2022 Year in Review

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

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

HABITS

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

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

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

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

• Started a walking habit.

PERSONAL RECORDS, CHALLENGES, & NEW HIGHS

• Several breakthroughs in meditation.

THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE

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

• Started coaching clients in meditation and habits/productivity.

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

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

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

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

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

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

• Lots of depression.

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

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

MISCELLANEOUS & APPLICATION

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

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

HOPES AND PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR

• Hope to nail down the Star Engine.

• Intend to do more coaching.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year.

2021 Year in Review

Another incredibly difficult pandemic year filled with a ton of frustration and set backs. But looking back I also ended up doing quite a bit.

HABITS

• Became a morning person by formalizing two habits: a morning routine and a bedtime ritual

• Started using a sitting desk thanks to the work of Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark believes this is a much better alternative to standing desks as it forces you to move through a series of “ancestral sitting postures” that might be a useful alternative to mobilizing, especially when it comes to hip opening.

PERSONAL RECORDS, CHALLENGES, & NEW HIGHS

• Completed a major 5 month mental experiment where I tally clicked every single negative micro moment of my mind. I’m still mulling over the data.

• Completed a massive, progressive 8 month food testing experiment. Despite high levels of adherence, my body fat seems highly resistant - my hope was to see if there was a specific version of primal eating that worked. This involved cycling months of vegetarianism, no dairy, fasting (One Meal a Day), portion control, and strict keto.

• Completed a 40 hour fast using tally clicking to offload the urges.

• Used tally clicking as a targeted therapy tool for specific, short events like weekends and trips I knew were going to be stressful. Tally clicking seems to have a lot of uses.

THEORIES & EXPERIMENTS

• Updated the anatomy of a habit, building off the habit loops of Charles Duhigg and James Clear.

• Created a Habit Equation by combining 3 habit graphs and plotting a line of best fit

• Used a Jamar hand dynamometer for productivity and focus across the day.

• Conducted another habit in a day experiment involving sleep - hopefully I’ll get around to writing that up. Essentially, sleep is vital to learning, and it’s been theorized that napping after learning something can boost the rate it gets consolidated into long term memories. My theory was that it might be used to shortcut the identity and length of perceived time aspects of the SRHI to create a faster habit.

• Graphed the progress of granular concentration in samatha meditation. I don’t think this has been done before, and I think it marks a breakthrough method to quantify the progress of meditation.

PLANNING

• Continued experimenting on the ultimate planning method - found and read David Kadavy’s book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. Kadavy seems to be the only other person talking about incorporating mental states into planning.

• Updated the Eisenhower Matrix and created the Planning Cube to better incorporate behavioral states into planning.

• Theorized a better method to train meditation by using running periodization

PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE

• Appeared on several podcasts

• Started coaching people

• Started a small Pinterest page

• Attended my first in person Stoic meeting since the pandemic started

• Reached almost 10 k followers on Instagram

• Coursera referenced me on an article on motivation

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

• Started a weight lifting habit but….tweaked my shoulder and my knee

• Got fed up with finding an optimal eating pattern and gained 20 pounds

• Got super burned out

• Had almost all my habits die out from a lot of travel

MISCELLANEOUS & APPLICATIONS

• Dabbled in tantric yoga - specifically dream and Tummo

• Experimented with tantric drawing, inspired by work on aphantasia and creativity

• Came up with a new form of “resilience mediation” 

• Came up with a meditation training method to counter social awkwardness

• Continued experimenting with a method to fall in love with an action

• Did another Finder’s Course - got into some really interesting states with meditations I never got anywhere with before

• Published a checklist on the science of falling asleep more efficiently

TRAVEL

• Visited San Antonio, Florida, Albuquerque, Texas Hill Country, Seattle, and San Francisco

• Wrote a book on Houston with Lydia (Oldest Houston, Reedy Press), out in May

It’s unfortunate ending the year with so many low points, especially with respect to my habits. But that just means there’s more to learn and work on.

2020 Year in Review

2020 was a crazy year. As for many, it included a lot of setbacks, but also a lot of forced growth 

HABITS

This year I made some of my most efficiently formed habits yet. I tested out methods to form a habit in a day - which ultimately failed, but I learned a lot about the process and hastened it significantly. From that came a potential habit equation, something I’ve long theorized on, but never had the technical or mathematical ability to uncover.

I also tested a novel method - what I call “habit splicing”-  to smoothly connect two habits together in order to cross train the larger behavior.

THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS

Habit splicing was brought on by a new meta model that goes beyond habits into “lifestyles” - a sequence of habits in a row used to bypass skill plateaus and the lag time needed to efficiently form a habit.

I tested methods to extend Cal Newport’s theories of “Deep Work” - stretching out my focused concentration by manipulating larger variables like energy. This got me into some really interesting research on how to work on both sides of the concentration and willpower divide, exploring activities that are actually BOOSTED when willpower is low.

I also successfully mapped out a bad day, using a number of techniques to replenish willpower, even when I had nothing left in the tank. I measured this using a hand grip dynamometer, a device some old studies used, which matched quite well with my subjective feelings of self control. This opens the door of further direct testing on willpower and how it would play into a larger potential self help equation.

I sketched out the problems of “lazy” polymathy - learning multiple skills in tandem - and the behavioral techniques it would theoretically rest upon. I completed a 90 day tally clicking challenge on anxiety, which worked spectacularly well. It is, as far as I can tell, the first graphed out map of mindset and how to scientifically and accurately change it. 

This - and a chance video posted on the Houston Stoic group - gave me the idea of fusing behavioral science with Stoicism in order to better achieve emotional mastery and deal with all my mental health issues in one fell swoop. I started that project about a month ago, and it seems to be progressing well.

MISCELLANEOUS/APPLICATIONS

I came up with a number of new techniques during 2020. These include a new resiliency meditation that borrows from vipassana and loving-kindness practices. I also used a dating reality show to practice “Awkwardness Meditation”. I tested out micro meditations of 1 -2 minutes, made gratitude PowerPoints,  and used an electronic tally counter for a mechanical, external form of mindfulness that I believe is a fantastic entry into the practice - and worked especially well when I was feeling overwhelmed.

I took part in an incredible, full on Vedic ritual with my parents to imbue my tally counter. I started other rituals like “shitty art nights” and resurrected my weekend menus.

I got several other counters (finger and a necklace) to accommodate the large amounts of clicks from my resiliency training project. I bought an HRV monitor to try to track meditative states. I got an assault bike for HIITS, Timular (a physical device to track multiple broken up projects), a rower, and a trampoline to test “rebounding”.

LEARNING

I also grew my personal library of antiquarian self help books (most from a hundred years ago). They are fascinating in their many good AND bad ideas. I learned more about other ancient forms of self help - tantra, Western occult, Theosophy, New Thought, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Ralstonism. Looking to the future, I researched Artificial Intelligence theories and their take on advanced nonlinear planning. I found out about Applied Behavioral Analysis and their methods on training autistic children, an approach remarkably similar to my own. And I finally figured out how to use my local library system to get full access to science journals. In the past I had two jobs where I had to build databases of journal articles for very niche topics. I never thought it would come in handy, but I’ve already begun doing the same with this project.

I started bouldering at my climbing gym before it closed, took up whittling, learned to design on Canva, took classes on site traffic, website SEO, and Instagram.

Most importantly, I finished a very intense course on meditation - the Finder’s Course - rigorously trying over 30 different types of meditation, many of which I had never heard of before. This lead to some very advanced practices and experiences.

ATTEMPTED AND FAILED

It wasn’t all good. I had spectacular setbacks in publication. I pitched almost a 100 different magazines. And while I’m glad I had positive feedback and “almosts” with some high end ones - The Washington Post, the BBC, Yoga Journal, Scientific American, and The New Yorker - it all went horribly wrong. In some cases, I had commissioned articles pulled after working a great deal on them.

TRAVEL

I got accepted for a press trip to go on a UNESCO pilgrimage in Japan where I would stay at traditional inns, eat super local food, hang out with a Yamabushi monk, and forge a knife with a Kyoto sword maker. I got accepted to write it all up for Travel and Leisure, a magazine that has long eluded me.

That, of course, was all cancelled due to the pandemic. I did however learn how to travel in different ways. I went on a trip to the Texas hill country and did a lot of local exploration, visiting old towns, old shops and antique stores in the many villages and neighborhoods in and around Houston 

I reconnected with a lot of old friends - taking part in and organizing group zoom calls, boardgame nights, movie nights, socially distanced picnics, book clubs and long phone calls. 

I walked in parks a lot.

PUTTING MYSELF OUT THERE

Zoom made conferences easier. I checked out the Embodiment Conference, and ones put on by Adobe, Issuu, and Later. I applied to be a speaker at StoicCon (and didn’t make it). I applied for a Gotham Fellowship and entered a flash fiction writing contest (also a no from them). I participated a lot in a Facebook writer’s group and started answering questions on Reddit on my project. 

My failures in publishing forced me to to focus on my own brand. I used a lot of methods from my classes to boost traffic to my site, increasing visits by 214% from last year. And I grew a completely new instagram account from nothing to over 6K followers. Most recently I collaborated with a friend on an Instagram Live discussion on habits - my first foray into video.

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2020 didn’t go the way I had planned. But I learned a whole hell of a lot along the way. I hope you did too. Happy New Year!

2019 Year in Review

The last year was more about honing and applying a lot of the this project’s productivity framework as outlined in my old post, The Elements of Change: A Grand Unified Theory of Self-Help. Here are some of the highlights:

Habits
-Created a Planning Superhabit

Personal Records, Challenges, and New Highs
-Successfully completed a 90 days of clean eating challenge
-Completed a 90 day no alcohol challenge
-Started a 90 days of tally clicking cynicism challenge which I’m in the midst of (second month). 
-Finished rewriting my proposal (my third)
-Went to Disneyland and meditated on every ride I went on (and I tried to go on them all)
-Applied for a grant
-Hit day 2000 of recording in this project
-Hit 2000 days of meditation 
-Hit 1000 days of mobilizing 

Publishing
-Published an article on horror and meditation for Tricycle
-Got articles commissioned in 3 top tier outlets (my first) - to be published in the next year
-Worked on consistently pitching and following up on top tier U.S. outlets
-Collected, printed out, and pinned all of my rejections in an attempt to shoot for 100 rejections

Theories and Experiments
-My crown jewel this year was uncovering A Better Way to Write, a system that applies all of this behavioral science to writing, joining elements from the process theory of composition, the elements of change, advertising agents, the Poynter Institute, books, articles, courses, and a decade of writer’s block. It has utterly changed the way I write and is a true game changer.
-Theorized about intentional imperfection and planned mediocrity in long-term goal setting
-I started experimenting with overcoming the task switching cost through watching short videos
-Tested out a rudimentary ego depletion recuperation test

Learning
-Went on two long seminars/retreats with a Tibetan meditation group - one on Chöd and the other on the Bardo
-Attempted the faster EFT meditation
-Started going to a rock climbing gym

Attempted and Failed
-Attempted to dip my toe into Strong Lifts - but failed to continue. It’s something I want to get into this next year
-A lot of my semi-permanent vice removal strategies fell a part, though only after a lot of tangent issues - sickness, travel, holidays, etc.
-Started experimenting with fasting
-Fell of the wagon with exercise and mobilizing recently during the holiday season, mostly because I hit a massive plateau with weight loss.

Travel
-Traveled to Grand Rapids, Austin, Dallas, and College Station
-Went on a road trip to West Texas and then on up to New Mexico
-Went on a massive road trip and camped for the first time and visited 4 national parks – Grand Tetons, Redwoods, Yellowstone, Crater Lake

Miscellaneous/Application
-Got a beautiful 110 year old tally clicker
-Had the best 40th birthday anyone could have
-I got a glimpse of what true control looks like on a trip to College Station while continuing along my no beer and clean eating challenge. Despite mourning a friend and having an intense series of social interactions, I ate clean, drank very little (and no beer) while every emotional trigger discharged. With proper structures of behavioral buttressing in place, remarkable amounts of control are possible, even by someone (like myself) with very little natural self control
-Used my planning habit to completely plan 3 trips (a first for me)
-Used planning to almost finished a second proposal while working on outputting my first 
-Experimented wth hacking culture to create my own tantric Christmas ceremony
-Started compacting my routine - meditation between writing sets, writing while at the rock climbing gym
-Used mobilizing, using Lydia’s mobilization glove, to heal a hand tendon injury
-Took several blood tests to track marked Improvement from eating and drinking challenges

Putting Myself Out There
-Fielded some good questions on starting meditation 
-I got two people on my tally clicking bandwagon, and another guy from Australia apparently heard about it from a friend and got a tally counter.
-Helped Lydia through a flawless 90 day eating challenge - she said that for her and her issues with food, it was almost easy
-I’ve started to become a more positive person to the people around me, specifically my family and Lydia
-Attended my first writer’s conference, which was eye opening
-Joined meetings in Houston - Stoics, Tibetan meditation, the Theosophical Society, The Houston Occult Society, a maker’s space, and the Oddfellows, among others.
-Joined online groups on writing, and fielded questions on the writing process
-Started my email newsletter

This has all been really great. The training of the mind especially heralds a lot of fundamental changes that I hope come to fruition in 2020.

In the next year I’d also like to focus on:
-Tally clicking more emotional issues like reinforcing optimism and countering depression and jealousy
-Making my routine more efficient and compact
-Creating a balance between hedonism and asceticism with respects to vice removal
-Advancing meditation even further by applying more behavioral science to the practice
-Sending out another book proposal and working on another one
-Figuring out a smooth cadence with writing and pitching to continuously have writing magazine work
-Dip my toes back into travel writing
-Dip my toes back into travel, but in a more meaningful, project and subject oriented way
-Building a robust and consistent social media campaign
-Attempting to figure out how to behaviorally “love what you do” - something I think is pretty common advice, but hasn’t really been concretely explored in productivity

photocred: fireworks by Kumar Appaiah

2018 Year in Review

This last year has contained a huge change - moving back to the States after a decade abroad. It’s been really light on travel and publishing, but incredibly heavy on new techniques and theories which have already had a gigantic impact on this entire project. Here are the highlights:

Habits
-Formalized a flossing habit
-Added Olympic weight lifting to my exercise habit
-Experimented with habit removal by successfully removing drinking beer

Personal Records and New Highs
-Completed a 90 Day No-Beer Challenge
-started and successfully ushered a flossing habit from tiny habits all the way to a habit terminus, a habit that is totally complete
-With easy access to group meetings in the States I had my first social discharge of a habit by joining in on a group meditation.
-Took meditation to a new high by meditating throughout the entirety of a horror series (The Haunting of Hill House) and thoroughly enjoyed it despite hating horror because of the fear involved
-Solved a decades old issue - shin splints - with the help of Kelly Starrett’s mobilizations. Running is something I’ve always wanted to do, yet I’ve always stopped because of some kind of foot pain. No more!
-Passed 4 years of meditating, writing, and recording.
-Passed 3 years of consistent exercise
-Went from 35 lb dumbbell clean and presses to 55 lbs in 11 weeks (missing 3 sessions)

Publishing
-Finally completed my book proposal and query letter and started pitching it to agents.
-Changed my book idea, and started working on a second proposal

Theories and Experiments
-Created a fully 3 dimensional moveable model of a full habit, something I don’t believe has ever been done before.
-Created a grand unified theory of behavioral change and self help
-Mapped the terrain of quitting
-Created a full model of the process of writing

New Techniques
-Created a Deep Work Protocol based on Cal Newport’s work
-Created and tested Structured Randomness, applying it to meal planning
-Created the ultimate guide to writing
-Figured out how to efficiently overcome the problem of limited natural progress, applying it to meditation and working out.
-Learned to gain entry into jhana through anger and anxiety
-Learned how to use noting the self to get to 4th jhana
-Threaded different types of meditations together to reach deeper states
-Experimented with and got to within a hair’s breadth of mastering sleep.

Learning
-Started reading Daniel Ingrams highly expanded second edition of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
-Learned about and practiced Mindful Scrolling, a new meditation technique
-Started reading James' Clear’s book, Atomic Habits

Attempts and Failures
-Ended a social media habit that had already gotten to super habit status
-Attempted GMB fitness
-Attempted a 30 day strict paleo challenge

Travel & New Experiences
-Traveled to Valencia
-Visited Italy (Bologna and Florence). Saw the original instruments of the old scientists as they tried to experiment and quantify temperature, gravity, and electricity, which was really exciting giving it’s exactly what I’m trying to do for self development.
-Traveled to Houston and Albuquerque
-Moved back to the States, and successfully moved into central Houston
-Hosted 5 people
-Stuck with a ban on travel, passing up trips to Greenland, Nunavut, Grenada, Barbados, and Portland
-Tried 3 different meditation groups - the Chinese Jade Dragon Temple, the local Zen center, and an insight meditation group
-Went to a writer’s group meeting
-Started pitching top tier outlets like the NYT

The techniques section has some amazing stuff. I have huge plans for the next year simply because I now finally have the methods to accomplish them. I want to:

-Quit drinking
-Remove negative self talk and totally transform my base mental code
-Master eating
-Master pitching
-Get published like a madman

That might seem like a lot, but as one wise 3 year old would say, It’s just 5 things…

Happy New Year!

2017 (ish) Year in Review

I’ve been a little behind with this post. This has been the most turbulent year I’ve ever had, with immense amounts of travel, and a lot of setbacks. Nevertheless, the tests and experiments have yielded pure gold, techniques I can see myself using for the rest of my life. I'm including a few months of 2018 here (up until now) so i'm cheating a bit - but here are the highlights:

Habits
-Created a once-a-week habit and mapped it out using the SRHI
-Pushed meditation by successfully cross training it, adding gratitude, tantra, and metta training
-Created a social media habit

Personal Records
-Passed 4 years of daily recording
-Passed 1,000 days of daily writing
-Got back to my habits in record time (1 day off) after travel
-Improved the functional skill of my mental state through meditation

Publishing
-Wrote an article in Tricycle Magazine on behavioral change and meditation. This was subsequently shared by JSTOR, and listed as Tricycle's top list of articles in 2017
-Wrote quality Quora answers that garnered hundreds of views
-Connected with one of my favorite travel writers, one of my favorite meditation instructors, and got an offer to submit to Quartz
-Moved my website over to a new site

Theories and Experiments
-Experimented with Personal Kanban and used Trello to improve my workflow
-Had a breakthrough with the editing process of writing
-Experimented and succeeded with a new method of removing a negative habit using a tally clicker
-Conducted a sleep experiment using my own sleep scale
-Found a willpower scale
-Conducted another travel sandbagging experiment
-Progressively analyzed, read, and experimented with countering moments of ego-depletion and procrastination, and then came up with a protocol that seems to have cured me of these issues even with regards to difficult tasks.
-Used Cal Newport's concept of "deep work" to come up with a deep work protocol that works like a dream.

Learning
-Read: Cal Newport's Deep Work and So Good They Can't Ignore You
-The Weekend Effect by Katrina Onstad
-Peak Performance by Stulberg and Magness
-Personal Kanban by Barry and Benson
-Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss
-Lots of guides on the Getting Things Done method
-A lot of details regarding cross training meditation, specifically Dr. Jeffery Martin's Finder's Course
-Culadasa's The Mind Illuminated 
-Started a Udemy course on the writing process
-Completed a Gotham Writer's course on querying agents for book publication and wrote and revised my own query letter

Attempts and Failures
-Phased out a Pantry Check and Food Recording Habit
-Attempted and failed to complete a 14-day mobility overhaul
-Attempted and failed to complete a Whole Life Challenge
-Attempted a 30 minute research and blogging session at the end of my writing to push the habit
-Attempted a skill push with planning meals
-Paused my social media habit

Travel
-Road trip through Southern France (Toulouse, Narbonnes, Nimes, Albi)
-Road trip through the Costa Brava
-Visited the Catalan town of Vic
-Visited Valencia
-Camped through the entirety of Iceland
-Visited Italy (Bologna and Florence)
-Attended my 20 year high school reunion
-Hosted 6 friends
-Attended a conference in Chicago
-Traveled through Hawaii (Honolulu, Kailua Kona, Hilo, Kawaii)
-Visited South Carolina
-Visited the States (Albuquerque and Houston) two or three times

I really thought I didn't do much this year, but looking back it really amazes me that I was able to do this much while traveling an incredible amount and being sick a record number of times (I think I got sick 4 or 5 times). Lydia and I also decided to move back to the States during this time, and went through the process of selling our stuff and moving everything (a bigger post on that later). 

Seeing what I've done despite massive interruptions makes me feel secure in the process I've developed - there is no way I could've stayed the course before. I'm also really eager to see what a year of stability would result in. Here's to 2018!

2016 Year in Review

This has been my best year yet. I’ve experimented with a lot of theory, worked on expanding my habit base, completed a number of challenges successfully, all while traveling quite a bit and adjusting to life in Spain. I’d say the spheres I made huge strides in this past year include Habits, Challenges & Personal Records, and Theory.

Habits
-Demolished my badly formed eating habit and reformed it as a family of small behaviors
-Did the same to my “early wakeup” habit
-Made a superhabit of rowing
-Superhabit of food recording
-Superhabit of pantry checks
-Made a habit of Meal Prep Sunday, my first weekly habit
-Made a superhabit of mobilization
-Superhabit of drinking a morning glass of water
-Superhabit of recording eating
-Superhabit of recording eating
-Started a habit of setting a wakeup alarm, which may of just unlocked becoming a morning person
-Significantly progressed in meditation
-Successfully began implementing multiple habits at once

Challenges & Personal Records
-Completed multiple 8 week HIIT progressions of rowing - like it was nothing
-Completed a 30 day no alcohol challenge
-Completed multiple full courses online - the first courses I’ve completed in over a decade. This stretched my writing habit in all sorts of incredibly uncomfortable new ways
-Completed a 5 day National Novel Writing Month - 50,000 words in 5 days
-Reached over a thousand days in both daily recording and meditation
-Completed and submitted a formal book proposal for this project
-Worked on intensity of habits while traveling, including continuing a HIIT progression while on a conference in Aruba and meditating on camel back on a trip to the Sahara Desert. 

Theory
-Expanded on my theory of Delayed Onset Willpower Drain
-Formed an Identity Model of Habits, which seems to work better for pesky families of habits
-Experimented with Sandbagging in travel
-Reincorporated Challenges as a part of skill pushes rather than as a start to entering into a new habit
-Really delved into how to deal with skill pushes, the final major vector in my model of long term behavioral change
-Discovered mobilization, which I would include as an incredibly foundational behavior base along with meditation.
-Delved into Syncing with significant others, an aspect of vital importance most behavior change people don’t talk about
-Successfully worked on theories behind getting rid of habits

MOST IMPORTANT I have been successful with affecting others. Lydia is a year into a flossing habit. And my mother, is a full 30 days into a recording habit. She has completed this utterly effortlessly, despite, according to her, having so many troubles over the years of choosing to create a habit and sticking to it. I am most excited for her in the coming year. 

For so many, the New Year is a chance to change, but change in the old model is to flex some part of you inside and, statistically, to be found wanting in failure. This new model is about effortless change, where the structure of the implementation and progression bears the onus of success of failure. When my mom talks about how easy it was to get to 30 days, that is everything, and the greatest accomplishment of all for me in 2016.

YEAR ONE IN REVIEW

I just want to take some time to look back at how much I’ve accomplished in this first FULL YEAR of recording. Sure I had this blog a year before, but this is the first consistent year of recording and habit acquisition. Here’s what I’ve accomplished:

1. I have NEVER deliberately followed through on any daily discipline. I might have fallen into some things, but not by conscious choice. And as I mentioned in a previous post - I’ve been obsessing over habits since I was in middle school.

2. Meditation: I can regularly meditate myself out of bad moods.

3. I can do a bridge - and now a wall walk down and walk up bridge! I can do typewriter pushups. I can do bulgarian split squats. I’ve started on the dragon flag.

4. I have lost about 7 notches on my belt since the beginning of daily recording

5. I have maintained focus on daily recording despite moving to Brazil and Spain, and traveling to South Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, England, Paris, Germany, and all over Brazil for the World Cup. I’ve more recently went on two long road trips throughout Texas and to Oregon and visited the Dominican Republic. I’ve also done a couple of smaller road trips to Dallas and to Santa Fe. I might’ve missed recording at times when sick or traveling, but I always always got back on the horse.

6. I have written a book on meditation for my mother that is helping her. I’ve also done some coaching for friends needing to stick to things.

7. I wrote that book in 1 week, sometimes writing 13,000 words per day to finish National Novel Writing Month.

8. My grit scale has improved. When I originally took the scale, I was pretty average, scoring a 3.5 out of 5. Later I took it again at Day 103 and improved, scoring a 3.83. Today I took it and scored a 4.5!

9. I attempted many things unsuccessfully (and I think that’s great). I attempted a Walking Habit, ALMOST took BJ Fogg’s class on TinyHabits, and started a Coursera course on statistics and experimentation (but didn’t complete it!).

10. I tinkered with a bunch of stuff. I figured out how to make charts of my data, theorized on habit singularities, sandbagging, superhabits, endurance depletion, quarter mark danger zones, SRHI hacking and possible additions to the SRHI, employed BJ Fogg’s TinyHabits, created a travel protocol, moduling, plateau busting, different classifications of habits, and successfully completed a one month no bread challenge.

11. Learned about “crispiness”, the Zeigarnik Effect, and exchanged a few emails with habit researchers.

That’s a lot. And I fully intend to take this further. I want an equation for this - I want to start extracting useful bits for all the data I’ve collected.. I want to hone all these elements on what works and what doesn’t. And I want more habits!

But the next thing I’ll really be working on is a new blog - one that’s clearer, with a space for basic recording, as well as a place for important points. I think this has the potential to help a lot of people, and I want a blog that is more conducive to sharing it.

Cannot wait to start in on the new year!