The Science of Self-Help

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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!