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.

Walking

A picture from my walking route this morning. I’m rather spoiled with this, especially since it’s only a block or two away.

It’s only been Day 4 in this new habit, and I’ve already realized how badly I’ve prepped for it. On Day 2 it rained horribly all day long. Obviously I should have all my contingency plans lined up. 

The idea is to walk for an hour in total, and if it’s raining, do some kettlebell swings in my house instead.

As a part of the habit, I enjoy listening to music on my phone - so proper planning involves charging that….and I always normally forget to charge it.

All of this is going to get very difficult when I travel around for the World Cup in a month from now. It’ll be 3 weeks of travel, sometimes very early - having my contingencies and implementation intentions in line will be key through getting through it.

Thoughts on Training Mindfulness/Dynamic Meditation/Equanimity

As I have mentioned before, I am not convinced of the efficiency of carryover in meditation. Most books on meditation discuss practicing it one time during the day, and letting carryover continue - your individual practice carries over to regular life.

I believe that training as close to “war time” conditions as possible is the best training you can get. A continual habit, like posture, is something that bridges the gap. And in my research, I’ve found Buddhist literature talking about it in this way - you first get into a state, THEN you focus on maintaining it.

Posture exercises may well work eventually, but it seems as though posture is something you have to continually practice throughout the day to get to your goal - being someone who has good posture. Similarly, there is a huge leap between someone who practices equanimity training for an hour a day and someone who is an unshakably equanimous individual.

I’m still researching and asking people for advice on how to best do this. After all, there are other continual habits I’ll want to induct in  my regiment later on. I’ve had limited success with one - noting every time I feel negative emotions (they tend to fall into common groupings) and using mental gymnastics that work to get beyond them.

This worked very well for a short amount of time, but the number of variables got to be too much for me to continue. And things slipped through. I could feel happy, I could bust pass pessimistic emotions, yet fear would fall through - I would continue to procrastinate like I always do. So:

1. The willpower required to do them all was too much because I was also doing fixed meditation as well. Fixed meditation is well on its way to habit formation, so I should try it again now.

2. The willpower required to counter all negative emotions is too much, so I need to focus on one at a time. Preferably a lynch pin, like tension/relaxation. Can you be angry or depressed if you are truly relaxed? Can you even be fearful?

3. I should use a timer approach and use spot checks throughout the day. 5 times a day, I do a spot check and relieve my symptoms and move on, increasing until it becomes second nature.

4. Another method is going from the gross to the subtle. Record, do all of the me negative emotion meditation throughout the day and later, once the method is established as a habit, push it for things that have slipped. After all, habits do not equal mastery. At some point you have to push past plateaus in a learning curve.

I’m guessing that for all of this, the SRHI has to be modified, omitting frequency questions. Presumably the further along the habit goes, the LESS you’ll have to do it.

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.

Thoughts on Meditation Techniques

Way back in THIS post I mention a little bit about what meditators influence me. 

The difference between these guys and regular “single pointed” meditation is that I feel their techniques are more directly applicable to the real world. 

In the fantasy book I’m reading, one of the characters is part of an elite warrior group, whose teachers trained and trained her to go on the offensive when attacked. People naturally have the opposite reaction, so it takes hundreds, if not thousands of hours of practice to instill a new instinct. It becomes a muscle memory, you react before even thinking.

I want to practice the martial arts of meditation.

I mention a lot of people who are very unorthodox - Hypnotica, Steve Piccus, Shinzen Young, Ross Jeffries. A lot of these guys come to meditation in an incredibly unorthodox way. But all of them work in a method that’s more about changing mental protocol rather than having a bracketed time in which you practice gently focusing on a single thought.

What do I mean?

When I get depressed, as I am wont to do, I want my first reaction to be to do mood-lifting mental gymnastics. Shinzen Young advocates an old Buddhist technique to shift away from specifics, and focus on bodily sensations of emotions. In this way you step back and get a grip. Ross Jeffries goes further and talks about transforming that basic energy, transforming it, and taking it back in as an energy of positivity and transformation. I was very skeptical about this when I first tried it, and after a year of doing it more and more it has the ability to completely turn around my mood.

I am a fearful person, especially when it comes to writing endeavors. Steven Pressfield talks about procrastination as the loadstone by which you know what you need to do most. Hypnotica advocates a  program by which you immediately do the things that scare you for a couple of weeks so that you rewire yourself to be someone who faces fear.

Yoga has classically been defined by Patajanli as the “cessation of the fluctuations of the mind” - as such the end product of all this is to “bump back” - the instinctually turn around bad moods or fits of frustration in order to be a generally positive and unshakably calm individual. 

I’m still thinking about HOW exactly I’m going to apply all this - these are all varied techniques that need a lot of repetition to become a habit. I’ll discuss my thoughts on that in another post.

When and Where

So this is my first “Record Keeping” habit post. 

I decided I would do my record keeping in the morning right after waking up. Although from a memory perspective it would be best to do this at the end of the day or right after doing the task, I find that for the habituation portion “bookending” at the beginning of the day is best. As the day progresses more and more chances for deviation get introduced.

My starting SRHI = 14 for this habit.

I’ve pegged the habit at 40 days - just a rough estimate, but one I will ascertain by taking the SRHI - for this one I’m going to attempt to take it every day as part of my record keeping - I do not know if this will affect the scale, or if it will simply give me more plot points of data.

A New New Plan (and a Ridiculous Habit)

Based on my thoughts from the last post here’s what I’m going to do.

My two current “habits” - 750words and my kettlebell habit are in shambles. Last week I did a SRHI test and both were hovering in the low 40s (remember, this is out of 74).

So I’m scrapping both of them and starting…sigh…completely from scratch.

The first habit I’m going to implement is -  and I realize this sounds ridiculous - recording my habits. Every day. 

It’s something that I’ve had problems with since day 1. It’s even a problem among the professional researchers, who couldn’t get their participants to keep consistent records or do SRHI tests regularly.

I have no idea what number of days to peg this at. I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be more difficult than it looks, but we’ll see. I’ll need to take the SRHI regularly - I’m thinking once a week? I don’t know if taking it every day will show anything but I suppose I can try that at first.

I’m uncertain as to whether I will also be including blogging as recording, though I think that is a good idea. Would I blog once a week and try to make that into a habit, or go for the everyday thing? Every day isn’t really an optimal thing for blogs usually, but then again this isn’t for blogging, it’s for record keeping and keeping track of things.

Completely Stalled Out

I’ve completely stalled out on this project. 

The first thing to get over my frustration is to realize that this is bound to occur - just like it did on 750 words - gaining a handle on anything worthwhile almost requires moments of extreme frustration and loss of focus.

Secondly, I need to remember why I’m doing this. I have a deep desire within me to master a number of skills related to several fields. To me not attempting to master these skills would be tantamount to giving up a part of who I am. I consider this integral to my identity.

Furthermore, this method of habit formation is the only way in my mind to even attempt mastery at them. I’ve seen how some people amble about, cycling enthusiastically through interests without getting anywhere with any of them long term. Hell, that’s how I’ve been most of my life. I’ve seen books that talk about how you can learn a skill in 20 hours or some other short time - to me this isn’t mastery or habit formation.  I want the beast itself not some simulation of it. Therefore this is the only way to go.

Thirdly, I need to know why I failed. I failed for good reasons - moving countries, a death of a close friend, a very long illness, depression, etc. But everyone has reasons. A reason doesn’t magically make it all better. 

Fourthly I need to know what to do now. For me one of the biggest problems was not being able to record my items of habituation. Recording is important because it keeps one level of distance away from the grind of doing a habit - it also keeps you motivated and is a constant reminder of what you need to do for course correction.

My records were shoddy - I would record some days - I would leave swaths unrecorded and then recover my info later and quickly instead of giving the process its due. Recording my habit keeps me in touch with the entire project and keeps it real for me. Looking back, I’ve had problems with record keeping since the beginning, and this got worse as the habit formation got harder - which is not a good thing. Recording - seeing the swath of days where I kept the habit vs not kept the habit is the seat of change for this entire project. 

Also in that vein I need to write more on this blog. I think I haven’t been doing so because I want to keep it blog like - I want to get a picture and keep it short - but the truth is the purpose of this blog is like the record keeping - it keeps me in touch with the project. A picture isn’t needed, it’s extra, as is a bite sized blog post of 200 words, or paying attention to spelling and grammar. What is necessary is note keeping for the project, so I can look back and know what was going on week to week and how I can learn from it.

National Novel Writing Month Problems

My 750 word habit is rock solid. So I’ve decided to push it in several ways. Before I did this by getting various badges - one for not being distracted, the other for speed of writing. I feel doing this is a way to stretch the habit in it’s grooves, to go through the pain period of not just letting it lie, but by doing more.

I feel my first real challenge has been these last 4 days of National Novel Writing Month, where participants are invited to write a novel (50,000 words) in one month - the idea is to just write freely, not to have something that’s perfect.

I think this is fantastic - it’s even supported on 750words as a badge on the site. But this is a sizable problem for me because it’s almost triple my word count per day for 30 days.

This has caused a number of small problems. For one, it’s harder to get started on this at the beginning of the day - I end up putting it off - a problem I only had at the beginning of forming the habit originally. The second is that it has been throwing off my kettle bell workout routine - because I delay at my writing I delay, sometimes ignore completely my other habit. Thirdly my mood has been pretty irritable - I’ve been subject to more bouts of sadness and anger. Lastly, I’m starting to get a bit shoddy when it comes to tracking my progress.

This is all minor - and luckily it all seems to fit with my theories on habit formation. I’m entering that quarter of the way mark on the exercise habit and when I look at my spreadsheets now it looks like my spreadsheets for 750 words during the quarter of the way mark. 

I’m countering this by being more strict about writing as soon as I get up. IN fact that may be a great technique for any habit that is shaky - doing it as soon as you get up. I’ve been countering my moods by going on walks, which tends to get my blood flowing - it’s been such a great way of loosening up that I’m thinking about making that a separate habit.

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!

The Hardest Thing is Not Doing More

Last week I made a decision not to go on a meditation retreat.

I was really interested in doing a 10 Day Vipassana Course. It’s a silent retreat, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. The only problem is that it involves a lot of uncomfortable sitting on the floor, and most beginners report online that it’s incredibly painful - as Westerners we’re not usually used to sitting on the ground for long periods without our legs going numb. During my year in Korea, I got used to it, but it took many months.

I started to practice sitting for long periods of time, tacking it on o my current list of habits, and it was surprisingly painful. I also felt that weight that to me signals willpower depletion - it felt like when I was doing too many habits - that feeling right before I just gave up on every skill I was trying to acquire.

It really does feel with this program that the hardest thing is not jumping into doing more things. Meditation will help me keep focused. Eating right will give me more energy, and I have so many ideas now for apps for gamification that I have to fight urges not to dive into learning programming.

It was a really difficult decision for me, because I felt like I was copping out of going, of just biting the bullet and forcing myself to do it. But I have to remind myself that this is part of the process - I’m trying something new here, something that has thus far worked at least once - 750 words is now a habit. And I know my previous way of doing things hasn’t worked.

Since making the decision not to go, I’ve stopped my timed sits, which has been a relief, both in terms of the pain involved,and a renewed feeling of endurance with regards to practicing my new habit - and I know it will be easier to continue along the process of habituation without such a huge distraction.

But I’m still eying that retreat - and I will go in the future - just not now.

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.

Since Last Time....Kettlebell Status Update

I pegged the kettle bell exercise habit at 250 days to habituation - I estimated this based on Philippa Lally’s paper on how many days different habits take to reach automaticity. The paper estimated that it would take 250 days to form a habit of doing sit-ups in the morning. 

So for my theory, at the halfway point, 125 days, things would start to get easier. Days 62 - 125 would mark the most difficult time for the process.

So far I’ve had multiple problems. I went on several trips and moved to a different city. I started developing back problems because of it - I’ve always had a sensitive back, but it’s caused me to stop doing kettle bells for swaths of time. Instead I replaced it with a series of back stretches that worked in the past. 

Now it’s going well. I’ve bookended it immediately after my 750 words and I’ve incorporated the stretch routine as part of the process. I keep trying to remind myself that it’s not about the kettle bells, it’s about bracketing a spot for physical exercise - and that’s the thing I’m trying to habituate.

The other thing that’s different about this from 750 words is that I am not using gamification yet - my theory is that gamification can be used to lower the threshold of discipline needed for a habit - which would work best during the ¼-½ way mark. When I hit that point, I’ll probably be using Fitocracy.

This is day 35. Consistency has been sketchy, and I haven’t even gotten to the hardest part, at least according to my theory. AND, I’m going on another trip today!

Willpower at Zero

Feeling totally drained.

I’ve had a few of these moments in the past, and I’m trying to record them all to see if there are any patterns.

My immediate reaction is to take a character driven stance - I’m a lazy person, I’m not the sort of person who has enough character to push through, and this continues on to a litany of self-recriminations.

But this project is about standing in opposition to that stance. I want to know WHY I’m feeling this way, and how to productively counteract it.

It could be that I’m approaching the difficult stage in my kettle bell habit. Yes I’m sore and achy, but this is more of a willpower thing rather than a physical ache. I cannot for the life of me summon the energy to do other tasks.

It also could be the fact that I’ve done an immense amount of travel to different countries this year, and around this time is when I’m about to go home, and I normally feel this way. It could be that I didn’t get much sleep last night. It could be because I haven’t eaten yet.

I take solace in the fact that despite this, I have done my 750 words and my kettle bell routine today, so all is not lost.