A Note on Scaling

I’ve been thinking a lot on what I want my writing habit to look like, and I feel my final picture is one that will have cross over to most other habits.

Habit formation is the focus of this project, but it’s not the entire end game. Mastery of skills is. And so scaleability of tasks and pushing for constant improvement to bust out of plateaus is key.

When I think of my writing habit, it starts with fear. I’m afraid to just write due to various reasons. So step 1 is simply overcoming that initial fear response. Train and train until the response is action to the task rather than putting it off.  To do this I implement a small habit. Small sized habits - like doing 2 pushups or writing 50 words - make it ludicrous to NOT start or do the task in a day.

Step 2 is making it so that the task - writing in this case - isn’t just something I have to do in a day. It’s like breathing. It’s like brushing my teeth. It’s a part of my daily routine. And an advanced version of this - the superhabit - means that it would take more effort to not do it than to do it.

This is all well and good, but this can, for some tasks, land you squarely in a cycle of churning mud in place. Do 50 words, but they can be crappy words. You need to push past, and this can be done in various ways. For bodyweight exercises its doing more. I went from two burpees to 24. And this is step 3 - extending the habit. I did this with burpees by simply recording them. By recording, I was forced to distance myself and look at what I was doing. Naturally you want to slowly do more.

In writing I’m doing this naturally. And I’ve started to emphasize this by recording how many words I do. And I will continue to do this, and it’s a great thing right now. But very soon I will need more than just quantity. I’ll need quality.

So enter step 4. With working out it’s following a version of a scaled strength plan. So instead of just adding to the number of pushups I can do I mix it up. I do back bends and abs. I do more and more difficult exercises. And this is exactly what I will need for writing.

I envision a plan where I have one day where I work on transitions. One day where I work on pitches, and one day where I work on specific chinks in my writing armor. Maybe for one month I work on one thing, and then I move on. Maybe I take a class. I don’t know.

What I do know is that it has to be targeted.  It can’t be just taking a general easy class, because then complacency rises up - it’s easy to write 50 crap words, but improvement doesn’t come through anything but uncomfort.

I’ve tried a version of this with eating - I challenged myself to not eat bread for a month. Could I do more? Yes. What about other habits? Could I improve in recording? Absolutely - I can memorize the SRHI and take it in my head. Meditation? Sure.

The picture I have in my mind is being tossed into a module. I might have craziness happening in my life as a whole, but at X time I’m tossed into a totally dark room with nothing but the next preplanned module that forces me to grow. The room is completely unaffected by the outside world or other adjoining rooms. And the training, for the set duration of time, is perfect for my abilities at the time - not too easy, not too hard, but just right to force me to grow. Then I’m tossed back out into the real world and can totally forget that room. That, to me, is my mental image of proper training and regimentation.

Stephen Guise and Mini Habits

I just checked my email and found a Quora question that seemed remarkably close to my project. The question was:

I am ambitious, talented and intelligent, but I lack willpower, discipline, and organization. I am an impulsive procrastinator of the highest order. What can I do to improve?

I was just cracking my knuckles in preparation to respond when I read the top-rated response by Stephen Guise. He basically said that habit formation (rather than motivation) is the real solution! Yes!

He also went on to talk about small habits to lower the willpower threshold and promote long -term consistency. And one of his habits is writing 50 words!

His book is Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results, and I’ll be checking it out.

Writing, Tinyhabits, and Scaleability

The last few days my emotions have been all over the place. I’ve had loss of clarity, loss of focus, and today I have yet to do my new writing habit.

This all makes sense - I predicted that my emotions would be unstable during this induction phase of a new habit. But what I’m beginning to think is that I haven’t quite set up my new habit well.

The whole point of making a habit tiny is to lower the threshold for fear and paralysis. Such a habit should be ludicrously tiny. When I started burpees I did 2 burpees - an easy amount. I never had a point where I said - wow I don’t want to do the work today - it was only 2!

Although 200 words seems like it’s very small, it’s obviously not so in my mind. A habit should be tiny enough to completely negate the initial static mindset I have that prevents me from even opening up my word processing software.

When this happens, the basic most simplistic action becomes ingrained as a habit. And then, like BJ Fogg says, it will grow.

So I’m dropping my daily word count from 200 words to a measly 50.

I agree with BJ Fogg that such a habit will NATURALLY grow. But I believe at some point you hit a plateau. At some point you don’t have to work and you have to force it. And that’s where scalability comes in.

I do meditation every day, but I don’t push it. Bodyweight exercises grew from a tiny habit, and then seamlessly merged into plank progressions, and that will merge into general bodyweight progressions, the later 2 examples of scaling.

I want my 50 words to do this. I want it to naturally grow to 500, then 800, and then scale it so I do a rough draft of an article, then a fully edited article. I think this way of viewing the lifecycle of practicing a skill encompasses not only habit formation but its eventual mastery.

The Next Habit: Writing

Today 3 of my 4 habits reached “Superhabit” status at 80 and above on the SRHI. They feel pretty effortless, especially after getting used to my new unrecorded habit in the last two weeks of starting new duties at work. Two weeks ago I felt endurance depleted, but now I feel very solid, and it has been reflected in my scores.

I think it’s time to attempt a new habit. I thought about a simple habit like flossing, or going back to dynamic meditation. In the book Do the Work Steven Pressfield talks about fear and procrastination pointing to what you should do next. For me, that’s writing - I tend to avoid it like the plague.

My first attempt with this habit was with 750words.com over a year ago! According to my records, it was my longest running recorded habit at 175 days - though I had severe problems with consistency. I officially scrapped it at the end of Feb 2014.

In this new iteration I need to combine all the things I’ve learned so far. I need a solid implementation intention - an if-then of a trigger and the action. This will merge with the idea of “bookending” - doing something as a chain when I get up in the morning. And I need to include BJ Fogg’s notion of a TinyHabit. It also has to be scaleable - I should be able to naturally evolve and add to it.

My bodyweight training is, to date, the most efficient habit I’ve formed - a quick, steady rise to habituation with no real “danger zones." 

So, with all that in mind, my habit will be to write potentially publishable material every day. 750 words isn’t "tiny” so I’ll be writing 200 words a day. And these bits of writing cannot be diaries or meandering thoughts - they have to be something I could actually form into full pieces.

I currently wake up and meditate, then do bodyweight exercises, then record, then start work. I will put writing 200 words right after I record my habits and before starting my real work. This means I will have to off-set the recording of this habit for the next day.

I also need this to be scaleable. So I will first start with 200 words. Once I get good at that, I will extend it slowly by word count, then until I can proof a full basic article of 800 words and have one article ready to publish per day.

In my original 750 words project I would end each session by brainstorming what I would write for the next day. This is also a great practice.

This is going to be really difficult. It’s hard to do this psychologically because I fear it. Also I’m moving to a different country in one week. However, I want habits and habit formation to work irrespective of location changes, so I’d like to start now. I’m also curious if 200 words is tiny ENOUGH. The idea is that it has to be utterly easy - almost ludicrously so. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m nervous, scared, and a little excited - let’s see how this works out!

Graph Day! Graphs of 3 Habits

You might have noticed that I didn’t blog yesterday - my internet was out so I had to do it all offline. But as I went to log it in I went ahead and logged all my travel data into my spreadsheet. Since I had all the numbers, and since my bodyweight exercise is, at least according to the numbers, a habit, I thought I’d do another series of graphs. I omitted eating since I didn’t start recording it from the beginning.

I don’t have time to analyze them today but will do so soon.

X is number of days, y is the SRHI from 12-84.

Record Keeping

Fixed Meditation

Bodyweight Exercises

1 Month of Burpees and Travel Protocol

One week down of three for traveling. I have a moment so I thought I’d record some thoughts.

First, as of yesterday I just passed one month of burpees!

Second, I realized I never wrote down my travel protocol. It’s probably going to be more of an evolving thing - what Ive done so far is move my record keeping to right before going to bed. Its easier to do than having to rush it in the mornings.

Eating right has been difficulty - there are a lot of places where it is legitimately not possible. And at other times I feel carb deprived from the amount of walking Im doing. Other habits are getting stronger.

In addition Im starting to get more convinced as to including changing environment questions to the SRHI. But more on that later.

Sandbagging

I was talking to Lydia Schrandt  and she came up with this brilliant solution to making it through the “danger zone.”

We were discussing how easy the first months were in eating clean compared to any other diet or regiment we’ve been on. The key to her was that we just didn’t care. We entered into it not caring, so her suggestion to me was - maybe if you did the same thing it would work with other habits.

The problem is intentionality - how do you deliberately NOT care? 

Her recent solution (we’ve been talking a bout this a lot) is what she dubbed sandbagging. 

Start one habit you care about. At the same time, start two more habits that you don’t care about. It doesn’t matter what they are. Do them all with the normal protocol - recording, etc. When the main habit gets into the danger zone, drop the other two completely.

She used to work with hot air balloons, hence the term. I think of it in terms of Dragon Ball Z, where the characters all train with weighted shirts and artificially high gravity. Once they lose the shirt and get back to earth, they can fight faster and fly higher…much like the balloon.

Habits seem to cause indentions like weight on us, and it doesn’t seem to matter how small the habit is - it just gets tiring carrying it over a long period of time. 

This is something I’ll have to experiment with in the future. I could potentially do this with my eating habit by dropping my burpee habit. But that doesn’t quite sit well with me. In any case I’ll have to decide what  my protocol is when it comes to eating these next three months - it’s already gotten hard, and I’ll be traveling extensively throughout Brazil to see the World Cup, which will test this habit to the maximum degree.

Big Post on Food and Other Habits

I started a healthy eating habit about two months ago.

I decided I was going to try to follow Primal eating based on Mark Sisson’s books and blog. So basically, no wheat, no grains, lots of veggies, regular amounts of meat, and fat is ok. I chose this because several friends of mine who I trust researched it, did it, and recommended it.

Last year I attempted it and failed. But what stuck with me was that I felt noticeably better than I did previously when attempting to eat “clean” - when I went low fat. The afternoon slump in energy I had disappeared, I felt more satisfied with my meals. Pretty soon not eating grains was more to avoid that heavy feeling rather than for any health or weight loss gains.

Two months ago I decided to eat Primal, but decided not to worry about it. If I messed up, no biggie. And in general, I don’t care about eating out occasionally - getting pizza or sushi. I just don’t worry about it and just generally try to keep to it.

It has been phenomenally successful, both in terms of a habit and in terms of fat loss. I’ve lost 5-6 belt buckle loops, the bloat of my gut is gone and I feel great. But my main concern is with the habit.

I initially thought I’d have to start slow - make a habit of not drinking anything but water…then build up. But I’ve been rock solid, and I think there are several reasons why it could be this. 

1. I don’t care about it, but I feel better when I do it.

2. There is a carrot and stick element to this - It makes me feel better, but when I don’t do it I feel horrible. I think I’m sticking to it more because I don’t want to feel awful. 

3. The area I’m living makes it hard to get good carby food . It’s rural, there are only a few restaurants nearby, and I’m not next to, say, a Mexican restaurant (my Kryptonite) - it’s easier to eat like this in this location.

4. It’s only been 2 months - I estimate a habit to fully form in eating clean to take at least 250 days. It feels rock solid now, but is it really? I should take a SRHI and analyze it.

The reason why this is important is because it appears, points #3 and #4 notwithstanding, that I’ve created an incredibly difficult habit by just not caring about it, in an easy stress free manner. How can I analyze this and apply what I get to other habits? More on this later…

Hacking the SRHI?

My SRHI in Dynamic Meditation has jumped dramatically in only 3 days, as I mentioned before. This is a result of it being a “Continual Habit” - a task like posture, that should be spot checked repeatedly throughout the day.

Could this be applied to regular daily habits? I realize that the SRHI is meant to be a scale on habit formation. Does its accuracy go both ways? Can you hack the SRHI? That is to say if I manipulate aspects of the scale, does that in turn really result in a faster habit? 

For example, a number of questions in the SRHI relate to feeling weird if you DON’T do a habit. Well, I can’t really tell that until I don’t do it. So I’ll mark undecided. If I do miss a habit or at least delay it one day, and I do feel weird, my score increases. And this has happened in the past. Would a DELIBERATE missed or delayed habit result in faster habit formation?

Similarly would doing a task like…flossing for example, be quickly formed if I spent the first week flossing every hour during the day? There a number of questions regarding doing a habit before you realize you’re doing it - would waking up and doing a task while still bleary help with this? Telling as many people as possible that I’m a flosser might boost identity questions (“This task is typically me”) - would it actually make the habit form faster?

With this dynamic meditation habit it’s not just about the score - it really is shocking how automatic this is becoming. Now this might be for another reason. 

In a seminar I just watch on self help a speaker talked about meditation for pain and anxiety. The basic technique is to follow the anxiety and notice it - note its frequency, if it changes, its size, its texture, and if you keep up with this, it will start to diminish. This has worked with physical pain for me.

The point he made was that it’s an animal training thing. If you train an animal based on the basics - pain=bad, pleasure=good, you get results fast because that’s how we’re wired.

I’m in a profound sense doing this - if I can train myself to not go down paths of negativity in my head, I feel better. So, it’s not surprising that it’s a fast response to train.

So who knows if it would carryover to things like flossing, that don’t have such an immediate pleasure/pain result. This is something I’ll definitely have to try out.

Growth Mindset

In my research into Dr. Angela Duckworth’s work on grit, she mentions another concept - a Growth Mindset, as opposed to one that focuses more on concrete, immediate successes.

It seems as though this project, which focuses on the cultivation of habit, is a good example of a Growth Mindset.

In 750 words, in the past I focused on writing the best I could - and in my own experience, and in many forums, I’ve learned that this is the wrong way to go about it. NaNoWriMo, a website dedicated to helping people write novels, was founded to combat this. The website offers a chance to write 50,000 words in the spirit of “literary abandon” - the object isn’t perfection, it’s getting through the word count - editing comes later. 

In my theoretical topography of success, a habit comes first. If I make a solid habit of working out in the morning, even if it’s only doing a light workout, success - actually achieving the body I want - will come later.

I won’t necessarily achieve concrete success immediately or quickly. But it will come, especially in tasks like flossing or eating correctly which only require doing the task innumerable times. For other tasks plateau busting will eventually be required.

Though it’s on a longer schedule, habituation is lot quicker than going through the yo-yo cycles of shorter programs that don’t stick.

Dr. Angela Duckworth and Grit

A few weeks ago I was randomly looking at the MacArthur “Genius” Grant winners and came across Dr. Angela Duckworth, who researches grit and self-control with regards to education. In watching her video on the MacArthur website she describes her research, which seems geared towards shifting the focus away from talent to grit with regards to how to measure success.

When she talked about grit, sparks went off in my head, and I thought that it might be the missing part of my equation with regards to habit formation - willpower over time.

However, after taking her 12 - point Grit Scale, I realized that there are some other issues - and I’m not quite so certain. 

The scale seems to focus on two things -the ability to overcome setbacks and the ability to stick with one thing for a long time. The latter is what I’d say is my missing ingredient - the endurance to continue a task until automaticity is reached.

The former seems, after watching her TED Talks video, to be a smattering of different things - from dealing with obstacles to putting yourself through the pain period to push past plateaus and achieve true mastery. 

And although this is very applicable for becoming the best in a field, it’s not exactly what I’m thinking is needed for habituation.

On one hand, you can view grit as overcoming everything - the pain of willpower, the pain of endurance, the pain of really pushing past plateaus in learning.

But I’d like to view them as separate - when I choose to practice the violin today, I’m using Willpower to do so, which is a depleteable resource for that day. A few months in, and I’m struggling with a depletion of Endurance. And I can form a habit of practicing the violin at a certain time without actually mastering the instrument - which is usually caused by practicing easy sections and not putting myself through the painful trial of consistently pinpointing and practicing aspects of the art that are not perfect.

These three things act in different ways.

If Grit is some sort of combination of Endurance and overcoming, I want to know  - do the two act separately? What replenishes Grit? And how does it react - is it like Willpower? Can you train it?  

Right now her research seems very focused on identifying Grit - but to me this isn’t very satisfying - it simply becomes and indicator for success - I want to know how to foster it.

Nonetheless, I’m very curious what form her future research will take.

Willpower Over Time Theory

I have another theory that I’ve been turning over in my head for a while.

The hardest thing about a habit isn’t the willpower needed for an individual task. Flossing is an easy task that pretty much stays easy. It’s the STREAK - it’s doing it over time that becomes a drag. 

My theory is that Willpower is one aspect of the equation, but it’s Willpower over time that’s the real issue for any given habit. Call it persistence, endurance, doggedness, or tenaciousness - but it’s what caused me to make 750 words a habit despite having periodic setbacks.

I feel it reacts differently than Willpower - after about 2 months of working out, it’s not as though working out becomes difficult in that instance - it just becomes exhausting when it comes to the streak.

The reserve that fuels the act of extending the activity over time gets depleted, while the actual activity remains the same.

Furthermore, in my theory, as I have eluded to before, after a quarter of the way into a habit, Endurance becomes heavily depleted, while for Lally, it just becomes more and more easy.

And gamified programs, (although I’m sure they help lower the threshold with regards to Willpower) through their emphasis on badges over time and accumulating streaks, help the most with regards to Endurance depletion - Or whatever we should  call it.

There is a researcher - Dr. Angela Duckworth - who recently won the MacArthur Research Grant, who may be doing research into whatever this is. I’ll get into that in the next post.

Self-Discipline in 10 Days - A Plan of Action

The book has a great step by step process for creating a plan.

• Pick a goal

• Choose a launch date

• A broken down list for the action

• List a reward next to each step

• Cross them off as you do them

• Analyze/Review progress

I’ve been doing this for about 2 weeks and I’ve found that the broken down list of simple actions is invaluable. The biggest problem actions are the simplest ones - simply opening the software. I’ve put all these broken up steps into a Google docs spreadsheet, where I change cells green as I finish them - this gives the whole process a gamified feel - often times the only real reward for programs like Duolingo is that something flashes green and you get an “atta boy” sound.

For me so far, that’s all that has been needed. I’ve modified the progression to have a slot for brief relaxation, visualization, and affirmations. I also have another slot to plan what my next writing will be about.

I did all this because of Review step - which is also a slot in my spreadsheet - is invaluable and important for course corrections - it gives me a moment where I can reflect and streamline the whole process. Previously I had problems not having at least one idea already lined up, and adding that additional step made things easier.

Phillippa Lally and the Number of Days to Form a Habit

Common consensus seems to suggest that it either takes 21 days or 30 days to form a habit.

Based on my own observations, this is clearly not true - and Philippa Lally’s study in the European Journal of Social Psychology seems to suggest otherwise.

The study analyzes a group, has them perform various tasks, and asks them at what level of of automaticity they are at with these tasks every day.

The study suggests that some tasks take less time and some tasks more time before they are considered a habit, but the average is 66 days.

This brings up a number of interesting points:

1. Perhaps I should use an index like she did in order to assess my level of habituation for any given task.

2. Perhaps programs like Level Me Up, which use a number of hours to determine mastery, are not as good as a program that functions by checking out a daily practice of a skill. I’ve already begun to have doubts about Level Me Up - this might be it’s death knell.

3. What are the tasks that are easier and take longer to form into habits? I’m assuming this has to do with those that take more willpower. If habituation can be indexed by a questionnaire, perhaps I could come up with a willpower index in order to attempt to find some sort of correlation between willpower expenditure and “automaticity” - what the studies are using as the technical term for the progression of habit formation.

This is some really exciting stuff, because it’s the first real testing as to the mechanics of habit formation in scientific conditions.

Plateau Busting

Plateaus seem to be THE thing that confounds everyone.

Let’s say someone wants to learn a musical instrument. There’s an “onboarding” period where people learn a ton and feedback is great. It’s new and exciting and you want to continue with vigor. Then you hit the slower steady progress. You are still getting feedback, and you are making progress so you continue - but it’s the daily grind.

Then you hit the plateau, where you work and work but don’t notice any visible improvement. That’s where most people give up, and the habit (and learning) stops.

There are a few methods for getting through plateaus. For one, just sheer willpower - either yours, or for many in school, their parent’s. The other is to vary practice so that you don’t get bored of the routine. Another is to KNOW that it’s there - the theory is that knowledge itself of the plateau will allow you to save up willpower, which you’ll use to bust through the plateau. And another method is to take a break and come back - “resetting” your habit processors so to speak.

The point of this endeavor is really about plateaus and willpower. Does gamification lower the amount of willpower needed to get through plateaus? Does this lowered willpower threshold allow for more skills to be habituated at once. It’s really two questions.

1) Sure Duolingo is fun, but will it continue to be fun after 3 or 4 months?

2) The willpower threshold in gamifcation is lowered through engagement - it’s fun. Will this allow me to learn multiple skills and practices - or will I fizzle out because I’m trying to do too many things?

A lot of people seem to roughly calculate the plateau phase of any task as kicking in at three months - and that’s the mark I’ll be looking at closely in the future. I might decide to stagger various strategies to see which ones work and which ones don’t. This will take some tracking, because I started each skill in a staggered way - duolingo first, 750 words a week after, etc.

Habit RPG and Habits of Omission Part 2

I’ve decided to not only NOT drink alcohol, but also coffee, which tends to make me worried and nervous.

I’ve done this by having a DAILIES - not drinking coffee/beer for a day. This section in Habit RPG is a daily task that gets more and more difficult - so in the game your score gets higher and higher the longer your streak is.

I’ve also created HABITS - specific tasks. I wanted ways to conceive of tasks that are positive rather than simply getting docked for failing to NOT do something.

So every time I refuse a drink, I get points. Every time I don’t drink an alcoholic drink at a bar or social event, I get even more points ( I’ve gone into the advanced features to weight the task as “difficult” thereby giving more points for every successful completion).

According to The Power of Habit, it is easier to replace a task than not do it - so I also get points every time I replace coffee or alcohol with water - and I might also include a replacement with any positive activity, like going for a walk.

Lastly, I’ve decided to use a technique in meditation to fight any cravings. My addiction isn’t physical, it’s more a social habit based on the experience and the art of a finely crafted drink amongst friends, etc. There is a specific technique to bring about a feeling - normally irritation or anger - and then calming the self as a way of practicing avoiding the pitfalls of actions that come from anger.

In this way one instance of practicing bringing about anger/irritation and quelling the emotion is like one rep. I’ve gotten a lot out of that technique when it comes to emotional management, and see no reason why it wouldn’t work with any other emotion. So I’m doing it for alcohol.

I’ll look up pics of drinks or situations, feel the cravings enter, and then practicing dealing with them by relaxing my mind and unhooking the feeling of a stimulus with the craving. I’ll go into more detail on this in another post.

In Habit RPG one “rep” of this will also be a HABIT and I will get points from doing this too.

So far here are the specifics of the game:

-Not drinking a margarita at a Mexican place (Just came up with this one recently) - MEDIUM difficulty, cause I associate the two

-Drinking water as a replacement for alcohol/coffee - Easy

-Not drinking coffee - Easy - not sure if this should be replaced with the later or not

-Not drinking at a bar - DIFFICULT

-Not drinking at a non-bar social event - DIFFICULT

-Not drinking coffee/alcohol for the day

Power of Habit by Werbach and Hunter

I was really curious about this book because it seems to be the go-to book on gamification. I find it incredibly helpful - here are a few points:

-“behavior-change gamification seeks to form beneficial new habits among a population” p 23

So that’s the official term for what I’m focusing on!

-Problems with boredom

However, if you approach gamification in this way you’ll quickly run into trouble….But these users often get burnt out by the enldess treadmill of points…and abandon the system.

This could be something look out for in programs that either don’t have a leaderboard or don’t hone in on it. For example Duolingo as far as I understand it hones in on friends that are close to you, and those are the only ones that show up on the leaderboard.

-p32

Another interesting aspect - the lack of failure makes you continue in the game.

p61

This was interesting - at some point just regularly giving rewards isn’t enough - I assume that most games get around this by using badges or quests or whatnot to shake things up

p66

It’s not just badges, but unexpected badges that work.

p95

The book also talks about progressions stairs - HOW players level up - a regular progression is boring - games often start with a simple progression (onboarding) because it helps the game become more addicting in the beginning, with every next level getting harder and harder - sometimes called an RPG progression. The book says that this isn’t good enough - a better game will offset this with harder and easier levels so that players can catch their breath and experience a sense of mastery before a challenge.

Habits of Omission

I decided to do start two gamified habits this week because one, writing, has to do with work, and this one is a habit of omission.

I suppose you could call it breaking a bad habit, but a lot of psychology seems to suggest that positive reinforcement works better for long term habituation. So “habits of omission” it is.

Specifically the habit I want to break is drinking.

I find that in the habituation game, alcohol is perhaps the absolute worst thing you can do for several reasons.

For one, even a few drinks will sap you of willpower. It actively corrupts discipline and since this entire project revolves around willpower, this is not a good thing.

Also, since I don’t drink regularly, even a few drinks will make me hungover the next day, making it highly unlikely that I will continue in my gamification - and with a day or two away from the game, I run the risk of leaving the game.

Lastly, there are other skills later on that tend to get corrupted by alcohol. Later on I want to gamify eating right, and not only is alcohol not really great, but it tends to give you the munchies. Being hungover is not good for getting into shape when I gamify fitness, nor is it good for mental health. I just read a very great thread on reddit about a guy with mental health issues who was “self medicating” - one redditor responded by saying that the first thing people with mental health issues should do is stop drinking because it exacerbates the situation. I have noted this in my own mental health.

I’ll get into the specifics in another post, because I find that Habits of Omission have to be treated differently.