The Quarter Way Blues

Over the last few days I’ve experienced a drain of energy. 4 days ago I wrote my 750 words, but didn’t do my kettle bell/stretch routine. And the last three days it’s felt like I needed to expend more effort to do my exercises.

There are many explanations for this. I’m approaching the end of a year of intense travel and I’m about to go home - every time I’ve approached this time in the past I’ve felt my discipline go way down. I’ve also been extending my workouts so they are more draining - I’ve been incorporating a back bend progression and bodyweight exercises like squat thrusts, mountain climbers, and crab toe touches (I’ll describe these some more in another post) in order to have them primed for times I can’t bring my kettle bells.

But it is interesting that this dip in will is happening on day 50, roughly a quarter of the way through my projected habituation cycle for exercising.  And it’s not just will - it’s also my mood, with more frequent bouts of sadness, depression, and frustration.

And if I recall other times when I’ve attempted 90 day transformations I had the same set of emotions - it’s understandable that this would happen after the beginning where everything is new and spirits are up, and after the time when you see a lot of improvement. You’re left just chugging along with no hope, and you start wondering why you’re even doing it. 

This is actually a great thing because it confirms, at least emotionally, my theory that ¼ of the way into a habit is the hardest part. It’s where I should start using gamification to counter this low point.

Is this confirmed by the SRHI index? I’m not sure. I took it a week ago, and 750 words = 74 while exercising = 43. These stayed roughly the same when I took it today (750=73, exercising = 43). Looking at the exercising habit, I was quite surprised - I would’ve sworn that it would be lower - I don’t know if this signifies that this period is a plateau, or if this is just a regular progression. It does signify that I need to make more regular records of my SHRI score. I believe Lally stated in some interview that her problem in her habit formation experiment was that participants weren’t recording their SRHI regularly - perhaps I need to make self reporting a habit in itself!

Since Last Time....750 Words Status Update

 

In my post, A New Plan For Habit Formation Part 3 - A New Hope, I outlined, well, a new plan. I scrapped the old way of doing things and focused specifically on one habit until I reached my estimate for it becoming easier - the halfway point. 

My halfway point for 750 words was 25 days (50 for full automaticity). 

Turns out, in this case, I was spot on. About day 30, I felt a flow to the habituation, supported by two things: A daily progressional flowchart using the ideas in the Self-Discipline in 10 Days book, and the notion of “bookending” - having a daily set of things you do in the morning after getting up and at night before going to bed.

In this case, I used the solid event of getting up and made myself do 750 words right after. By doing this I attached it to a daily event, something I wasn’t doing before. Before I would tell myself to do the task whenever, as long as it got done - and that often resulted in not doing it.

On day 50 I achieved an SRHI Score (a self reported score measuring habitation - I’ll do another post going into this in more detail) of 73 (out of 84) and for me that felt like that habituation was achieved.  

Today is day 71 of 750 words. Despite going on a trip to northern Argentina with long travel days and a few days in the jungle, I’ve been on a 48 day streak, and it feels incredibly solid. This is a huge win, especially looking back at my track record and feeling like I was all over the place.

A New Plan for Habit Progressions Part 1

So in light of feeling the brunt of all these attempts at habit formation, I’ve stepped back and tried to look at a better plan based on all the stuff I’ve been reading.

So here’s my theoretical framework: If self discipline is one deplete-able resource, and if automaticity is when an action approaches an asymptote of 0 willpower, then the best way is to have a slowly unfolding progression of new actions taking over as the first action slides towards that asymptote.

For example, if drinking a glass of water before breakfast takes 18 days to form into a habit, then I’d want to start another habit at some point past the mid point where the slide to full automaticity is underway.

I’m assuming, perhaps erroneously, that tasks take a certain amount of willpower on day 1, and start getting harder as the “streak” of sustaining the habit continues as days go by. This certainly is true for my own personal attempts. Going to the gym is easy on day 1 or 2, but it gets more and more difficult to continue the streak of days (obviously there are some random days where it’s more or less difficult).

Given the above, and given that different tasks take different amounts of times to reach automaticity, then it makes sense to start Habit 1 until the midpoint of automaticity, then start Habit 2 until it reaches ITS UNIQUE midpoint, etc. This way the process of automaticity itself shoulders the brunt of sustained will - rather than how I’ve been doing it now - which is simply adding tasks 1 week later regardless of their difficulty or willpower expenditure.

So now the question is, how do you establish midpoints? I do not want to test each task, so what I’ll do is ball park it using Lally’s experiment - I’m assuming that tasks that take the least willpower will take the quickest to form into habits and the ones that take more will take longer.

So with Lally’s data, I can estimate that easier tasks will take 18 days, middle of the range will take 66 days, and the most difficult will take 250 days - I’ll divide each to peg the midpoint, and estimate the variations between tasks that I’ve already labeled as Easy, Medium, and Difficult.

Too Many Attempts at Habit Formation

In the last week or so since getting back my self discipline has been all over the board. I’ll be able to do 2-3 tasks, but I won’t be able to accomplish the full 4 and the additional “test” task I had of eating well.

One of two things is happening - either not hit my groove again from my vacation, OR I’ve hit my limit of willpower to accomplish those tasks.

If we say it’s the second one, it makes sense. Instead of waiting for a requisite amount of time to create a habit, THEN adding another task, I’ve just been adding another task every week, which doesn’t at all fit into the research I’ve been reading about willpower and habit formation.

Since I’ve come back from my vacation, I’ve been generally keeping up with 750 words and meditation, but things like Duolingo & Habit RPG have been falling through the cracks, with my test skill, eating right using Epic Win being hit or miss as well.

This is a good thing in that my actual actions seem to mimic the research I’m reading. It’s a bad thing because I’m going to have to re-do my overall plan for this project. Oh well. A part of all of this is knowing that I’m not going to hit the mark the first time - it’s about learning and adapting.