The Science of Self-Help

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Day 1678

Day 1678 Record Keeping
Day 1650 Fixed Meditation (10 jhana, 10 gratitude, 10 metta, 10 intro Houston Zen Center sit)
Day 1524 Writing (3, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1063 Exercise (20 min walking/running, 15 min biking, 15 min elliptical)

Day 804 Mobility/Stretching (15 min, anterior and interior shin smash)
Day 114 Flossing (ALL TEETH!)


Bad sleep. Checked out the Houston Zen Center, which is quite close to where I live. They had an intro talk with a 10 min sit.

I’m beginning to think that there is this weird connection with bifurcating habits into small cross trained bits and increases in overall outputs. I understand how that would work - I think I was thinking about increasing habit loads as a matter of willpower when it was more about boredom and attention. When I do one type of cardio for 45 minutes it’s boring and I can’t do it. But when I break it up, it’s new, it’s interesting, much like the Novelty Affect or gamification, it just keeps my attention.

But further than that, it seems to have a system wide impact. I naturally increased mobility and flossing without really intending to. I shall monitor this to see if it continues, but it’s definitely an interesting result, and one that could offer an answer to what I long considered the missing link to my system.

I am curious in the future of really zoning in to the ecology of going from super habit to habit terminus. There really isn’t often that much to go after a tiny habit. Flossing with all teeth vs flossing 4 teeth isn’t that much of a difference. And for meditation or exercise, you really wouldn’t want to do more than 45 minutes or an hour of each. So zooming in to what it feels like increasing output is important, even though I’d be really fumbling as to metrics and even definitions of things like willpower versus attention or energy.