It’s Day 169 of my project.

My once rock solid habit, 750 words, is kind’ve in shambles, as is my new kettle bell/stretching/walking habit.

I’ve been sick for a long time, my rib hurts from coughing, I’ve been traveling, and my close friend died.

But I’m still moving forward.

The point of this whole habit thing isn’t to do things under the right circumstances. It’s to make actions so a part of who you are that you do them through any circumstances.

That being said, looking at my records, there’s good and bad. Despite my last post, I didn’t miss out on a month of habits - it was less than two weeks. BUT, I have been very sketchy in my consistency during the last few weeks.

This is worrisome because I’m at the point where I was supposed to start my 3rd habit, Flossing. But since my previous two habits are not consistent, I’ve decided to put it off for two weeks. I’m a little at a loss as to what to do.

I haven’t taken the SRHI again - I think I’ll do it after one more week and see how stable the habits are. Right now I’ve been so sketchy that I think my SRHI will not really be consistent - I know it generally has a high test retest capacity, but at this point I think scores will be all over the place. I want to have an amount of consistency in order to determine whether or not I should move on.

I’m hoping that there is an elasticity to habits - that once a habit has “set” it is easier to get back into the rhythm. Which is great for 750 words. But I don’t know if my exercise habit has fully set. If it hasn’t, I’ll rely on the SRHI to know when to move on to flossing.

On a larger note, I’m wondering whether or not this is what I should expect in the future. Will the turbulence of getting near the half way mark of habit 5 wreck havoc on the solidity of habits 1 through 4? Does adding a habit by its very nature interrupt other habits?

It seems counterintuitive - a habit is ideally an independent entity that has by repetition bored a pathway all of its own into the subconscious, one that is somehow self-sustaining. Previous habits haven’t interfered with older habits, have they?

But now that I think of it, if I encounter some sort of high stress it does interfere with habits - I’ll sometimes skip showers if I feel some sort of life trauma. My eating habits will change, I’ll tend not to put on my contacts. But once the stressful period is over, my habits snap back.

Is inculcating a new habit the equivalent of a “life trauma”? We’ll just have to see as my project continues…