Slacking and Superhabits

The last few weeks I’ve gotten the impression that I’ve been floating through many of my fully formed superhabits.

A lot of this has to do with my bouts of sickness and travel, where I have to slack deliberately in order to sustain the habit.

But now that I’m good, there’s been a slump. Specifically:
Fixed Meditation
I’m doing basic meditations. Relaxation, visualizations - these would have been difficult a while ago, but I need to PUSH. Bring UP bad emotions, then quell them. OR do some advanced stuff, like TUMMO. OR start doing what I don’t like to do, like single pointed meditation. OR do Vipassana for time. 

Bodyweight Exercises
I’ve been on type writer pushups - that’s awesome. But I’ll do 3, and stop. I can do reps like I did today - and it HURT. I should be used to that pain. I need a better cycle - I’ve started doing bulgarian split squats and that’s good. I need to push my bridges. I dropped my dragon flag progression because I don’t have a good stable spot, but that’s no excuse - I gotta solve that problem. And I HAVE to do what I hate, tabatas.

Writing
I’m totally slacking on the actual writing part of my cycle. I need to get back into that mentality of doing a first draft - like I can do no wrong. And then the next day NEEDS to be editing to a polished submittable piece. If I can get that cycle down, a HUGE weight will be lifted, because pitching is easy for me. So maybe I should just focus on that - forget everything else - first draft, then edit. again and again rinse and repeat.

Eating
I’ve been letting things slip here. But I don’t care as much - FINALLY it’s just coalesced into a habit. If I can keep it like that, I’m happy, and I can clean it up later.

Conclusion - this is something I’m going to have to constantly be aware of. Plateaus are a part of this business. Sometimes it may take something special to shake things up. Maybe I should do crossfit. Maybe I should drop everything and do writing/editing for a month. Maybe I should do a month of single pointed meditation. There is definitely a huge benefit to doing something like my No Bread challenge. 

Thoughts on Dynamic Meditation (so far)

Today’s 20 minutes got me really sensitive to the subtleties of this. I could feel a sliding crystallization of tension in my mind and in my shoulders. I used a specific technique to counter it - relaxation through anchoring. A thought I had day before yesterday was that I should get really technical about it - I should know tension and anxiety like eskimos know snow. Not only will the delineation of different categories of it help me focus, but it acts as Vipassana noting - separating my mind from being entangled in the feeling.

This type of dynamic meditation is very interesting in comparison to Vipassana and other schools of Buddhism. Vipassana is all about the controlled observation of the mindstream in order to gain visceral knowledge (jñanas) that change its (the mind’s) quality. In Vajrayana, visualization and ritual are used for the same purpose, and for some versions of Tibetan Buddhism mucking about with the Bardo - transitory states of consciousness like before death or dreaming - changes the state of the mindstream.

What I’m doing is purifying the mindstream through habit in order to prevent the arising of negative emotions. The more I think about it, the more I think I’ve stumbled on another school of Buddhism…if it works. I’ll have to come up with a name for it…

Either way, that purifying action is an important metaphor to keep in mind while proceeding.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited Party IV - Last Notes

I just did a 20 minute session while doing some work. It was pretty easy to track some of these things. Here’s what it looked like:

biting lip - anxiety - R
x3 minor anxiety arising - R
minor anxiety arising - x4 shoulders - R
x4 fingers - picking, flicking
x2 lip picking R
x2 caught minor anxiety
X5 laughing

As you can see a lot of these things happen in groupings. And a lot of these things have very clear physical markers - lip picking, picking at my fingers, shoulders tensing up.

The “R” was just my short form for Regular - as in I didn’t use any sort of specific technique - I just stopped it - these were all minor tensions in the mind stream.

“X2 caught minor anxiety” referred to catching it as it formed in the mind. And “X5 laughing” referenced that feeling of cheating at life, that true happiness that seemed to arise as I felt how easy it was to change this.

That feeling is really what I’m after - and it IS easy, but like the rest of this project, extending even the simplest things out across months (or in this case over the course of a full day over time) is very very difficult.

Buddhism and Dynamic Meditation

I’ve been reading a lot on Buddhism lately, and it seems as though some people view Nirvana as getting into this state of equanimity - of completely uprooting the possibility to have these negative emotional arisings at all.

In Vipassana, this uprooting occurs through visceral knowledge of the state of the world through repeated meditative practice. Through just observing the mindstream, you’ll gradually come to realizations - like realizing that we are not angry - anger has just visited us momentarily. This eventually (as far as I understand) will get us to this uprooting. 

There are other ways there - in Rinzai Zen you break the bonds of logic to attain sudden illumination, in Vajrayana you use visualization and ritual to get there (again, I’m still researching this stuff so please excuse my lack of understanding - and feel free to correct it). 

My method of dynamic meditaiton through habit formation is the “quit smoking” version of equanimity - that if you counter the urge enough times, the urge ceases to arise at all. The urge has to be countered minutely from second to second in the mindstream, but as far as I understand it, this might just be another avenue to Nirvana. Which is kind’ve cool.

Now all of this is theoretical - I’m very curious to see how (or if!) it will work - especially next to these thousand-year traditions.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited Part III- Implementation Intention & Mental Contrasting

The first step is Implementation Intention. This is kind’ve weird because it’s not a discrete task - rather it’s one that needs to be performed in life. But hey, why not apply it to something I’m really nervous with? Is that good or bad? I don’t know, but let’s try it

Implementation Intention:
I will perform 20 minutes of dynamic meditation at the beginning of the day when I do my first real task - my work habit on weekdays, and my writing on weekdays. I will start by putting up a word file to record things on the side of my computer screen to list out when the emotions arise and what I do to counter them. I will record this on my blog as well.

Mental Contrasting:
1. What positive changes can occur in my life if the habit is fully a part of my daily routine?

If dynamic meditation is a part of my daily routine I will be able to not be ripping myself up to accomplish my goals like I have been recently, and do so constantly in my life. So much energy gets wasted on just trying to maintain, and doing so has me barely able to do anything during a day. To be able to recover that would be amazing.

I want to be someone like Ari from Entourage, who is never ever really broken, like Vince, where every day, positive or negative is all good. I want to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who always looked forward despite overwhelming odds. For him, being weird was a positive - not being at the cool kids table wasn’t something to feel beaten up over - it meant he got to create his own damn table.

I want this so that I can accomplish all my wildest dreams without feeling ripped a part in thinking that I’m not accomplishing anything at all. I want this so I can accomplish all my goals, this project, and beyond. I want to be a force to be reckoned with, unshakeable, to uproot all this negativity from out of myself. I live a life that is fantastic, that people would kill for, and there’s no point in living it without enjoying it fully.

2. What could go wrong in forming this habit?

I could not do other habits - writing or work - that could cause me to therefore not do my 20 minutes of dynamic meditation. I could feel lazy and not want to get started on it. I could get bogged down on what the correct perfect formation of this habit is instead of just STARTING. I could forget to not write down my list of arising emotion in that 20 minutes - I got lazy about it last time around and it resulted in fewer and fewer results. I could not have access to my computer and not have a pen and pad to jot all this down - or just be too busy and forget to bring it with me, like when I’m traveling. I could abandon the habit in my breaking points or in the quarter mark period, where sustaining the habit becomes difficult to endure.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited Part II

So basically, I can skip certain portions because for me, fixed meditation is a superhabit. I believe that I can also skip the part where I JUST observe my emotional states starting at 20 minutes. Way back in Brazil I did this and executed techniques in Step 10 - The Arising and Quelling of Negative Emotion.

My problem was that it wasn’t sustainable. I did Step 11 - Expansion - I did all at once, monitoring, quelling and executing techniques, recording, and doing it all day. That was exhausting, and though I felt amazing, I couldn’t continue doing it.

With that in mind I’m going to form a habit of 20 minutes of happiness. I’m going to record it and time it. I’m sure I’ll experience bleed over. 

It’s confusing because before I set the habit as “immediately counteracting arising negative emotion” which screwed with the SRHI. I had a false rise because I was doing the action so many times during a day. It would not be as drastic because I’ll only be starting with 20 minutes.

It’s a dicey thing. I can think of it as a daily 20 minute practice, and expand, or I can view it as a series of individual practices. I think I’m going to do the former, simply because I tried the latter before and my other habits - writing, exercising, etc, have habitualized and expanded well so far.

I did a little bit of it today - what I forgot was that for many things a formal technique isn’t really necessary. It’s almost like it’s the observation and the redirection of the flow of my mind that is necessary. I have no doubt that the individual techniques I practiced in fixed meditation will be necessary - but it’s as though they give me a basic grounding to flex a muscle I never knew I had - the muscle of choosing the course of negativity or the course of satisfied happiness. Doing it today I felt the same wild hilarity - the feeling of cheating at the test of life and laughing - that I felt long ago in Brazil when I first attempted it.

It’s flexing that muscle and observing negativity as it arises that’s key. And it was shocking how minute and integral things like pessimism and tension/worry for no reason are to my moment to moment experience.

Dynamic Meditation Revisited

I’ve been feeling really down the last few days.

I feel the usual sensation - like I’m running in mud, like I’m drowning in too many tasks, like I’ve got 50 things I had to do yesterday, like I’m in a forest without a map. It’s “usual” because I feel this way every single time I get to these breaking points in this project.

Negativity seems to attract negativity - I find myself having negative thoughts about particular events that seem to multiply and expand to all parts of my life, such that it’s so difficult to do any work.

I’ve thought for a long time that I need to nail my mood because it affects everything. It’s a formative skill, and I think I’m ready to start it. Again.

So I’m going to start my dynamic meditation habit again. I think if I do a Tiny Habit I can begin it along with my malformed work habit. 

So what’s a TinyHabit for dynamic meditation? In my book on meditation that I wrote for my mother  I detail the steps for this:

Step 7: Implementation Intention and Mental Contrasting for Dynamic Meditation
Perform both Implementation Intention and Mental Contrasting exercises for Dynamic Meditation. This should fix exactly when you’ll perform it - ideally right after your daily fixed meditation or other reliable daily habit.
It should also prepare you for what you need. For me, jotting down a list of mental states for Dynamic Meditation is easy because I’m sitting in front of the computer all day for work anyway. But if you have a more active lifestyle, you’ll need to get a notebook and pen that you use regularly.
Step 8a: Adding the Second Habit
At the halfway point, when your fixed meditation SRHI is in the 60’s, it should be ok to add the second habit - dynamic meditation. You’ll now be taking the SRHI twice per day.
We’ll be progressing slowly with this, like the previous habit.
Start with the simplest act of dynamic meditation: Noting your mental states.
As an anxious person, you probably have very intense anxieties that would not arise in the normal person. But for you it’s a way of life, and you will be unaware of it - remember the progression of mastery of a task - you are trying to get from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. You need to know when you are doing something wrong (worrying) so that you can recognize how it arises within you.
So, a first exercise is to take 20 minutes in your regular day and note down negative emotions. I want a brief note on what you are feeling, and a brief description of it.
As a worrier, you will probably find  yourself stressing about absolutely nothing. Really be aware of the moment to moment fluctuations in your mind.
Example:
-Tension in shoulders - naturally just got nervous/tense for no reason
-Tension in shoulders
-Tension in shoulders
- (X4)Worrying about a work problem
-(X2) Regret - remembering the past and wishing that things could have gone differently
- (X3) Sadness - about opportunities not taken.
Just do this for 20 minutes. As a worrier you will have plenty to write down. But you must be aware of yourself and realize when negativity arises. You’ll be tempted to justify your worry. This exercise is not about justification. Just write it down. The point is to get you monitoring yourself from a distance - don’t punish yourself, don’t add any additional commentary, just recognize the emotions from a distance, and note it down as though it was a non-emotional scientific note about a distant phenomenon.
Start with 20 minutes. If you choose do note for longer, then by all means do so. But don’t force it. The creator of TinyHabits has a saying:
“A well planted seed will grow on its own accord”
You’ve planted the seed, now let it grow.
Step 8b: Adding additional exercises to fixed meditation
At this point you should be ready to rotate exercises in fixed meditation. So far you might have been only doing one exercise. Try others.
If, for example, you have until now only been working on the Anchoring progression, do the Anchoring progression one day and the Tantra progression another day. If at any time you feel too stressed, or have to much to do during the day (or if you just feel too exhausted) it’s ok. Fall back to your basic exercise and do that.
Step 9: Superhabit Status and Expansion
At some point your fixed meditation habit will achieve Superhabit status and will be solidly ingrained as a part of your daily routine. This is an excellent time to start pushing the envelope - if you’ve only been doing a few mental exercises, push the envelope. You’ve done a great job forming a habit, but this doesn’t mean you will not fall into a plateau, where actual progress stops. If your habit hasn’t been naturally expanding, expand it by practicing additional exercises.
You should have the additional endurance and willpower to push dynamic meditation. Expand from 20 minutes, to 30 minutes to a full hour of self moderation and note taking.
Step 10: Arising and Quelling of Negative Emotion
This half step is an important progression to the full usage of individual techniques in your real life. The key here is to practice as close to real world situations as possible. In Fixed Meditation begin by selecting negative memories to bring about negative states like anxiety and worry. You can do this either by just summoning a memory or by writing it down to act as a guide.
Once you’ve summoned up the actual negative state, then practice the various techniques to control and transform the emotion to positivity.
Step 11 Expanding Dynamic Meditation
The last phase of the entire process is continued expansion of dynamic meditation. After slowly expanding your self monitoring note taking you will begin to use the arsenal of techniques that you’ve practiced in fixed meditation in real life.
Now when you feel the arising of anxiety or worry, practice the fixed meditation techniques to quell the emotion. This is very difficult to do in real world conditions so, again, start slow. Start with 20 minutes or an hour depending on how you feel, then slowly expand.
You will very quickly find yourself catching and neutralizing negative thoughts as they crystalize, and then before they even form.
Step 12: Continued Expansion & Dynamic Meditation Superhabit
By this time your dynamic meditation - no matter how small it is - should have reached superhabit status. At this point simply continue the practice of expanding and using techniques as though it’s a game in your life.
There is a quote from a book I read (The Lightbringer - Find Quote) about how warriors spend hundreds of hours of practice so that the first moment of conflict the natural biologically set response of flight is changed so that in those first few seconds you go towards the conflict and fight.
This is exactly what we are training - the automatic response to execute a meditative technique immediately in response to negative emotion.
Step 13: Uprooting
At some point in the expanding of your practice, after the execution of a meditative technique following worry is automatic, the negative emotions become less and less frequent. What would have bothered you immensely before just don’t phase you. You become more and more unshakeable. And as you continue it becomes easier and easier. And at some point, the feelings cease to arise at all.
This is the fulfillment of the buddhist concept of uprooting. To tear out worry and anxiety from the roots.

A New Protocol for Work, Pavlov/Click Training Style!

A New Protocol for WorkWork just isn’t progressing well enough, and I think it’s mostly because I don’t have a solid trigger.

Now normally my triggers are sequential ones, using bookending. I have my stable daily event - waking up. I wake up, I take a shower, I meditate, I do my bodyweight training, I write, and….by that time I’m a little mentally tired.

I end up dithering online for a while. Making coffee. Reading emails, whatnot. I need a bit of a break.

Earlier I had thought about incorporating a unique sound, just like Pavlov’s dog, to become a trigger. I rejected a time based alarm because my schedule changes day to day. But what if I did a timer and set a specific sound?

So today I started this. After I finished writing I gave myself 25 minutes

I selected a unique sound - “Waves” - to set my habit to.

After 25 minutes (the pic shows it counting down) my timer went off and I immediately started opening all the pages I need open for work. Now it’s “crisp” - I’m tying it to this particular unique sound at my choosing.

I think this will work, but we’ll see. My minimum is still set at 20 minutes of work. I finish, record and write on this blog, then finish up with the rest of work. But what if I set each time I start on work to the same ring tone? The trigger is still there, but now it’s going off twice, maybe multiple times a day.

My hope and hypothesis is that I will be able to really vanquish this habit in record time because of this. Why? Because I’m practicing the habit multiple times a day, it becomes triggered more often, and automaticity gets practiced more. Frequency shoots through the roof. Length of time is already maxed out, so the only thing that would need more points is identity questions.

We shall see!

A Habit Singularity

I was talking the other day with Lydia and she seem to think that I might be approaching a time of explosive regimentation in my habit project.

The way she described it was like the technological singularity, where the rate of technological progress explodes and accelerates beyond comprehension. 

At first I didn’t understand, but going over my progress and where I’m heading it starts to get interesting. 

I am starting to veer off of traditional habits into slotted habits where individual activity can be exchanged for cross training. For example, my pushup habit has now evolved into a pushup progression one day, a HIIT another day, and core exercise day.

Meditation has evolved into doing different types of meditations, writing has become writing, pitching, blogging, editing, and doing writing exercises depending on the day. I talked about this HERE when I discussing introducing cycling to all my habits.

What other habits are left? A recording finance habit, learning a musical instrument, flossing, and a general learning habit. Almost everything else can be enfolded into this cycling, slotting, regimentation thing. 

Do finances need to be recorded every day, or could they be folded in a general all-around slot? That slot can also handle learning about social media, photography, etc. Meditation can be expanded to Tummo training, bodyweight training to martial arts, breakdancing and parkour. The time of an idealized complete habit structure might not be too far off, and with cycling all habits are multiplied.

That’s a very strange idea to think of. It reminds me a lot of some descriptions the Kwisatz Haderach in Frank Herbert’s Dune. That’s particularly funny to me because Dune is the book that really influenced me and got me into all this self improvement stuff in the first place.

Restructuring Habits

Although my super habits are down cold, my two non-habits - eating and work are pretty much in shambles. I’m not worried about either though - once I get into the zone in eating it gets consistent fast. And with work it’s understandable - I haven’t worked the last week for the holidays and that absence is affecting my SRHI score.

More worthy of discussion is the plateau I find myself in superhabits.

Writing is about to change. I want to alternate between writing and editing, and I’ve started doing this to good affect. I’m also considering adding another day of pitching and one day of blogging on the weekends.

I need to memorize the SRHI to continue on with record keeping, but it’s not that serious of an issue.

Lastly, I’ve plateaued in bodyweight exercises. I’ve started doing the one arm pushup progression against the wall, but it’s not that difficult and I’m not sure if I’m doing it correctly. Other exercises are stalling - my dragon lifts are pretty much the same right now and my bridges aren’t necessarily improving. 

I realize with this that though it feels like I’m flailing, it really hasn’t been that long. It just sort’ve feels like a long time because it’s the holidays and I’ve been traveling and relaxing because of it - the holiday effect. But I would like to throw more stuff into the mix - maybe start lower body exercises or whatnot. 

I’d like to start implementing my fixed meditation plan as I outlined in my book. It basically consists of practicing multiple arenas of meditation classifications. I’ve started doing a it a little bit but I want to make it cyclical - changing it up every day. 

This cycling idea started with bodyweight training and has seemed to just leak over to all my superhabits. I’m curious how it works. I’m wondering if it’s a good way to bust past a plateau. But I also think it’s completely like cheating. Up until the superhabit formed I’m normally doing one task - usually in Tiny Habit form. But once the “slot” coalesces not only does the actual amount of one task grow, but I can get several tasks for the price of one.

I’m ideally not just writing, I’m using the slot of writing to write, pitch, blog, and edit. I’ll see how it goes, but if it goes well things are about to get really interesting, and either way I’m going to welcome the changes.

MILESTONE: DAY 300

It is supremely ironic that on day 300 I was traveling and it passed by without me really knowing.

This is a huge, huge milestone. I don’t think I’ve done anything with this much deliberateness ever in my life for so long.

What’s great is that it’s no big deal in my consciousness….It felt like another day, going through the same procedure…Which is totally what a HABIT should feel like. 

I’m not some guy huffing and puffing to cross a finish line in his mind - I’m not dieting for 3 months or sprinting for 5 minutes - this is lifetime change that I’m trying to inculcate, and I think it shows that I’m starting to do it.

What’s hilarious is that though I’ve made immense changes in these past 300 days if I step back and look at it all from a longer lens, it’s not that long at all. It’s not even a full year.

That makes me terribly excited about the next year, and the one after that. In process oriented thinking it’s about the long game - the one that solidly increase the odds of life. I’ve done so much so far, I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen in the future.

Writing Habit So Far (From Start to Superhabit), SRHI over Time

This graph isn’t very clear cut at all in terms of backing up my Quarter Mark Theory. But analyzing it further there are two big gaps in progression. 

At around day 53 there is huge downturn - actually a gap in recording that occurred. That was during a week of travel to England and France. 

There is another one starting around day 72. This was during another travel to Germany where my computer completely died.

In both cases I wasn’t prepared - I didn’t go lo-tech and I didn’t have a solid implementation intention.

Before both and after both travels I quickly got back to the 70’s in the SRHI.

Does this blow my hypothesis out of the water? I’ll have to keep looking into it.

It is interesting to note that in the first iteration of my writing habit using 750 words, I got to the 70s on day 50 (though at the time I wasn’t taking the SRHI every day - it was more like once a week, if that). And this most recent iteration of the writing habit really did seem to stretch out a lot longer than I would have thought it would. I’m guessing this had to do with the travels and gaps in recording.

This graph might be particularly useful to try to analyze how gaps might stretch out a habit. AND it could be useful to analyze how long it takes for regular habits to become solid superhabits over 80 on the SRHI.

Day 290 & Writing Habit Update - Am I Ready to Declare Superhabit Status?

Day 290 Record Keeping
Day 259 Fixed Meditation 
Day 205 Bodyweight Exercise  (3 bridges, 3 dragon lifts)
Day 132 Writing = 80 (editing meditation book)
Day 305 Eating = 67
Day 62 Work = 65
Great sleep, great wakeup. Trying to work more on the dragon lift - the last part of the dragon flag. Though I can get up onto my shoulders it’s still difficult to maintain enough ab contraction to stay level  - I feel working on the dragon lift will help with that.

Writing Habit Update - Am I ready to Declare Superhabit Status?

Writing appears to have reached superhabit status.

I am concerned about making it official. I had a week of continual superhabit status writing (two weeks ago)- but that was because of NaNoWriMo. Now I’m doing mostly editing.

One side of me says it might be best to wait until I can take the SRHI for a week of regular writing.

The other side of me says - that’s just negative thinking! I kicked ass on NaNoWriMo - that’s not a walk in the park, that’s taking the habit to it’s limits! And editing involves a lot of writing as well - that’s a special project, but it’s also taking it further. And I’ve been 80 and above for almost a week on that as well.

I’m going to think about it.

Also - a great idea is to do alternating cycles - just like my bodyweight workouts. One day writing, the other day polishing and editing. That would be amazing. And if I can include pitching in the cycle I’d pretty much have my freelance work life taken care of.

Feeling pretty good about that writing habit!

Old School Habits: Habituation Notes from Highschool

I’ve been obsessed with habit formation for a long time. I remember trying to encode habits in middle school.

Yesterday when I was cleaning out my parent’s garage I found a bunch of old schedulers from high school (1994, 1995, 1997)….and it has been really interesting reading these again!

Here I basically talk about how I need to set habits - and interestingly enough I do the exact same thing I did in the first iteration of this project - start one task, then add another after a week. This obviously doesn’t work very well.

The check-list variant of habit formation. Not really that much different than what I do now.

A more robust iteration of the checklist.

Here you see more of a strategy of regimentation.

Again, very cool to see this, but it really underscores the importance of something like the SRHI to gauge the strength of the habits. It also underscores the need of a more robust program to keep up with all this, as well as a slower progression.

In the last picture I’m really going after a lot of things, but because I didn’t understand how willpower/endurance works, it was inevitable that, despite my ambition, I would fail.

I remember doing this a lot - going through eternal cycles of trying desperately to form a bunch of solid habits, forgetting, remembering a month or so down the line, and then going back to the same tasks. I felt after every cycle that if I just wanted it MORE, I’d eventually succeed. Which is often why the next cycle would be even more ambitious and encompass more tasks.

It’s also interesting to note how similar the activities were - waking up early, meditating, exercise, music….these are things I STILL want to master…only now I have a much better understanding on how to do so. 

Oddly enough looking back I feel really good about this project. I see exactly what I did wrong and I’m glad I finally zoned in on this old interest of mine, to research and experiment on it, and to do it right.

The Science of Suffering →

Why do some people cope with trauma better than others? We’re finally beginning to understand.

A great article that discusses the possibility that historic trauma and anxiety changes brain structure and can be inherited, predisposing the next generation to have more problems.

Recently I’ve been really noticing how anxious my mother is. I suppose it has come to the forefront because I’ve been really working on it all year in my own practices in meditation. She mentioned before that she must have gotten it from her own parents.

My feelings in interacting with her with regards to the article is that the opposite is also true - that meditative practices can change the structures in the brain. And I find this to be much more satisfying an option than pursuing drugs to combat the changes in the brain.

In discussing her anxiety, I tried to come up with a series of steps to follow. And this isn’t just for her - I want to come up with a program for anyone, because I personally know how debilitating anxiety can be - you get stuck in well worn roads of thought for so long you don’t even realize that what you’re doing is abnormal. Here’s a run down of what I suggested:

1. Record. In recording we understand the paths we take and just how abnormal they are. We also distance ourselves from the anxiety.

2. Practice specific techniques regularly - relaxation through Vipassana noting technique, physical relaxation, tantric transformative energy technique, the modulating future expectations technique, etc.

3. Practice the techniques daily, using a tiny habit formation, making small in-roads like any habit

4. Push the practice by bringing up anxiety and quelling it

Now this isn’t the final form of a complete practice. There are still a lot of questions - should you practice recording just an hour a day? Because it is quite difficult to do this all the time. How do you best habituate a trigger-response - that is, a continual habit?

I believe that the answers will come through experimenting with any continual habit. So I am quite excited to try something not as personal and central to my being as emotional control. Like posture or something totally random. But it is a seed for a program to remove incessant anxiety.

Future Personal Finance Habit Ideas

I recently came across a Khan Academy link:

https://www.bettermoneyhabits.com/index.html
Khan is apparently joining up with Bank of America to promote better finance habits. Khan Academy is one of many online resources I want to explore to record, keep track, and optimize my finances. It’s something I know many people have problems with, but I feel it’s something that people just put off, convincing themselves it’ll get taken care of “one day.”

This is like so many habits that fall through the cracks. But with this, it’s about money, and in saving correctly it behooves you to start early.

The personal subreddit is another resource, one that comes up on my main Reddit feed. And there are a series of threads on people panicking about what to do with debt over their head, or even more moderate threads on saving - but in either case immediacy seems to be the main thrust of the advice.

I haven’t researched it yet, but I’ve heard several pieces of advice on Reddit that involve just recording everything. And that’s probably where I would start.

It’s hilarious that in this day and age of the internet there are so many resources freely available, yet people seemed to be utterly incapable of making use of them. There’s just too much out there, and consistency and focus becomes more and more of a problem. We have the knowledge but thoroughly grasping it all has escaped us. Which makes this project all the more vital.

Forming Record Keeping as a Habit

Lydia wants to start record keeping in order to cement her habits. She’s been trying to keep up with a habit by skipping over the recording, and she’s admitted that it doesn’t really work well for her.

When I started this project for real (the third time), I decided that I was going to begin only with record keeping. In my mind, forming a habit of recording habits is the trunk and roots of a tree of skills. And though it seems tedious to JUST do that, it’s the process that, when properly cemented, is where all other branches of the tree arise.

But Lydia’s hesitancy is understandable. I don’t want to advise people to sit there for 2 months doing nothing but recording nothing…just recording the process of recording. It makes sense theoretically - record keeping is something that takes very little time but is often overlooked - like most quality habits. Flossing, doing crunches, etc take very little time, but over time are dropped. Even the researchers have problems getting their test subjects to take the SRHI regularly.

As we were talking I further backed up forming the record keeping habit slowly. There is a maddening tendency while doing it - you have so much willpower right NOW, but you feel like you’re doing nothing. The problem is that willpower really doesn’t matter. Going to the gym once and having a fantastic focused workout doesn’t matter at all if it’s not extended for a long time. Endurance is the key to lasting change.

The other argument is that once it’s developed it’s yours presumably for life. So yeah you might take 2 months to develop it, but isn’t that worth it if you’re going to resting other habits on top of it? Isn’t it worth it if it’s cemented forever?

Despite all this, it still doesn’t sit well with me, especially when it comes to giving advice. “First, go record recording for 2 months” just doesn’t fly off the tongue. I can hear people just ignoring this first step anyway - god knows I would if I heard that a few years ago. Is there any way to compress two habits - one of recording and another habit - so that it at least feels like you’re doing something in the beginning?

I’m all for adding two habits at once if they’re both tiny - the endurance threshold lowers so it’s easier to keep it up to make them both habits. Lydia suggested automating the recording process. A lot of what takes time is adding up all the scores - what if it was all automated?

That level of programming knowledge, though basic, just happens to be far more advanced than what I can accomplish.  Lydia is working on a simple spreadsheet that will tally scores.

But what if you could go further? Say a click-able list of questions that tallies your score and automatically records it onto a spreadsheet with all your habits with a date stamp. And the date keeps rolling - so if you don’t do the questionnaire it continues to mark it as an absence - oddly enough a big problem I’ve had is counting and making sure my missed days are accounted for. I often get quite confused trying to straighten out my numerical mess ups.

If you could have a streamlined system like this I believe the habit would be successfully “tiny-fied” - and adding it together with something like doing two pushups a day would be feasible. And furthermore, it would be palatable as an overall program for general self improvement.

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.

Mental Contrasting →

http://happierhuman.com/mental-contrasting/

A very interesting technique applicable to the project - one I believe was tacitly described and advocated in Self Discipline in 10 Days

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.