Why Habit Stacking Isn't Enough (And What Works Better)

Different behavioral configurations provide a better framework for systemic long-term change.

When I was in college, I heard a professor describe a more efficient engine. Regular combustion systems were based on the piston. Line them in a row and get them turning at different times across a crankshaft and you got a standard car engine.

That’s really the only way I’ve viewed self-help. Create one good habit. Then repeat.

Problems with habit stacking

Up until now I’ve only been focusing on making that process easier. That involves relying on more than just one resource like motivation to move the needle. With the Elements of Change, you can offload that process - add other Elements, and you’ll make change more assured and feel subjectively easier.

This has 4 emergent problems:

1. It takes a long time. When done right, it involves building up habits one at a time until they are established enough to add another.

2. It’s prone to failure. The more you stack up, the more fragile it becomes (as I’ve unfortunately personally discovered). One habit that doesn’t trigger means that all the rest of them will likely not discharge across a day.

3. It’s exhausting. Using habits dramatically lowers the starting threshold, but large groups of them have a cumulative draining effect across months.

4. Burnout is a real issue. Especially if you’re working on many things (like most of us are). You have to, like a piston engine, time things right. This applies even further if you’re trying to level up multiple, previously established habits, like working out or meditation.

A better system is more than this piecemeal and repetitive solution. It’s sudden, systemic change, one that rapidly and easily inducts a cascading sequence of behaviors. And most importantly, it’s a network where everything behaviorally supports each other.

Bolstered habits: when behaviors support other behaviors

The professor called his creation the star rotor engine because of the shape of its compressor. It introduced me to the world of different, potentially more efficient configurations like the radial engine (also called a star engine).

Engineers have always been obsessed with delivering more ouput through better use of forces. I find this an admirable and apt metaphor for behavioral mechanics. Fuel is like willpower or motivation, and systems often have lags or friction costs that diminishes efficiency, etc. It’s not an exact correlation, but it’s useful enough to build off of.

Habit networks

A long time ago, I talked about families of habits, a network that was more than a sum of its parts. A fit person, for example, might be more likely to hang out with other fit people and go on excursions that bolster that fitness. And the same occurs for families of vices.

Such systems are gyroscopic, maintaining an overall balance that autocorrects in the face of individual piston failures. One skipped workout doesn’t change a life of fitness, just as one good day doesn’t make up for a lifestyle of vice. To quote The Godfather, it can feel that “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

A behavioral star engine: a more efficient habit system

For positive change, this can be difficult to transition to. In my regular way of stacking habits one by one, if one does not discharge, it feels more like the opposite of a gyroscope. It’s a house of cards, and the whole lifestyle collapses.

If I were to create a behavioral Star Engine, it would have to simultaneously draw from different angles to creatively utilize forces, just as the historic progression of engines has done.

After writing and experimenting with “snap-on” habits, I realized that there’s not just one way to create a long-term behavior. Just as different productivity techniques can draw from different Elements, habits can draw from different conglomerations of Elements. If the previous method were Elemental, a step up in this matter could be termed molecular change.

What is molecular change?

In addition to standard habits, you can also create long term behaviors through:

• Ritual. Involving Mindfulness and Rewards,

• Implemented Ritual. Involving Tiny Behaviors, Implementation Intention, and Ritual.

• Apps and technology. Implementation Intention, Tiny Habits, and Bypassing Decisions.

• Tally Clicking. Mindfulness, Ritual, Rewards, Curiosity, Metrics.

• Falling in love. Mindfulness, Rewards, Time Off.

Furthermore, you can double up or speed up long term behaviors through:

• Unzippered habits - Inducting two habits for the willpower price of one.

• The Habit in a Day protocol.

This alone gives us many options for constructing a better system.

Behavioral engine configurations

What’s interesting about different mechanical engines is how creatively they utilize forces.

The opposed-piston engine fuels two pistons for the price of one. This reminds me of unzipping habits, where I’m inducting two habits on alternating days, then finally separating them off into two complete daily habits. This works because, according to the research, a habit does not have to be done every day to coalesce efficiently. Furthermore, the willpower load occurs highest at the beginning of habit formation, then tapers off as the actions become automatic.

Some engine configurations, like radial engines, better utilize carry over motion to not only apply better rotation to the crankshaft, but help reload an opposing piston. Meanwhile, a pendulum-like offset weight applies even more torque to the crankshaft.

This reminds me of compressed habits that attain synergy, like microworkouts as a break from deep work. The physical break reestablishes focus and avoids any energy slumps while also making exercise more palatable and less exhausting. The behavior is further lodged in place by being jammed between two already established routines.

The jet engine operates by highly compressing air to attain significantly more thrust than a radial engine. This reminds me of a habit in one day, where I’m front loading maximum effort in the first day by repeating a trigger and response numerous times. While motivation quickly depletes across time, it can be compressed in this manner to quickly force automaticity. In my experiments, I’ve had them form in 5 days as opposed to the average of 66 days.

Repercussions of molecular change

If Elemental Change makes one productivity behavior more assured and easy, then my hope is that Molecular Change will make self sustaining networks of multiple behaviors at once more assured and easy.

My hope is that instead of trying to change people one habit at a time, you could instead paste an entire way of life onto someone, one that is self propagating and self correcting.

Furthermore, I believe that this is much more efficient and sustainable across time and less subject to collapse when life brings with it inevitable interruptions.

Fortunately I’m in a spot where many of my habits have either failed or gotten very sketchy due to a lot of travel. I’m in the precise spot to reinitiate them in better ways, while adding more all at once to test out the limits of my Behavioral Star Engine.

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photo cred: Walter Castor Engine by Flight Magazine, crankshaft by NASA, 7 cylinder radial engine by Rankin Kennedy, two stroke engine by MichaelFrey, radial engine timing by Stoianovici, turbofan by Richard Wheeler (Zephyris)

3 Easy Techniques to Quickly Add Habits

Snapping on habits to established routines doesn’t have to be complicated.

Basic habits as I’ve been discussing them are trigger-responses that gradually become automatic. There’s a progression to them - across time they begin to effect identity, taking less executive functioning and willpower to last long-term.

I usually formalize them with an implementation intention (an if-then statement), a mental contrasting exercise (brainstorm your “why” in addition to stumbling blocks and their workarounds), and record them using the SRHI (Self-Report Habit Index). They have a pattern, following a natural log function, and take weeks, sometimes months, to fully form.

But over the last few years I’ve noticed I can also add behaviors that seemingly just snap on. They involve slightly different mechanisms that may appear obvious, but also have long lasting effects for less hassle:

1. SET IT AND FORGET IT

When I changed my sleep hygiene to avoid blue light at night, I didn’t formalize a habit like I normally do. I just used an app.

The one I use, f.lux, is really simple - you install it and it’ll naturally filter blue light depending on the time. Setting the thermostat to automatically get cooler at night is another example of this, and is also great for sleep hygiene. I’ve just discovered Bixby Routines on Samsung, where I can program all sorts of functions to occur automatically on my phone depending on the time of day, location, and even what WiFi signal my phone logs on to.

Analyzed in terms of behavior, these usually involve extremely small changes and are technology driven, bypassing decision making entirely.

Sometimes the positive loop can feed on itself. I’m less inclined to look at filterless screens at night, and more likely to dim lights even when I don’t have my app on hand.

The obvious downside is that if you don't have access to your technology (or charged) things can fall by the wayside.

2. COMPRESSION

Do something small that fits between two larger behaviors, and it’s more likely to last. For example, I love Mark Sisson’s idea of micro workouts done as breaks between Pomodoro work sessions throughout the day.

In many ways it’s similar to using the replacement strategy to change a habit. You trade out the response while keeping the already established cue and reward.

But here, there’s a synergy that can develop - what I’ve described in the past as habit harmonics, when two habits become better and more sustainable than one. Small workouts keep you energetic for work focus without tiring you out. At the same time, they make working out far more palatable and Tiny. It just becomes buried within your day. 

*I’m using the gray diamond to indicate a possible new behavioral Element

There’s also a subtle push for productivity just because you’re abutting against another habit, and that synergy acts as a reward for both behaviors.

The downside is you often have to have your actions carefully preplanned. There’s just no time to fumble around looking for what you have to do.

3. FIAT

Another method that works is simply formally declaring a small change. One example of this is what I’m calling an “implemented ritual” - a simple statement of intent with something that’s really small and involves some item or gadget.

For example, I have a sitting desk, also courtesy of Mark Sisson. I decided that I’m just going to sit there rather than at a regular table. Similarly I’ve started drinking water out of a specific cup as soon as I get out of bed instead of coffee.

In both cases they became automatic quickly.

Its tiny-ness is part of the reason of why it works so well. But it’s also oddly ritualistic because they both involved gear, tying associations to an object. It’s like a habit, but it’s not a grind. With some of these types of behaviors I feel pulled into doing them because of the new contraption I have, like a reward. You get to do something with a novel object. I think this works by offsetting motivation with Tinyness, Novelty, Rewards, and Ritual until it becomes automatic

OTHER SNAPON BEHAVIORS

There are other methods, but they are not both quick AND easy.

I did not include Rituals or falling in love with an action. Both involve mindfulness, both often involve some sort’ve implements or gear, and both act as a reward, unlocking immense amounts of focus instead of draining them. I think these might be significantly easier than normal habits, but might be more involved in their setup. I’m also not fully certain how these work yet.

I also did not include my attempts to form a habit in a day. In my experiments with this I’ve created habits in far less time than the standard 66 days, but they involve quite a lot of up front effort.

REPURCUSSIONS

All of these behaviors are small, but that does not in any way imply that they are less important.

For health, this could be ground breaking. It’s already changed my sleep hygiene, and I’m now implementing micro workouts and screen breaks for eye health throughout the day.

But beyond this, it means that habits don’t have to just come from one configuration of the Elements of Change. The more change is offloaded off one method, the less it’s relying on that limited resource.

Theoretically, it could mean easily changing a whole host of behaviors across a wide spectrum really fast.

Formalizing a Morning and Bedtime Routine

I’ve been meaning to start a solid morning and bedtime routine.

In the massive amount of self testing I’ve done on my sleep, a few things really surprised me

1. Light has a massive effect on me. With respect to a morning routine, getting natural sunlight in the beginning of the day seems to get me to sleep faster. I also think that getting enough light could possibly be an issue in several areas, including physical recovery, weight loss, quality of sleep, and energy. I recently tested my vitamin D levels and found that I’m very deficient.

2. How early I get up is highly dependent on when I get to bed. I spent a lot of time with “revenge bedtime procrastination” - I go down internet rabbit holes and watch Netflix and generally waste time before bed. As a result, I usually get to bed quite late without even realizing it. That, in turn, makes me get up later.

Starting even a small habit of getting outside in the morning and getting to bed earlier can help me get more vitamin D, get quality rest, and help me get more stuff done. It could also ideally make me a morning person, something this night owl never thought possible.

I’m going measure myself with a scale and tape measure just to see if there are any physiological changes connected with better sleep and greater light exposure. I’ve taken a sleep scale measure, which I’ll take again in a month. I’d also like to take another vitamin D test in 3 months to see if levels have improved.

So let’s get into it…

IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION (MORNING)

As soon as I wake up I’ll get out of bed, grab a cup of coffee, and go up to my building’s balcony to greet the sun for a few minutes.

MENTAL CONTRASTING (MORNING)

A) Positives
I hope to get better sleep and a better way to start the day and fit in more. I feel I’m somehow physiologically blocked from losing weight, so maybe this is a solution. I think vitamin D deficiency is causing many system wide issues. I also think it’s also a potential start to a gratitude practice or a walking/running routine because it’ll be a time of day that’s not horribly hot.

B) Obstacles
Rain.

B-1) Workarounds
Either an umbrella or a raincoat, both of which I have, or if it’s really bad, popping a quality Vitamin D pill, which I’ve also already bought.

GROWTH (MORNING)

I’d like to extend it into a full 30 minutes, as one study tested that length of time. I’d like to also do a gratitude practice or even just record one so I can listen to it. I’d like to transform this into a walking/running habit like Lydia does. Maybe even something like swimming or yoga.

IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION (NIGHT)

After Lydia goes to bed, I’ll set a 20 minute alarm and record my habits, after which I’ll head to bed as well.

MENTAL CONTRASTING (NIGHT)

A) Positives
I want the potential for an entire calming ritual, and an opportunity to learn whole host of skills, like pranayama, or experimenting with diffused state learning, or just dabbling in general. Imagine writing a rough draft of a book or developing other forms of low stakes mastery? This could potentially double output while making me a better sleeper and a morning person.

B) Obstacles
Lydia could not go to bed early. She could be away. Or we could have a late night out.

B-1) Workarounds
This rarely happens these days. I’m usually hesitant to pin a habit cue on another person, even a significant other, but she’s got her own schedule she has to go with that’s rock solid.

GROWTH (NIGHT)

I’d like to add more behaviors, like a pranayama practice or using lavender essential oils, both of which I sometimes do now. These both have been linked with better sleep, but I’m inconsistent. I’d love to expand this to creative nights - either with art nights, writing, recording a podcast, a low stakes learning time, or perhaps a yoga practice.And I’d love to be able to live cast this.

Can You Form a Habit in a Day?

ANSWER: Almost

THE EXPERIMENT

According to the research, habits take on average 66 days to form. But that varies considerably - in the study, some took 18 days and more complicated ones took an estimated 254 days. In my own research I’ve found that the more techniques I used and the more tiny the habit, the quicker they formed. 

What if I used the average and discharged the trigger and response 66 times in one day? 

Using my regular exercise trigger (finishing a glass of matcha) and a new exercise response (riding on a stationary assault bike), I took the Self Report Habit Index (SRHI) before, after, and the next few days.

The SRHI is the go-to scale for habit research, where 12 is the lowest score, the highest is 84, and 70 is considered a habit. 

THE RESULTS

Before (Day 0): SRHI = 12

After 66 Reps (Day 1): SRHI = 35

Morning (Day 2): SRHI = 38

After workout (Day 2): SRHI = 65

Morning (Day 3): SRHI = 67

After Workout (Day 3): SRHI = 64

After weekend (no habits on weekends) (Day 5): SRHI = 71

On Day 1 the difference was significant, but unsurprising.

On day 2 I was distracted working on something, but before I knew it I had finished my glass of matcha and almost panicked as the overwhelming urge took over to immediately get on the bike. It was an incredibly strong automatic response, more powerful than a lot of my other, older habits. 

I was worried that the effect would fade, but it hovered at roughly the same score after a day, then shot up after a weekend of not doing it. 

While not a complete habit after one day at 65-67, it was quite a jump. For comparison, my old habits reached a 65 on the SRHI between 27-48 days. My recent streamlined habits – rowing, planning, and flossing – all reached a 65 on the SRHI on day 15.

And a habit in 5 days is incredible, assuming it continues to hold steady.

BACKGROUND

Over the last few months I’ve been experimenting with transitioning between two habits in a lifestyle (I’m defining a “lifestyle” here as a sequence of related habits across a year). Unfortunately for my exercise lifestyle, I injured my foot badly during the transition from rowing to walking/running. 

After healing, I was stuck in a weird spot - detrained from rowing, yet not fully on walking/running. We got a stationary assault bike, which is great for recovery, but I was frustrated because I’d have to start a new habit from scratch. 

But it gave me the opportunity to test out this attempt to “hack” the SRHI. 

My exercise habit was always triggered by finishing my afternoon cup of matcha. So, I decided to make it simple and splash a bit of matcha in my usual glass, knock it back as the trigger, and peddle on the bike a few times as the response.

HYPOTHESIS

The SRHI assesses a few vectors: automaticity, length of time, routine, and identity. 

My theory was that repeating something 66 times with a clear trigger and response was only going to change the “automaticity” angle.

In an old post I theorized on manipulating facets of the SRHI. I actually got a response from Dr. Bas Verplanken, one of the creators of the scale. He said that habits are ALL angles of the SRHI, so manipulating one was unlikely to make a habit. Nevertheless, I thought this might at least give me a leg up on the process.

I’m also interested as to if habit formation is a type of learning. In accelerated learning research, quality sleep appears to have a huge effect on integrating skills and information. My theory was that testing the SRHI after a night of sleep would also result in a boost as the practice was integrated.

WHAT HAPPENED

66 repetitions took a long time. I focused more on the end of my trigger (drinking a bit of matcha) and made the peddling response even smaller just for time’s sake. I went out on a break and got a couple of drinks before returning. The whole process took until around midnight. I was also distracted, watching a tv show through the entire process. All of those peripheral actions may have influenced the process.

WHY IT MIGHT HAVE WORKED

I’ve always felt that zooming in on the trigger and response was key to automaticity. But I’ve never zoomed in this much, especially with the end of the trigger, which is why I believe it was so powerfully automatic on Day 2.

But the gains in my habit score suggest that more than just automaticity was improving.

Based on a few studies, we know that identity can become permeable. In one test, children were able to regenerate or borrow self control by pretending to act as fictional characters (known as the Batman Effect). But this “borrowing” phenomenon worked better for those who were already depleted. 

We also know that lowered executive functioning results in greater creativity. Distracting the mind through small tasks, occupying it with difficult problems, or imbibing alcohol all contribute to this.

By happenstance, I fulfilled several of these permeability inducing behaviors. I was:

• pretty tired, finishing the test late

• distracted, watching a tv show

• had a few drinks

Is it possible that this effected the identity vector of habit formation?

Lastly, while a night of sleep improved scores twice, I don’t think they were significant increases.

FUTURE TESTS

As I said above, finishing my cup of matcha is my already established cue for an exercise habit. While I covered for this by initially taking the SRHI for the habit of riding my stationary bike - and getting the lowest possible score - I’d like to test this accelerated method on an entirely new trigger and response.

But what surprised me was how taking a weekend off changed my scores. In the past I’ve noticed my SRHI strength consistently increase by NOT doing a habit once in a while. That makes sense with regards to a specific question on the scale - “Does it feel weird NOT doing the habit” - something you can’t really ascertain if you’re TOO consistent.

It also makes sense in relation to improving in skills, where it seems learning occurs more efficiently when we are exposed to differing relationships – like how shooting hoops at different distances makes one more skilled at gauging force, and angles.

The weekend off also messed with my perception of time. Which leads me to wonder if the time vector of habits can also be manipulated more. According to a quick Wikipedia scan, the subjective perception of time can be dilated through experiencing cold, fear, or awe. Could using icepacks, watching horror movies, or maybe viewing amazing photography of landscapes help build a habit faster?

And what about other accelerated learning techniques? According to one study, students who had a scent present while studying AND while asleep later that night had a 30 percent boost in memorized vocabulary. If automaticity is a learned behavior, could this accelerate habit formation as well?

MY BIGGEST TAKEAWAY

Learning a complex skill in a day may just be the ultimate Holy Grail of self development. But a habit in a day is a pretty close second.

The biggest application from this experiment wasn’t just that 66 repetitions effects habit formation. Rather, it was that zooming in to the very point of contact between the end of triggers and the beginning of responses created such a dramatic automatic behavior. That’s something I want to to apply to every habit.

And the potential for other methods of accelerated habit formation opens the door to new experiments, the results of which could change the entire productivity game.

How to Prevent Plateaus by “Habit Splicing”

A smooth transition between two habits maintains continuity in progression.

As I described in my last post, my pandemic reset involved too many variables and quickly failed. I successfully created a strong, basic rowing habit, but had to return my rower. Afterwards, I switched to walking to keep up the exercise behavior, which eventually just fizzled out.

The biggest issue was not having an intentional method to transition from one exercise to the next. This is a systemic problem because most skill-based habits need to change – sometimes significantly – to avoid a plateau. But, in changing, the cues and responses (the building blocks of any habit) also change.

It’s what I’ve dubbed the Habit Advancement Paradox - eventually you’ll have to sacrifice automaticity to skill advancement.

And this is why I believe that Killing Habits is as Important as Forming Them and why I think it’s useful to think in larger cycles that go beyond habits.

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I’m going to define a Lifestyle as a broad based behavior comprised of separate, often linearly changing habits. For example, an Exercise Lifestyle could be comprised of 3 months of walking, then 3 months of rowing, then 3 months of biking.

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A good lifestyle progression is an important added measure to Oetingen’s mental contrasting exercise. In mental contrasting, you contrast the good with the bad, brainstorming problems that could crop up. The problem here is how to advance and cross train a skill, which is itself a “danger zone” - a critical area in the duration of a habit where there’s a significant chance it will collapse.

The tendency is for strong habits to “drift” as new cues and responses are introduced to level up the skill. For example, switching from rowing at 3 PM to running as soon as you wake up might be a part of the same exercise lifestyle, but they’re totally different habits.

When transitioning, efficiently creating a new habit would be tedious. You’d have to slowly level up a new Tiny Habit from scratch. That’s great for habit formation, but not as efficient from the lifestyle or skill perspective. You’d be going back to very little cardio vascular growth if you transition from doing HIITs on a rower (an advanced habit) to walking around the block (the Tiny Habit for running).

UNZIPPING HABITS

A better method may come from a weird quirk of habit formation.

One reason I hate the so-called “Seinfeld Method” is that it emphasizes that daily execution is important. But according to the research, habits aren’t completely contingent on streaks – rather, habits are deep mental structures that also involve automaticity, memory, length of time, and identity. According to the researchers, missing a day after 3 consistent times didn’t significantly effect habit strength.

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The Seinfeld Method - Get a calendar, draw a big red X on every day you do a specific behavior, and don’t break the chain.

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In fact, I remember actually getting higher scores on the Self Report Habit Index (SRHI) after skipping a day every once in a while.

In Is Polymathy Even Possible?, I talk about how you can theoretically make two habits for the willpower price of one.  

The closer you get to a strong habit, the more automatic the action gets, and the less willpower you have to exert.

Conversely, the closer you are to the start date of a habit, the more willpower you’ll generally exert.

But if habits don’t necessarily have to be done every day, then why not alternate days, executing different habits on different days until they’re well established?

Across time the two behaviors would unzip, forming two habits for the willpower price of one.

PROGRESSING BETWEEN HABITS

I think reversing the process may be a way to seamlessly transition to a new habit within a lifestyle.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you have a rowing habit that you want to transition to a running habit to avoid a plateau.

And let’s say the cue for rowing is, for simplicity sake, as soon as you get up.

The rowing habit grows through the normal cycle:

1. Habit formation. A Tiny Habit of rowing for one minute after getting up becomes more automatic until it’s a fully established habit (70-84 on the SRHI).

2. Natural growth. Rowing automatically swells in time and intensity.

3. Forced growth. Natural growth falters, but by altering practice slightly (inserting other exercises like kettlebell swings or pushups in between two smaller rowing sessions, or by inserting a few HIITs per week), growth continues. The change in focus makes the additional time or intensity feel less onerous.

4. Plateau around day 90. Even forced growth ceases to deliver change and increasing intensity or time loads feels harder.

Instead of abruptly stopping on day 90 to start a running habit from scratch, I’d replace rowing every other day to build up a daily tiny habit of running off the same trigger. Essentially, I’d be splicing in a new habit.

With ludicrously tiny habits it takes about 20 or so days to get them up to the 70s in the SRHI.

I’d want to start splicing in running about 20 days before the end of my rowing cycle - so on day 70.

But those are changing responses to the same trigger (waking up). What if you needed to change triggers?

For example, if I want to transition to a yoga class, I’ll probably have to go at a specific time that’s different from my cue of rowing.

It still theoretically works - I’m just establishing new cues WHILE I’m tapering off my rowing habit. I’m still working out every other day, while efficiently ramping up a new exercise habit and conserving willpower.

It’s like relay runners exchanging a baton. To conserve speed both athletes need to be running during the exchange. If I’m right, this not only solves the Habit Advancement Paradox, but also maintains momentum in skill across a Lifestyle.

Now I just have to test it out…

6 Scientific Strategies for Effortless Habits

Lydia’s crossfit gym let us borrow an indoor rower while they’re closed.  Since my exercise habit has basically imploded, I thought I’d use this opportunity to establish a rowing habit for the duration of the quarantine. 

For this post, I’m going to outline the science and strategy behind forming a basic habit - one I define as an action done once at the same time every day. I had a rock solid rowing habit that lasted for 3 years (until we moved), so I’ve had a lot of time to figure out how to practically implement this with the minimum amount of effort. 

THE STRATEGY

1. Form a ludicrously small habit. Instead of rowing for 30 minutes, focus on something so ridiculously small you’re more likely to do it on your worst days. For me, that’s 5 minutes, and I have no compunction about dropping it down to 1 minute if need be. Behavioral scientist BJ Fogg’s method of making habits small has a lot of backing - and it makes sense.  Lowering the “habit load” will help you focus on the automatic trigger-response and mentally make getting started easier.

2. Form a clear trigger. “When [X] happens I will do [MY HABIT]”. Remember that the clearer, more precise, and temporally connected the two are, the more efficiently the habit will form. DO NOT use sloppy triggers like “sometime in the morning I will go for a run”.  This technique is called an implementation intention and you can check out Dr. Peter Gollwitzer’s research linked in this Wiki article.

3. Perform a mental contrasting exercise. Positivity isn’t enough, and can sometimes blind you to the issues involved in forming a habit. This exercise uncovers the complex emotional entanglements that often underpin the act of change. It also draws out potential stumbling blocks and forces you to plan how to get around them. Check out psychologist Gabrielle Ottingen’s research on it here.

4. Strategize growth. Resist the urge to go all out at first. Stretch out the energy you have on, say, day 5, and instead stick to just keeping it a tiny behavior. Once the habit is established (take the Self Report Habit Index to make sure) then you can start to grow it. At first, it will grow naturally without pushing it. But then you’ll inevitably hit a plateau.
   
   To get through the plateau, modulate practice. If you’re doing cardio at a gym, I find the best way is to drop your time, and cycle between different cardio equipment. I found that plateaus aren’t necessarily about your own endurance, but more about focus. We just get bored. Directly forcing your way through it drains massive amounts of willpower, and modulating practice like this can result in easier progress.
   
   Once I hit my natural growth plateau for rowing, I’m going to try including some kettlebell rows or HIITs to shake things up.

5. Record your habit on a spreadsheet. I know, it sounds like a painful extraneous step, but there’s a lot of behavioral science to this. Keeping clear metrics is a principle used in everything from biofeedback, food diaries, and gamification to FitBit-style wearable trackers and the quantified self movement. If you know what you’re doing each day, you’re likely to automatically try to beat your score. 

   
   In most cases, the “score” would be the surface level metric - like how many meters I’ve rowed. But we’re not going to track that at first. Instead, we’re going to use the SRHI (The Verplanken-Orbell Self Report Habit Index - the questionnaire should be at the bottom of the .pdf) - a sliding scale metric of how strong a habit actually is. You can track it however often you want just to gauge how far along your habit is, and to know when to add more to it. I’m pretty anal retentive and tend to take it every day so I can make a pretty graph at the end.
   
   I tend to drop habits when I forget them, or when I’m generally (and inevitably) interrupted by life. Recording adds an extra layer of accountability that is the best method for remembering to pick up the habit again before it completely dies.

6. Kill your habits. After about 3 months, plateaus really start to take root. And if you’re trying to do another exercise - like running or taking a class - you’re really shaking up the triggers or the preplanning. Your class might be at a different time, or you might have to plan on how to deal with rain if you’re switching to running outside. This “habit drift” is natural when skills grow, but they wreck havoc on automaticity. It’s just better to restart another habit, and do all the preplanning for the new one.

Hopefully after 3 months the quarantine will be over. That might just be the best time to switch things up, get out, and try something new – maybe even around people!

TIPS

• Don’t worry about a few missed days. A habit is about a collection of instances, and in the studies, one day didn’t really seem to make much of a difference. Just continue to record it as a miss, pick it up the next day, and try to avoid missing long streaks.

• Actually write down the mental contrasting and implementation intention exercises. I write them on my blog, but you can easily jot them down wherever you record your habits.

• Do one habit at a time. The more habits you try to form, the less likely you’ll actually accomplish any of them. You might have the energy to do 5 things at once today, but will you have that same energy in 3 weeks? The stats say no.

• Take time off. I drop all my regular habits on weekends. There’s a lot of research that shows that regular time off has innumerable benefits. For a great read on this, check out Katrina Onstad’s book, The Weekend Effect.

• Go with the flow. Every aspect of this plan rests on system architecture rather than personal struggle. If done right, this will be the easiest habit you’ve ever made. Let the system do its work

BONUS MATERIAL

• Recording. Here’s the format I use for my spreadsheet:

• Implementation Intention:
  After I finish one writing Pomodoros, I’ll immediately row for 5 minutes

• Natural and Forced Growth Progressions:
  I want to start this as ludicrously small as possible. I think 5 minutes will be fine, but I’ll drop it to even smaller if it even begins to feel arduous.
  
  After my natural growth cycle plateaus, I’ll shave off 5 minutes from my rowing, hop off and do some alternative rows with kettlebells, then hop back on and do some additional rowing. I’ll also change things up by introducing HIITs twice a week.
  
  At 3 months I will kill it off and reestablish it as another exercise habit. This will depend how the quarantine goes, but I have options like walking or going to a gym, or even bodyweight training from an online course.

• Mental Contrastion:
  1) Positive Aspects
  I see this as a great way to get back into exercise, especially with the quarantine going on. I have a rower, might as well use it. I think it will also get me more energized and provide a welcome break from my extended writing work sets.
  
  2) Obstacles
  I see almost nothing wrong with this. I think that I might get sore, or pull a muscle, but I hope to chain this habit with a mobilizing habit which should mitigate things.

• Here’s the chart of my previous rowing habit.

There’s a few things to note here. First, you can see the curve is really steep at first, and that was even with missing a few days. At this time I was including missing weekends, which didn’t really affect the habit either. By day 22 the scale had gotten to the 70s, indicating a formed habit. A little before this time is when I’d shoot to start naturally growing my habit, resisting the urge to do it before it’s fully established.

Is Killing Habits as Important as Forming Them?

While popular wisdom suggests that establishing a habit is the key to all self improvement, ending them may be equally - if not more - critical.

I’ve been in a rut for a long time. Old habits aren’t as stable and progress is slow. I miss swaths of time, and getting back to the routine just doesn’t happen as smoothly as it once did. 

As I diagnose this issue I have to acknowledge how much my core habits have changed. Meditation was something I did after showering. I now practice it between writing sets. Exercise started as a rowing habit as soon as I got up. It’s now morphed into cardio, indoor climbing, or walking -  something I get around to “at some point” in the day.

This “habit drift” is necessary. When efficiently leveling up a habit, both the trigger and response eventually have to change. I might practice several skills in writing depending on the day. If I joined a Crossfit class, the trigger will probably differ from my original home workout habit.

The only behaviors that are as rock solid as when I began – flossing and planning – don’t require any skill pushes. But for all the others, I’ll naturally mess around with triggers and their respective responses to grow. That makes the “habit fold” in my head less crisp, less automatic, and the habit degrades. The more you efficiently push a skill, the more inevitable this issue becomes.

I’ll call this the Habit Advancement Paradox.

The Habit Advancement Paradox:

When efficiently leveling up skills, automaticity degrades.

Or

Either habit automaticity remains stable or skills continue to advance.

“Efficiently” is a a key word here.

While I believe there’s natural growth that occurs, and you can extend that by forcing progress, it’s hard to get further without doing something extra – going to a different type of gym or joining a community. When that happens, it can feel like the ground is falling out from under you as once solid behaviors fade – even though you’re doing the right thing. You’re left scrabbling, tapping into willpower reserves in a way you never had to before to maintain the routine. After a certain point, what’s efficient for progress isn’t optimal for habits (and vice versa).

A NEW MODEL

I assumed that all skill pushes should be done under the auspices of the original habit. This appears unsustainable. Perhaps the answer lies in viewing progress as something larger than habits.

A “habit” is a singular, automatic trigger-response behavior. I define a “routine” as a sequence of habits chained across one day. What I need is a term for a collection of sequential, related habits and skill pushes across years that lead to mastery.

Let’s call that a “lifestyle”.

In this new paradigm, ending habits is just as important as forming them. It solves the Habit Advancement Paradox.

Take meditation. If I focus on triggers, my meditation habit was tied to:

1. Showering

2. At some point in the day

3. Random classes/community sessions

4. Between sets of writing

Going to class never stuck - and why would it? It’s not at all related to the initial habit I formed. Yet many of the changed triggers were conducive to skill growth. I moved the habit later in the day to accommodate more intense 40 - 60 minutes sessions. Community practice got me meditating in different styles, and short sets between writing forced me to work on quickly and consistently reaching states.

All this messed with automaticity. What would’ve been better is if I deliberately destroyed and reformed the habit to parallel different triggers and preserve the automaticity of the practice itself.

Knowing when exactly to do this is difficult. I think the answer lies when they’ve grown to the point of diminishing returns. And there seems to be a progression to the efficient, most effortless growth of any skill:

1. A Tiny Habit (establishing the initial habit)

2. A natural extension (the skill just naturally grows before plateauing)

3. Some sort of forced growth under the same trigger (the easiest growth I’ve found is to either go really tiny and intense or cycle through different types of training)

After number 3, it’s pretty clear that progress just stalls. There’s a limit to which you can wring out growth with the same trigger. There’s also a degradation in automaticity because you’re not making any meaningful progress. This might be the right time to reestablish a new, related habit on the path to mastery over a lifestyle. And I’d eyeball this at about 3 months.

Not only is three months enough time to establish and level up a habit twice (through natural and forced growth), but it’s also a nice way to divide the year into quarters. It also tends to be how long I shoot for with challenges. And there’s usually some sort of disturbance in my life within that time frame which degrades automaticity anyways (like holidays or travel).

TROUBLESHOOTING

There are still some theoretical problems with this new model.

The biggest issue is that restarting new habits is, once again, going to drain willpower. Most of the time starting a habit efficiently isn’t problematic because it starts so tiny. But when you’re ratcheting things up that might not be an option. There’s not a place, say, for going to a group meditation and just showing up for 10 minutes. However, I’d argue that a part of that load will eventually be taken up by other Elements of Change - specifically socializing and expectation. I think there’s still going to be a bit of awkwardness and a difficult start in the beginning, but I’m hoping it won’t be too much of an issue. 

IMPLEMENTATION

If I were to implement this, I’d first kill off exercise and mobilizing. Exercise has been the hardest hit by changeups, and mobilizing was always something I did after exercising. A part of my implementation would involve planning to naturally grow it, how to force grow, and a plan to kill it off in three months. I’d think about how to periodize this across a year, much like bodybuilders do with macrocycles.

It still feels wrong. Even though many of my habits are tattered and worn, they’re still precious multi-year behaviors. Shooting them out back like Old Yeller is nerve wracking. 

LARGER BENEFITS

I’m drawn to this paradigm for larger reasons. Productivity isn’t everything (gasp!).

There’s a reason why a “routine” connotes boringness. There is something inherently inhuman about strict adherence to a program. And that’s how I feel when churning through habits over years, especially when progress inevitably plateaus. Yet I cannot shake how valuable routines are.

However, change, newness, and novelty are all joy producing and life affirming. And they’re agile.

There’s always been a trade off in self-help - discipline to accomplish goals on one hand, and the random enjoyment that has so often led me astray on the other.

But there have been a few times where I’ve been able to fuse the two. Structured Randomness comes to mind, with its use of Novelty to bolster productivity. Similarly, “jot-outlining” and “scamping” in process composition joins creative freedom with structure. Structured Relaxation and Planned Mediocrity also carry a whiff of this union of opposites.

When I imagine a macrocycle divided into quarters where I get to run, rock climb, do yoga, and box, while making sure to build those up into strong automatic habits, I kind’ve get excited. I know I’ll always be adapting and growing. I’ll never feel dull. And I’ll be able to make them as effortless and automatic as possible.

Killing habits might be the best way to have your cake and eat it too.

photocred: tree in stump by Tim Snell, bulldozer by MINING.com, periodization chart by paddlers guide.wordpress.com

Answer Bag: Is Polymathy Even Possible?

A polymath is a person who has mastered multiple skills. Polymathics is Robert Twigger’s term of making such mastery possible. When discussing simultaneously mastering multiple skills my Dad recently asked :

“If there’s only so much willpower available to an individual, is mastering multiple skills at the same time even possible?”

So far this blog has been all about habits and skill mastery, but what has emerged is the concept of effortless change. That is, emphasizing techniques to offload the weight of change from willpower, effort, or strength of character. Techniques like building a Tiny Habit or my tally clicking system accomplish this by making the change as easy as possible. The more offloaded the change is from brute willpower, the more likely it will stick. Furthermore, this type of self-help is egalitarian, likely to work just as well for people who, for whatever reason, have less gas in the tank.

But what I’m really going after is effortless polymathy. Or at least preserving enough willpower to make it as easy as possible. But how do you do that, especially if you’re a regular person?

I believe there are methods, both theoretical and tested, to do this. Here are 4:

1. Unzippered Habits. One thing that surprised me about habits is that they don’t need to be done every day to form. Let’s say you’ve got a simple, daily habit you’re starting - say, flossing. When graphed, the initial habit formation curve is incredibly steep. Several of the habit researchers have stated that missing any one day doesn’t mess up that curve’s trajectory. As long as it’s not a long streak, your mind doesn’t register missing instances that closely. If you’ve got a clear trigger-response, your flossing habit will form up whether or not you miss days 3 or 8. And it will form at the same rate.
   
   So theoretically, you might be able to miss every other day, replacing those days with another habit, pulling the two habits apart when they approach full habit status.
   
   As the two habits become fully formed, their automaticity goes up, and willpower expenditures go down. In this manner, it may be possible to form two habits for the price of one.

2. Spaced Learning. Another big issue regarding polymathy is that there isn’t enough time in the day. The assumption is that to master something you have to cram as much practice time in as possible. That might not be true.

   In studies on accelerated learning researchers found that distributing practice sessions across a longer amount of time (rather than massing them all together) resulted in more efficient and long-term learning.
   
   The research is changing and rather confusing. But if that is true in any form, that space might give enough time to not only learn multiple skills together, but do it better.

3. Priming Tasks. A massive “leak” in the system is task switching costs. When the mind moves from one type of activity to another it lags. This is a particularly irksome issue when you’re stacking habits, and I’d imagine it would become more pronounced when learning different skills.

   
   However, priming the next task at the end of the previous one taps into a sense of excitement and motivation. While motivation isn’t my go to for long-term change, it is incredibly useful for “interstitial” issues like this. I found that watching a quick video online helps shift my mental gears to the next task at hand, significantly decreasing lag time.

4. Ego Repletion Techniques. As the day progresses my energy dies. There are, however, a few methods to refuel the tank. I’ve written about methods that have worked for me in this blog post, including harnessing momentum, changing mood, exemplar priming, and meditation. When cycled and tested with a rudimentary before and after scale, I found I could recover almost all of my energy back.
   
   An overlapping and related issue relates to energy. I think that ensuring good sleep and proper diet can really help with this. There are also activities that contribute to stable energy levels throughout the day - like this writer who found that 30 second bursts of exercise gave him the same boost as coffee.

I imagine this system as a really well tooled engine - you have to contend with friction costs and fuel efficiency and energy loss. With a behavioral science engine to drive multiple skill advancement, the system has to be incredibly efficient, and even more so if you want that change to be as effortless as possible.

If this sounds complicated, it is – and I think it should be. What we are discussing is the equivalent of sending someone to the moon. I think it’s time we view the complicated mechanics of behavior just as seriously as aeronautics instead of simply defaulting to talent and motivation.

photocred: Gary Danvers Collection

the Problem With Triggers, Cadence, and Task Switching

Habits are not enough

The typical narrative in productivity is that you’ve done all the heavy lifting once establishing a strong, daily habit. 

I’ve experienced the exact opposite.

These days, many of my multi-year habits have been getting shaky. In fact, it seems all habits involving complicated skills eventually erode themselves under the weight of progress, especially when stacked. I’ve pinpointed 3 problems with advancing habits - issues with:

1. Eroded implementation intention. A good habit is a clean if-then protocol. If you start cross training (which you should do) then it’s not the same habit anymore. When I attempted switching up my workout routine depending on the day of the week, the fold naturally got a bit messy because suddenly I wasn’t just doing one thing in one place. I might be walking outside, I might be climbing, I might be going to the gym.

2. Cadence in progress. Progress is a weird stagger step. Some people describe it as two steps forward and one step back, but I think it’s worse -  it’s  a drunk tango dancer trying to walk a straight line. Unfortunately, this nonlinear progress is difficult to handle, especially emotionally. 

3. Task switching costs. Whenever you switch thought patterns, there’s going to be a lag in focus. This is particularly salient when you’re trying to stack habits into a fully fledged routine. The goal isn’t one habit - it’s a host.

Luckily there are a number of counters to these issues.

For sloppy implementation, it’s focusing on crisping up the initial habit. A few options are:

1. Focusing on the time to start. As soon as the trigger occurs, focus on the next minute task.

2. Focusing on some small external thing. I have an experiment I’d like to try on tying habits to ring tones, then triggering them 66 times in a day. This could potentially not only speed up the habit building process (on average a habit takes 66 days to form), but would  shore up the trigger response of an already established habit.

3. Using click training. Click training works by identifying and rewarding the exact moment a trigger-response occurs. This yet another way to zoom in and shore up that tiny moment.

When you’ve got a lack of continued, smooth growth, it causes emotional friction. You start blaming yourself which in turn causes energy dips throughout the day. Some counters include:

1. Walking away. Sometimes it’s worth it to just stop and refocus. I tend to just fight and fight without really accomplishing anything, which just leaves me exhausted.

2. Creating a discrete end. Even when I’m having a good day I tend to have no stopping point  to some of my habits, like writing. This intersects with good planning and seeing the big picture, so you know for sure that your bit of work in one day will contribute to a longer strategy. In Deep Work, Cal Newport advocates having an ending ritual to shut off his brain.

3. Momentum. Getting a few easy wins early in the day by moving around my schedule.

4. Setting a trip wire to know when to engage anti procrastination strategies.

5. Priming the next task. This seems to bypass the task switching cost.

Marriage counselor Dr. David Schnarch believes that all long-term relationships go through shaky times. It’s built in to the system. People grow, often because of each other. That change in character naturally changes the relationship, which can result in interpersonal turbulence. 

While the past ideas are solutions for specific problems, I’m beginning to view this process as a similarly inevitable issue, one that must reflect an addition to my self-development model:

1. Establish a tiny habit using implementation intention and mental contrasting

2. Once it’s a super habit, extend it by cycling what you do in one session.

3. Deal with energy issues as you collect multiple habits.

4. Begin cross training that habit across different days (which seems to answer cadence issues)

5. As the habit becomes shaky, reestablish it in a way that encompasses the cross training

Over the last two weeks I’ve implemented a number of these protocols. For writing, my issues of starting disappeared once I focused on tying the habit to starting the Pomodoro timer.  Whenever I remember to watch a climbing video at the end of my previous habit, all the empty time I spend dithering around disappears, and I get to the gym faster.

But the biggest protocol I’ve experimented with is compacting my routine. I’ll go to the climbing gym, do a cardio workout, then do some writing, and meditate between Pomodoro sets before doing some climbing. I think movement maintains energy throughout the day and a change in scene can give me an extra boost. I have a theory that artificially constraining practice time is also a really good way to cross train, and has certainly benefited me in meditation. 

This type of condensing is not only good for efficiently stacking habits, but it plays them off each other. Meditation gives me rest from writing, which in turn recharges me from my initial workout. At the same time, I’m cross training, extending my practice, and harnessing momentum. 

This will be particularly key the more skills I stack on to the entire system. The goal for all of this is to master multiple skills at once while maintaining core lifestyle habits.

You’ll notice I haven’t said much about cadence, which is also key to a broad science of polymathy. I’m still getting a hold on the messy pattern of how naturally staggered progress works.

But I’m hopeful. As this project continues I see more beauty and opportunity in that chaos. And that bodes very well for the future. 

photocred: stairs by Matt, lightsaber duel by Morgz, steamroller by nex230

On and Off the Wagon: Tally Clicking as a Reset Mechanism for Vice Removal

Old habits die hard - in fact, they may never die

In an MIT study, researchers studied neuron behavior in rats when they associated cues with rewards. When the rewards were removed, the rats reverted to their previous behavior. But when they were returned, the patterns continued as though they had been there all along. 

Ann Garbiel, the professor of neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive science, stated that “it is as though, somehow, the brain retains a memory of the habit context, and this pattern can be triggered if the right habit cues come back.”

That’s great for good habits. It’s not so good for the bad ones.

Over the last several months, I’ve gone on trips that have reignited almost all my old vices. Smoking, beer, eating badly, alcohol in general. And when I got back home, all the urges that I spent time getting rid of individually (each for 3+ months) came back in force.

So I did a reset. For 31 days I’ve clicked away all urges. This was a test of 2 mechanisms:

1. How would tally clicking work for multiple habits?

2. How well would it work for resetting vice removal?

Here’s my data:

Qualitatively, it felt a lot harder. I had strong urges, mostly for alcohol. I think in part this was because I was retraining 4 different vices at once. It’s also been getting cold, and the urge to get out and have a beer at a warm bar is appealing. My monthly cheat fell smack dab in the middle of all this. And that cheat came right when Lydia came back from a work trip. The absence and return of a significant other seems to affect my mood and my cravings. I also still don’t think I have a good method of dealing with relaxation and getting out with regards to alcohol.

But those were all internal measurements. Externally, it worked just as well as any other time. At no point was I remotely close to breaking (outside of the official cheat). And I keep forgetting how difficult that would have been before for any one vice. I tend to look at the numbers and sigh, forgetting the the numbers are for urges, not indulging.

Happily the more salient problem isn’t knowing if the technique works, but knowing when I’m done with the reset.

I attempted 2 methods to get a feel for this:

First, I took the SRHI to determine whether the action was fully automatic. The action I assessed was “clicking my vices and watching them go past without indulging in them”.

The result: 76/84. 

And the only reason it was this low was due to a few questions on not thinking about the action. Automatic behaviors are thoughtless. But the action I was assessing was about mindfully seeing an urge, so of course it was going to be artificially low. The other question that wasn’t perfect was one of identity - which is a complicated question. Am I person who “clicks away my vices”? Well…sometimes. Meanwhile, frequency, automaticity, and feeling weird NOT doing the task were all rated as high as possible.

Second, I tried seeing how low my clicks were at the end of my reset and compared them to individual vice removal clicks towards the end of my 3 months. Towards the end of the reset, I was getting anywhere from 10 - 20 clicks. Dividing by 4 vices, that’s 3.74. For the previous vices I have data on, the last 10 days were at:

• Alcohol: 0-6

• Food: 0-4

• Beer: 0-4

I did a reset right after my first trip, and got it down to 0-6.

I do not know why this chart reflects a better reset than my most recent one, especially since halfway through I had an official cheat. And for the last 10 days I was actually cheating (one of my trips was during this time). Which is bizarre. And it’s something I’ve noticed before - actually cheating is bad and counter to the ends of this project, but it results in fewer urges.

This is all rather ad-hoc. There is an overlap between alcohol and beer. The older vices I removed returned quicker. But it did seem to be a more rapid return in general, lending a bit of personal creedance to the study that suggested we have patterns already formed, ready to switch over.

This entire process reminds me of how people talk about detoxing. I have a friend that does a one month food detox earlier in the year, and I know people who do a “dry January”.

But like challenges, I feel people do it in the wrong order. Challenges work better once you’ve established a solid habit. Using a challenge levels them up because when you go back down to your regular habit, you naturally tend to execute them at slightly elevated levels.

Perhaps this is the best way to use a detox - not to kickstart anything, but to get back to an already established level once you inevitably fall off the wagon.

And I’m glad I fell off. One of my trips was to Grand Rapids, Michigan, known for its beer, where I sampled the best I’ve ever had. Other vices contributed to great experiences of shared friendship and exploration, all situations I do not regret and probably won’t regret in the future.

I enjoyed falling off the wagon. Perhaps the key is falling off – and getting back on – well.  

photocred: wagon by Conal Gallagher

Giving Up Alcohol: 90 Days of No Drinking

It feels weird drinking again.

After 90 days of no alcohol, my first drink is an American peated whiskey that Lydia brought back from a trip to Washington, one she claimed was as good as the Islay single malts I adore. It sat on our kitchen counter for the duration of this challenge. At first, that caused a lot urges, but towards the end it –like most instances of cravings – faded into the background. 

I’m finally tasting it (and she’s right, it IS that good!), but as with beer and food, the drink isn’t causing any urges, even during the act of consuming it. I’m appreciating it, but oddly, the craving aspect just isn’t there. It’s just an act of scheduled appreciation.

Experiment: Creating artificial cravings

Like my previous challenges, I used my tally clicking system to record urges for any alcohol across 90 days. This time, I tested the hypothesis that artificially exacerbating cravings would change the graph. If it’s just a matter of a certain number of urges to get over, pushing them early should result in the entire cycle finishing earlier, contributing to a faster, more efficient quitting process. I did this for one week.

To do this I watched shows like Mad Men and Lucifer, watched cocktail making videos, liquor commercials, and mini-documentaries on crafting spirits. I started writing down my best memories with alcohol, and several nights even poured brandy in a glass, stuck my nose in, and sniffed it repeatedly to conjure cravings.

Results

In general, the quitting process was very similar to quitting beer, cigarettes, and processed carbs. It was easy to ignore urges and there was never a point when I felt like I’d break down, even while deliberately summoning cravings.

As for my artificial exacerbation experiment, my hypothesis seemed to be true. On day 60 my SRHI for the habit of observing and ignoring urges was at a 79 - close to super habit status. But I didn’t take a snapshot of the SRHI on day 60 for other quitting attempts. And while there were fewer average urges for alcohol versus food in the 3rd month, it’s unclear to me whether the difference is significant enough to warrant changing my protocols (average food cravings for 3rd month = 2.26, average alcohol cravings for 3rd month = 1.58).

In terms of surface level results, I didn’t really see much of a difference in weight loss (I’ve been weighing myself every day). 

But I took a blood test and my ALT, uric acid, and iron levels are in healthy ranges, when before they were not. These have relationships to alcohol and liver functioning, so that was to be expected - it was just nice to see external confirmation. And my triglycerides have gone down considerably. It’s not the best before and after snapshot because the last blood test I took was 5 months ago, when I had already started my healthy eating plan.

As for deeper, self control results, the challenge was a fantastic success. I did conference networking, parties where everyone was drinking and pushing alcohol on me, and even went to 6th street in Austin and hung out at bars all night without drinking. It also worked through some of my particular triggers - grilling and fancy restaurants - with ease.

However, I definitely needed a release, and indulged in other vices, like hookah and cigars as a crutching mechanism. This valve release is an important issue, that I’ll get into in another post.

4 triggers of alcohol cravings

Observing the urges - and therefore the tangled set of psychological associations - uncoil and clarify was particularly interesting. Cravings mainly arose in four instances: social situations, boredom, as a method to relax, and in situations where I thought it was a matter of convenience. 

An urge to grab a drink functioned as a shielding mechanism when things got socially uncomfortable, or when I felt tense and nervous, especially during awkward silences. An easy fix was using vipassana to observe how the tightness and tingliness that comprise the emotion spread across my face and chest during such encounters. Socializing without alcohol took some getting used to. I found that people started repeating themselves or acting odd, and I had to remind myself that they were probably in a different state of mind than I was.

My lack of a steady community was an overlapping factor between socializing and boredom. I crave socializing, and I usually satisfy it in the shallowest way - by going to a bar to be around people. Luckily, I’m exploring more groups in Houston, which, combined with my planning habit, lets me know what options I have on any given day.

But drinking is mostly just an easy way to fill boredom. Without it, my mind naturally tried to find other things to do. During this time I started getting involved in other activities - from group events, to joining a mountain climbing gym, to just hitting up the apartment pool.

Alcohol and relaxing at the end of the day have gone hand in hand with me for a long time. It’s ritualistic. Opening a bottle of wine or getting a drink with a friend is a signal that conversation is officially about to happen. I found that replacing it – using relaxation exercises, pranayama, and mobilization – helped, as did going to the pool. Getting a bit of sunlight as soon as I woke up also caused me to get sleepier earlier. 

Drinking as a matter of convenience is the hardest thing to nail down. There’s a feeling of expectation, but not real pressure. It’s just easier to order a beer than figure out good drinking options, or if you want something that isn’t water. This wasn’t so bad, but it’s a subtlety that came up a lot.

But why do you want to stop drinking?

My limit these days is pretty low, usually two drinks. During the challenge I had a number of people who asked “but why do you want to quit if you don’t have problems?”. 

I recently watched a Netflix documentary - The Truth about Alcohol - which discussed why alcohol - any amount - isn’t a good idea. Alcohol is connected with cancer. People tend to consume significantly more when they are drinking. And it interrupts self regulation, and that’s particularly bad for this project.

But I’m not doing it for any of those perfectly valid reasons. What bothers me is the cavalierness we all have when it comes to alcohol. 

During one of my aforementioned meetings a boisterous member asked if I wanted a shot of crappy whiskey at 7 pm. And everyone was drinking beer. I was able to notice that people weren’t often drinking alcohol to truly appreciate it - they just needed something in their hand. Drinking isn’t a personality, but for so many people, it is. And all of this definitely applies to me.

One method I used to spur on urges was to write memories that I had with regards to alcohol. Like a mental contrasting exercise, I included both the good and the bad.

I discovered I have a lot of bad memories. I have a lot of good memories, but most of that goodness derives from closeness with friends, moments of deep connection and a shared community. What I learned is that alcohol is an easy way to get that, but not the best way out of the possibilities. Saying goodby, even only for this 90 day challenge was oddly sad. It felt like saying goodbye to an innocence that allowed me to be wild and carefree and have people love me for it.

Connoisseurship & habit circles

This test helped me hone in on what exactly I like about drinking.

Drinking regularly, even in small amounts makes my appreciation of alcohol decrease dramatically. I don’t really care that much about any given beer. It’s just a habit when going to a bar. And I’ve noticed that change even in a week of drinking it again. I estimate that at the low end I ended up saving $600 from not drinking across three months, which makes me wonder how well I can up connoisseurship through buying higher end alcohol and only drinking it once a month.

A climber friend of mine once described how the community doesn’t really drink that much because they usually want to get up early to climb. When I don’t have the easy, liquid option of getting rid of my issues, it forces me to naturally find ways that are better. I think having more hobbies and activities helps a lot - it forces you to form a family of good habits that promotes things like better sleep, outdoorsy-ness, waking up early, going to bed earlier, better food decisions, more robust communities of people who are interested in what you’re interested in, not just their interest in drinking etc. For climbers, climbing is the high they’re chasing. 

But if I analyze my circle of behaviors, socializing generally equals drinking at night. I don’t think there’s something intrinsically special about those people with a good family of habits. Rather, I think they just happen to fall into this circle of behaviors that supports one another. The key for any real system of self-help figuring out how to artificially kickstart this.

What does drinking look like in my future?

It’s Houston restaurant month and I’ve ordered the wine pairing at an award-winning restaurant and it is blowing me away. The way the wines and mezcal pair and change my dishes is something that I appreciate in an intensely human way. It is, for me, life worth living.

I like drinking.

There’s no question that I’d indulge if I’m appreciating terroir. If I’m in Scotland or Kentucky, or provenances in France, or the Caribbean, I’m going to drink scotch and whiskey, cognac and rum. 

I’m going to splurge on higher brands.

I’m also going to drink when there’s a moment of shared experience - my friend’s 40th birthday is coming up, and I’d love to have a quiet drink of communion with him. It’s just part of the ritual. 

But those exceptions, when I actually look at them, are exceedingly rare. And a once a month indulgence, as with food, might help me reap the benefits both worlds – Epicureanism without rigid asceticism. 

I’ve decided to allow all forms of drinking (Including beer) until I finish this article. Naturally, it’s taken longer than I expected. Alcohol is still an easy release of stress and boredom at the end of the day. This is something I need to replace, and is inline with my long standing view that forming an end of the day routine is paramount. The alternative seems to be what I do now - flail about and grasp at the easiest options. 

As I regress to my normal levels of imbibing during the rest of the week I acknowledge that the first drink was noteworthy, as was the wine pairing at the restaurant. But were the rest? Will I remember them in any significant way?

More and more I’m beginning to think - “no”.

photo credit: whiskey glass by Invaluable Official, red wine by Micke Jakobsson, whiskey collection by Ian McKellar, empty glasses by Micke Jakobsson

Formalizing a Daily Planning Habit

I’ve written about the importance of planning before, but after attending the Dallas-Fort Worth Writer’s Convention this weekend creating a habit has never seemed more important.

I’ve always been bad at it. I’ll pick up a planner and use it for a week or so and then, like all of my habits, it’ll fade away. Across keynote speakers and casual one-on-one conversations throughout the conference, it seemed that success seemed to be a matter of luck. Some person just happen to read and enjoy a writer’s work at the right time and right place. And while that seems disheartening at first, the behavioral hack behind the scenes was the same: all the writers kept constantly sending work out into the world.

Luck can be gamed. And the key is to, as Brandon Sanderson said in one of his lectures, “always be working on something else.”

That makes complete sense but is utterly beyond me without having a long-term planning system that’s solidly in place.

So…

IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION

As soon as I get my coffee and sit down at my desk, I’ll spend just a few minutes going through my bullet journal and updating lists or reading and ranking what I need to do that day. I’ll do a bit more on Monday for the week, but even if I just open up the journal every day the habit will still count.

MENTAL CONTRASTING

A) Positives
The ability to make this a part of my life will help me fill the world with writing arrows, hedging my bets to make success happen. It will also alleviate the feeling of living or dying on one proposal or pitch. This is immensely emotionally important to me. It will also help me significantly improve my craft. It will bring some amount of order to my generally chaotic life. It will help me plan for productivity experiments, and will prevent wasted down time.

It will also help me become a better person.

I think in relationships the concept of mental load is important - it almost always falls on females. I am a person who exacerbates this. I don’t plan for trips, I don’t get what I need done because I’m so disorganized, I don’t have my shit together. This forces the people around me to take up immense slack that I just assume they will carry. To both be free of that nagging feeling of constantly ignoring something in the background and to lessen the load the people I love shouldn’t have to carry is incredibly positive.

B) Obstacles
Not carrying my planner when I go on trips. Grossly overestimating time. Not having a pen on hand. Not feeling like I know it all now, when I think this will be a process of growing and adapting to what works best for me.

B-1) Workarounds
Luckily Lydia is a master of this, and I’ve already interviewed her for best practices. I think I’ll start with the basics and then add different aspects - like the 3 Ships concept or whatnot. A surprising amount of these best practices mimic what process composition writers like Jack Hart and Shani Raja describe when they talk about bringing structure to articles.

I intend to write another post on the ins and outs of this. It’s really a very foreign concept to me, but I can see it doing a lot.

Formalizing a Tally Clicking 90 Day No Alcohol Challenge

The biggest problem with my food was controlling drinking. I’ve discussed quitting – or at least severely curtailing – drinking for a long time. In An Identity Approach to Alcohol: Parts I and 2 I discuss how willpower-eroding it can be, and how counterproductive it can be in developing skills. I discussed pretty much the same thing almost 6 years ago at the very beginning of this project in Habits of Omission. I even successfully completed a 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge.

Back then, I didn’t understand the unmatting process or have the tally clicking system. Now I do.

IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION

Anytime I have an urge to drink alcohol for the next 90 days, I’ll click.

At the end of the day I’ll record the total number of urges for the day.

This is to satisfy my curiosity for the question “How many clicks does it take to remove the habit of wanting to drink alcohol?”

MENTAL CONTRASTING

A) Positives
Separating out the triggers regarding drinking will let me understand how to truly control myself. I think it will help foster greater skill in things like socializing. I think it will also help me make better gains in fat loss. I think it will make me feel better overall, and will help me sleep better. It will help cement the tally clicking process as one that’s replicable and highly efficient. I’ll finally be able to have true control over a habit I just fell into. And I won’t feel like I’m using it as a crutch, either for socializing, having a good time, relaxing at the end of the day, or just feeling bored. I think it will also help me shift to becoming a more active person, perhaps even a morning person, or an outdoor person. It’s a key component of a family of behaviors that will eventually result in a massive identity shift. I think if this works, it will have massive implications in helping other people with their own lives and addiction patterns.

B) Obstacles
Boredom, especially the feeling of release triggered by drinking a glass of wine or going out to a bar, will be a big obstacle. As will the connection between celebration and drinking. I’ve conditioned myself to think that those are all one and the same. I have fear of missing out on unique drinks or experiences. I think it feels like I might have a more difficult time building a community because most of the people I have met or socialized with in the past have been when alcohol was around. I’m worried that it may be awkward.

B-1) Workarounds
I think treating this as an experiment that can always be changed is a good safety net for me. I also think the reintroduction phase of clean eating - namely the potential for having one cheat day a month - offers a psychological respite from the odd fear of never drinking again. I also know that the craving mind isn’t the same as the one that will emerge after 90 days, when the majority of urges will subside.

I think coming up with a list of alternatives for getting out of the house is important. Gong for a walk or a dip in the pool, for example, would deliver a similar hit of joy, contentment, and activity. Honing a nightly ritual might not only give me that similar feeling of release, but also become the beginnings of a sleep ritual for better sleep hygiene, something I’ve also wanted to work on.

I’ve got my spreadsheet ready, let the challenge begin!

90 Days of Flawless Eating

“Chips and queso,” Lydia said. “Oh, and pizza - definitely some deep dish pizza!”

It’s day 90, and for the next few days we intended to do some quality carb binging to celebrate 3 months of absolutely perfect eating using the tally clicking system. 

We just had our queso, but things are already significantly different compared to other attempts at clean eating.

As with beer, the roots of the behavior seem largely neutralized.

Here’s the data:

Qualitative Observations

Across the 90 days urges started to drop away quite quickly. I noticed several unique triggers and a heightened sensitivity to sugar and alcohol. 

But from a behavioral perspective, my adherence was spectacular. As with beer, my control never got close to wavering. Furthermore, this control was in full effect in my regular life, rather than the normal method of avoiding experiences. I went on a long road trip, where I stopped for lunch at a gas station and ate a hot dog with fixings but without the bun. I ate Tex Mex with no tortillas and no chips, no rice and no beans. The program weathered unexpected visitors wanting to meet up for lunch, Cinco de Mayo parties, and Indian food sans rice and naan. I was able to pick out corn, croutons, noodles and potatoes from salads and soups with no problem.

Furthermore, it’s surprising to me just how easy it is to do here in the States if you ask. Taco places do lettuce wraps, Vietnamese restaurants will serve phở without noodles or with zucchini noodles. I love New Mexican chile rellenos, and one eatery in Albuquerque made them “naked” with no batter. Burrito places do burritos on salad bowls, burger joints do lettuce wrap “buns” or bowls. A nearby Tex-Mex chain even brings out chicharrones to dip into salsa if you don’t want chips.

The only exception I had to flawless adherence was alcohol; at several points I drank more than my initially allotted maximum of 2 drinks per day. Early on I kept telling myself to rectify it by reaffirming my implementation intention.

That never happened. 

Surface Changes

Though it didn’t make much of a difference on the scale (I only got my scale a month in, and lost about 10 pounds total in 2 months), I lost anywhere from 1 to 3 inches in diameter on various body parts. My arms especially seem to change quite a bit, appearing noticeably more toned.

I took a blood test after one month, and intend to take another one soon in order to see what (if any) internal changes occurred.

But as part of a Facebook Keto Group, and seeing a friend’s detailed progress – a guy who is following a similar food program – I was less than impressed by my end results, especially given the high level of behavioral adherence.

Troubleshooting

There are several potential reasons for my lack of progress. Due to an incredibly bad carb flu, travel, and pushing a work deadline, I started slacking in my exercise regimen. After years of daily exercise, I’ve also became convinced that it wasn’t as integral as I thought for fat loss. This seemed to unconsciously bias me towards said slacking.

At some point in a habit, when you’ve ground out a routine for years with no perceived progress, you begin to wonder if it’s worth it at all. It’s a wall I’ve hit with several habits, and one I think is solved by A) proper understanding of the mechanics of the process and B) better methods to level up intensity.

Ironically, another issue may have been because I was too strict. When I first seriously attempted a solid eating plan we had at least one cheat day where we would binge on anything. I would consistently drop weight after the high carb day. And this “refeed day” (or carb cycling) procedure seems to be a mainstay of bodybuilders on cutting cycles, allegedly to prevent the body from going into a mode in which it retains as much weight as possible. In the future I want to experiment with clean carb days, something that was totally outside my realm of possibility before, as “dirty refeeds” reinforce adherence to prevalent, motivation-based programs.

Dr. Jason Fung is a nephrologist whose popular books on diet may offer a few other alternatives. In the book, The Obesity Code, he outlines perhaps the most clear and data-backed argument for the way I’m eating (which leans towards paleo/primal). In it, he also states that diet is a far more important behavior to change compared to exercise.  Other than changing what you eat, he also suggests changing when.

For Fung, snacking is a no-no. Which is unfortunate because I tended to snack a lot, on either nuts or plantain chips.

Secondly, he advocates fasting. I do generally skip breakfast and opt for a very un-regimented, very haphazard 14-hour fast, but he advocates upping it to 24 hours, and in some instances 36 hours. A friend who is following his advice seems to be having excellent results with this, and it’s something I also intend to look into.

When Are You Done?

I brought this question up in a previous post entitled The End of Beer: A (Mostly) Complete Map of Quitting - and it’s still an important issue. When can I move on and toss my clicker aside? Lydia has already done this naturally. When I quit beer, it naturally occurred for me as well. But the more I think about it, the more I believe I can frame this as a habit of observing cravings AND seeing them go past without reacting.

When I took the SRHI for this, I got an 81. And it was only lower than a perfect 84 because of automaticity-related questions. Though there were many cases where I would click for an urge, and later forget that I clicked at all, statements like “I do it without thinking” don’t track well with this method, since mindfulness is a key component.

When I took the SRHI for “making healthy food choices” I got an 83. If this was any other habit, I would move on, so I’m pretty satisfied with concluding the behavioral side of this project now.

Exceptions

Another key, finishing point is knowing how to reintroduce exceptions. Despite its rigorous obsession with discipline, this blog really is about living life to the fullest. I want to experience new foods and partake in life - I just don’t believe I need to do it every day.

So Lydia and I came up with a potential protocol for reintroduction:

1. A cheat meal one day per month. We flip flopped between this and the more traditional once a week cheat meal, but realized that we really don’t have that strong of an urge to eat badly. The behavior is pretty well ingrained within us, and we tend to feel pretty bad after indulging.

2. Specific, unique cultural events are acceptable exceptions.

3. A caveat to #2 is that we’d try as best as we could to taste a small sample to fulfill curiosity and life experience rather than get an entire dish. This worked for Lydia on several press trips and seems the best of both worlds.

4. We have a potential project of exploring different foods in this city - once a week we want to try a restaurant from a different country. If we choose to, we’d be able to try something that’s not clean if it comes up and if it’s either impossible to eat clean or something truly special.
   

While I won’t be recording clicks, I’ll be taking notes during this reintroduction phase. I have no problem with the once a month cheat meal, but the once a week “maybe” gets behaviorally dicey real fast.

With adherence largely stable the next logical step, in my mind, is to attempt 90 days of no alcohol.

—

But this is still day 91 of eating, my first free day, where all the food in the world is once again, suddenly at my disposal. I’ve tried many programs – several bodybuilding.com 90-day transformation programs, Body for Life, Whole 30 – every diet I’ve tried across over 2 decades has resulted in a deep-seated need for release. It’s a sensation that my cravings, having so long been kept in check, can finally spring free.

It’s not like that today. I feel like indulging is more of an obligation, like I’m going through the motions. I’m actually eager to get back to eating well. The thought, oddly enough, makes me feel relieved.

At the end of the day I opened my spreadsheet out of habit, checking my clicker to record how many urges I had:

Zero.

The End of Beer: A (Mostly) Complete Map of Quitting

The last time I spent any significant time in Bryan-College Station, good beer meant Shiner. 30 packs of Keystone and kegs of Natty Light were the norm, fueling house parties into the early morning.

While attending university in an out-of-the-way Texas town, beer lubricated belonging.

I’m back celebrating the passing of a friend, and now, 15 years later, Bryan is filled with cool craft beer bars with mustachioed, suspender-clad hipsters, ready to pair your brew with a meal. But it’s a sake bar at the far end of downtown that my friends and I stumble into today.

I head to the bathroom - I’ve been drinking water almost all night - but when I come back my friend has ordered a round of sake bombs, and one’s waiting for me.

It’s been 7 months since I cut out beer. After 90 days, I had a few to test out what it would feel like and then promptly decided to continue.

My initial 90 day challenge has extended into a complete removal of the behavior, and a complete success for my tally clicking method for vice removal. It’s also a method, I might add, that DOES NOT rely on the popular “replacement theory” of breaking habits. Here’s a look at the data:

Along the way I’ve had Lydia push beer on me accidentally. I’ve been able to go to places normally, places like craft beer bars. I’ve had people unknowingly buy me beers or tell me to taste them. I still have stacks of IPA’s leftover from my recent birthday party. I’ve navigated it all with control I never thought possible.

LAYERS OF CHANGE

But other than the external change, it’s the gradual un-matting of subtle, psychological connections that fascinates me most. Before the project, trigger and response were quick. Urge to drink, beer in hand.

As the project continued I soon began to notice the intermediary steps. In Atomic Habits, James Clear describes this by interjecting the URGE to do a behavior as a key component in the more traditional Cue-Routine-Reward habit loop (outlined by Charles Duhigg)

But things got even more subtle. I had memories of an urge without actually having the urge in the present. I’d start to notice them in dreams. I was able to appreciate beer without having the cravings come up. In one case I was super curious about a beer Lydia was trying that had a unique ingredient. I asked her and the bartender detailed questions about it, but never had the urge to sip it.

The tally clicker method seems to mechanically cultivate a high level of self-monitoring.  Months in and it’s still ridiculously solid, despite not clicking for beer any more. But that begs a very important question - how do you know when you’re done?

WHEN IS QUITTING COMPLETE?

Academically, it turns out that’s a contentious question. In a study on smoking cessation by the Ontario Tobacco Survey, one year was the baseline for a successful quitting process. 

27 liver transplant centers stated that 6 months of abstinence from opiates was a requirement. But the survey states that many centers were all over the map, and the line of what constituted abstinence was inconsistent and determined subjectively.

Personally, I feel daily visual mapping gives far more concrete data. As soon as the urges fail to come up regularly, it’s not a habit any more. As I’ll bring up later, that can cause some danger zones. But now at roughly 2 weeks between urges (and with urges being so light), I think I’m doing well.

A final evaluation might also be in order. Looking at pics of beer, or going to a place that triggers all my weak points - socializing, stouts, travel, etc - like a black belt test. Or perhaps an inversion of the Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI) can assess whether an action is NOT a habit.

But my notes say that there was a marked change on day 117. I stopped formal, daily recording, and also stopped carrying my tally counter around. It’s almost like my mind just said - “it’s not a big deal anymore”.

THE FUTURE OF BEER

While metrics may herald the end of this project, it’s the very human contemplation of a future with no beer that also has to be addressed.

To quote Brett Kavanaugh, “I like beer!” Just thinking of not EVER having it again was incredibly daunting. I managed it by first treating it as a 90-day challenge. This extended to a larger experiment - namely “What would it be like to completely quit?” - with the understanding that I could always add it back in should I choose.

But my attitudes have drastically changed. After the urges subsided, I began to realize that without the cravings, there wasn’t really much that I got out of it. Few beers were truly unique anymore, even my beloved porters and stouts. I’ve developed other tools to help me socialize instead of relying on it as a crutch. It left me pretty bloated. And imbibing was more because it was easy and available than anything else. 

That doesn’t mean I won’t have it again.

I tend to lean towards Epicureanism in that this project is more about living life fully. The Epicureans believed that the way to do that was through temperance and simplifying things to attain a deeper sense of pleasure. When indulging constantly, indulgence becomes commonplace. After a year of not drinking beer, the beer I try next should be exceptional, and will probably be appreciated more.

Setting protocols for such exceptions are necessary.

While some may say that means I haven’t really quit, I’d disagree. If you don’t brush your teeth one day, it doesn’t mean you’re suddenly not a tooth brusher. In fact, the SRHI describes habits as a combination of identity, time, automaticity, and consistency - it’s not any one thing that makes or breaks a habit.

Particularly rare or exceptional beers can be deliberate outliers. Unique cultural experiences - or scenarios where refusing is insulting to hosts - would also constitute a valid exception. But in my life, it’s surprising just how rare those exceptions can be. And that clarity isn’t something you can readily see amidst the forest of cravings.

DANGER ZONES

Exceptions are not the only addendum in a post-vice world. Urges, even after I had officially declared myself beer free, still come up, but they tend to be spread out at 2 weeks between urges. I’m curious if this is a pattern and if they will continue to spread out as the months march on.

Now that I’m in the midst of a “strict eating” tally clicking project, I get a lot of little blips for for beer. On the chart I can see that this started the very day I began the eating project. It’s as though all craving is somehow connected. Pressures on one side of the system cause disturbances in another - which seems to correlate with my theory of habit harmonics. Dissonance in one habit due to stress (or just establishing a new behavior) tend to effect other attempts at self change before stabilizing across the system.

What’s dangerous about all this is the risk of relapsing. After all, I’m not clicking for beer now, so I’m theoretically more easily taken unawares and unprepared. Lydia, however, thinks this is a non-issue -because what has become habitual is the self-monitoring. And she’s right -  I know when the urge is happening, and it’s really easy to spot and be mindful about them as they surge and ebb, even between long bouts without them.

—

In downtown Bryan my friends and I clink tiny sake cups and yell “kampaii!” dropping them into glasses of pale beer to gulp down. The invisible skeins of obligation, ritual, and community all subtly waft by me as I sip the sake and absentmindedly hand the pint off to someone else. Not only did I not need it, but I believe going without it enhanced my night.

I’m done with beer - and I’m as surprised as anyone else.

photo cred: sake bomb by Juan Barahona, black belt by Camera Eye Photography, monks drinking by Evgeni Zotov

Formalizing a Tally Clicking 90 Day Food Challenge

Contrary to my earlier article on attempting two habits, I’m starting tally clicking away food urges today by itself. Over the weekend Lydia and I went through the protocols and realized that it’s quite a lot to handle. So at least at the onset it’s going to be this one thing alone (though I’m going to also start a planner habit soon).

IMPLEMENTATION INTENTION

Anytime I have an urge to eat off the plan for the next 90 days, I’ll click.

At the end of the day I’ll record the total number of urges for the day.

This is to satisfy my curiosity for the question “How many clicks does it take to remove the habit of wanting to eat non-clean foods?”

MENTAL CONTRASTING

A) Positives
Success in this has all manner of positive benefits. It will help me look better, feel better, and have less loss of energy. I’ll be able to finally make concrete progress on something I’ve struggled with for over 25 years, getting me very close to mastery over a major aspect of my life. That will in turn result in loss of guilt for feeling out of shape, and the ability to finally move on to other things like improved posture, reaping the benefits of working out, improved finances, and the confidence and base strength for other far more interesting athletic endeavors: advanced body calisthenics, martial arts, social sports, hiking, rock climbing, etc.

It will also (hopefully) shift me away from nighttime activities towards becoming more of a morning person. It will help me feel less judged and self conscious, especially in terms of helping people. Often people hook on to something to criticize in the one giving them advice, and this will help bypass that. It will also help bypass the guilt I feel going to foreign countries and being judges as a fat American.

I can be an example to help other people improve their life. This will give me better standing in terms of authority to help people because most people in the self help arena immediately turn to the most visually obvious thing about a person, which is weight.

And lastly, i want to prove this technique works.

B) Obstacles
The Fear of Missing Out when it comes to unique foods or experiences, social situations, feeling pressured by friends, embarrassment through passive aggression when some people make an overly big deal of my eating preferences. I’m afraid because I’ve always failed at this and nothing has really worked. I’m worried about lack of options, of letting Lydia down when I just want to give in to random food cravings as a mood lifter for her.

B-1) There are events coming up that I will have to navigate around. A trip to Albuquerque and Dallas for a birthday and a potential trip to Cincinnati. I’m going to a gathering in my college town, a potential road trip, Valentine’s Day, and Lydia’s birthday. There are also smaller events to account for, like movie nights (no popcorn!) and dinner with parents (no dosa or naan!).

I’ve created workarounds by listing out places that have healthy options near me, as well as a list of snacks to add as must-haves in my weekly grocery habit.

WHAT IS “CLEAN”?

For the purposes of this challenge, it’s going to be “primal” eating, according to Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple. That’s no sugar, no processed carbs like pasta, bread, naan (ouch!) or pizza. No cokes, no beer, and 2 servings of alcohol a day max.

There are fuzzy edges to all of this. Primal guidelines work according to the 80/20 rule, with some foods dubbed as “ok to eat once and a while”. Since tally clicking attacks the urges to eat in the hopes of rooting them out entirely, the 80/20 rule doesn’t really apply. Therefore I wont be eating rice, beans, potatoes and no sweet potato fries when I’m out. I won’t eat gluten free versions of products from the grocery store or at restaurants (like gluten free pizza or bread) unless we make it. No rice noodles common in Asian food. no popcorn. And no hummus.

UPGRADES

The picture above is a a beautiful old tally counter I purchased made in 1910 used to count train passengers in New York. It’s not only gorgeous, but it lies flat in my pocket, and has an incredibly smooth mechanism.

I’m also using a Google Drive spreadsheet rather than a series of notes. I made some annoyingly bad bookkeeping errors doing it the old way. It really is amazing how the small administrative functions have such a huge impact on adherence.

The last thing I want to do is to get a blood workup, record measurements of my body, and take before pictures this week just for metrics.

After 90 days are up I intend on reassessing everything like I did with cutting out beer: How I feel, what’s changed, if I really am missing out on experiences, etc.

Whew! Let the challenge begin!

I Want it All: Changing Two Very Difficult Behaviors at Once

“I want it all, and I want it NOW!”

Those lyrics off Queen’s The Miracle album lit a fire under me as a kid. Back then I believed I could seize the world as long as I just had passion.

The next several decades rudely disabused me of that notion.

What I’ve learned through this project is that the path to getting it all is paved with patience. Now that tally training beer away appears to be a success – and one that occurred pretty effortlessly – I want to do more of it. The problem is I want to master two very large behaviors at once: emotions and food.

THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG

Logically, I know the best behavior to train is negative emotions. I’m an anxious, depressed, pessimist, and attempting to rid myself of negativity 5 years ago was one of the most eye-opening experiments of my life. I found that “static meditation” had little carryover to the rest of my day. So, I attempted to note, then counter, every instance of negative thought that arose, from nervousness and tension, to actual anger and massive depressive episodes. I called it “dynamic meditation”.

In the beginning, the results were phenomenal. Life became saturated with joy. I had a grin continually plastered to my face and felt I was cheating at life. I could actually feel myself changing and becoming a different person.

That lasted two weeks.

The system broke apart for the simplest reason - I simply didn’t have a mechanism in place to continue tracking it all.

Now I do.

So why an additional behavior? All my work on food and exercise just seems like a sunken cost. While Structured Randomness has significantly stepped up my eating game, there have been many leaks around the edges to compensate. Eating on weekends is unstructured, and the lack of rigor on what I snack on or indulge in with friends destroys progress. I’m putting in daily hard work, but there are no significant results. That infuriates me.

Also, I consider eating a core process like meditation or mobilizing. Eating effects mood, energy, sleep, and overall health more than anything else.

So in terms of choosing which to pick, it’s a hard decision. As with many items in what seems like a never-ending laundry list of self-improvement, I feel less that like screaming “I want it all” and more like sobbing “I needed to have done it all”.

The bigger question - is it even possible to attempt it all?

TRUST THE PROCESS

Now the case for overreaching lies in trusting this new method. Tally counting significantly offloads change from solely resting on native effort, will, and motivation. These are the factors that limited me to one change at a time. Also, as this project goes on, I want to start experimenting with methods to compress everything down. However, this is dangerous as these behaviors are also both very difficult to change. They are deeply ingrained and discharged continually throughout the day under many circumstances.

Sandbagging may be a way to have my cake and eat it too.

Lydia’s concept is based on the idea that willpower is a response based on a load. Dumping sand bags from a hot air balloon makes it shoot up because there are two opposing forces at work. If you’re working on two behaviors dropping one when the going gets tough assures the success of the other because the system was already trying to compensate for a heavier load. I would drop eating because, as Lydia argues, negativity affects every area of my life.

THE DETAILS

To do this I would need a double tally counter. I would also need to be vigilant as to how the two changes interact. I can see craving and negativity feeding off each other, potentially starting a comedic landslide of clicks on either side of the counter.

For dynamic meditation, I’m just going to use the same protocols that I used in my old attempt. The protocols for food on the other hand, are a bit trickier. Do I have cheat days? Do I include all alcohol? How do I include the holidays? What if someone invites me out? Will this be a long-term change or a challenge?

I’m betting, oddly enough, that eating will be more difficult, simply because it involves a lot of social pressure, pinpoint discipline, and preplanning (like going to the store and having healthy snacks around or knowing what restaurants have clean items on the menu).

Generally, I’m foreseeing that at some point this is going to get really, really tough. Then it’s going to get really easy as the meditation offloads the stress from eating clean. There is this notion that habits can positively reinforce each other, and I can definitely see that happening here.

PRAGMATIC PASSION

Can I do more to offload willpower? Yes, and this is really key. I can track food with pictures, or start the day with motivation or an affirmation or an implementation intention of the day. I can have my meditation responses all written out, and have a sequence of widgets like my ego-depletion protocol. I can also bypass decisions by planning for each thing that could go wrong.

Luckily at this point, I now have a lot of tools to work with.

“Here’s to the future,” Freddie Mercury croons later in the song, “to the dreams of youth.”

Over the long years with this project I’ve been incredibly cautious about grasping too much, knowing that I could very well end up with nothing. As I approach my 40th birthday (and The Miracle approaches its 30th), I realize that mental freedom and a healthy body are perhaps the greatest gifts I can give myself. And the journey to get them might also reignite the passions of my past.

photocred: Freddie by SoniaDee