an ultramarathon. I feel it’s an excellent (and awe inspiring) template for leveling up skills.

• Dark samatha. Experimented with using negative emotions as an object of single pointed meditation in particularly nasty cases of depression to access some odd form of jhana. I believe this is incredibly dangerous and not something I’d advocate, but it has worked thus far.

HOPES AND PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR

• Hope to nail down the Star Engine.

• Intend to do more coaching.

• I want to do a longer resilience clicker training experiment.

• I’d like to work more on fitness and health.

• I’d also hope to work on building a robust community in Houston.

• Speaking of Houston, we got commissioned for another book, this time for all of Texas, which will take quite a lot of time and travel to get together, which should be fun.

• And I’d like to get better at streamlining the proposal and book querying process for other behavioral science projects.

• I hope to work more on my own content - either on my website, Insta, or perhaps a Youtube channel or podcast.

• And lastly, armed with what I’ve learned thus far, I hope to dabble into what I call the Dark Arts - a set of mythic, sometimes pseudoscientific processes found in dusty corners of human knowledge like antiquarian books or small Internet forums, things that have long fascinated me in their extreme weirdness with respect to self change. More on that to come…

Happy New Year.