A New Plan for Habit Progressions Part 2 - Assessing Tasks
So I’m going to just attempt a rough estimate to peg ½ points of automaticity based on difficulty. I’ll divide my tasks into 3 levels
Easy - Reading (Goodreads), Daily meditation, flossing
Medium - Khan Academy course, Duolingo, 750 words
Difficult - Working out, eating right, not drinking alcohol or coffee, music
Flossing is a simple task, reading is something I like and do regularly anyways, and daily meditation is itself very simple and takes very little time.
Courses tend to take more energy from me - especially if they require homework, and 750 words though is enjoyable, sometimes takes a long time depending on the day
Working out is difficult even according to Lally’s data, as is eating right over time. Alcohol and coffee are such an easy thing to indulge in here and there because it tends to be cemented with socializing.
Two things I didn’t include are social events and quantifying my finances. Socializing is hard to start off, and I think it should be left until the end, especially since it’s often difficult to eat right - so it should be done after automaticity is achieved with that. And Finances….I have no idea how difficult that will be especially since initially it would be just a matter of observing my finances, not doing anything about them. So roughly speaking, I’ll rate the actions from 1 (easiest) to 10, then roughly rate the number of days to reach automaticity, and then half it.
Flossing - 1 - 18 days - 9 day midpoint
Reading - 2 - 30 days - 15 day midpoint
Meditation - 3 - 40 days - 20 day midpoint
Finances - 3 - 40 days - 20 day midpoint
750 - 4 - 50 - 25 day midpoint
Duolingo - 5 - 66 - 33 day midpoint
Khan Academy - 5 - 66 - 33 day midpoint
Music - 7 - 100 - 50 day midpoint
Not drinking coffee/alcohol - 10 - 250 - 125 day midpoint
Working out - 10 - 250 - 125 day midpoint
Eating Right - 10 - 250 - 125 day midpoint
Socializing - ?
I’ll have to take into account that these numbers may change as I evaluate them with the automaticity index.