Day 965 & Finished Book Proposal

Day 965 Record Keeping
Weekend Habits (Travel Mode)

Day 351 Exercise (walking tour)
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Eating
Day 187 Food Recording
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Early to Rise
Day 120 Water
Day 120 Sleep Recording (1|8:30|)
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Ok sleep, good wakeup. 

FINISHED BOOK PROPOSAL. 

This is a rather huge thing for me, not because it’s a proposal, and furthers my hopes as a writer, but because of how improved behaviors played into its completion. 

I had no idea how to do this. I learned how to do a competitive analysis, how to get statistics, and how to write marketing-type copy - all of which were incredibly difficult for me. I didn’t want to do it, but I kept moving forward, even if it was a slow pace. 

I read multiple books and websites. I took multiple online courses, including an interactive one (I hate those and have a history of not sticking with them). With my Gotham Writer’s Course I finished the first course with homework and necessary class interactions in close to a decade. And I did it while not procrastinating at all - every day, bit by bit, I waded through it, despite incredibly high amounts of anxiety.

I also fought perfectionism - the urge to, at every section, get lost in a labyrinth of research. That was equally as difficult - realizing when I was doing it and forcing myself to move on.

And I continued working through trips, visits from friends, while maintaining and creating other routines. It’s taken me….wow, I suppose since NaNoWriMo - so almost 10 months.  And it all grew from 750 words and in the most recent iteration, a 50 word-a-day habit.

Day 23 and Don't Break the Chain

SRHI=44

Great night sleep, good wakeup

Don’t Break the Chain is a simple, minimalistic online attempt at habit formation, based on a technique allegedly used by Jerry Seinfeld. He would post up a big calendar, and draw a big red X through every day he wrote. The only thing he had to worry about is, well -  not breaking the chain.

This Lifehacker post talks about applying it to more than just writing comedy. The idea is to do little bits of a project every day, and that is cumulatively more helpful that short intense bursts that may not lead anywhere. 

I definitely like it as a simple motivator and its relationship to habit formation. 750 words uses this by keeping track of the unbroken chain of days you have written - and at large amounts you get special badges. And the fact Fitocracy doesn’t do this is one of the things I dislike about it.

What I don’t like is that it is natural to miss days, and the next day, getting back on the bandwagon is incredibly difficult. If missing days is an inevitable, then getting back to the routine to continue the action is the most critical point of the entire endeavor - and it should be rewarded.

Our habits and our completion of goals is more contingent on what we do in our moments of weakness than on the moments of strength.

When we are we weak and “break the chain” that is the point when all our demons come out, telling us that it’s not worth doing anymore, that we can give up because we’ve already given up, that we are now justified in failure. 

I feel an optimal gamified program has to reward not just good behavior, but good behavior in weakness. That truth is the heart of all difficult endeavors.

Day 8, Fitocracy vs 750words

SRHI=41
Finally a good night of sleep

I was thinking about Fitocracy vs 750Words and I realized that there just isn’t the same amount of addiction. Don’t get me wrong, Fitocracy is a great website, but for some reason it doesn’t pull me as much. And I think the main reason is that there aren’t enough badges.

If I have a personal best, I’ll get an achievement but I won’t get one if I, say, workout 20 days in a row (as far as I know). To me that emphasizes achievement over overall fitness - i.e. habituation.

It’s the same tired old paradigm of doing more equalling more recognition. Which is great if you’re already an active person. But to, say, switch from writing occasionally to becoming a daily writer, you need achievements that addict you to streaks of writing, which 750 words does really well.

And this isn’t just about paradigms - though I do believe that the distinction is important - it’s far more practical. 750 words is just more addicting because there’s an incentive for you to play every day, whereas I feel that high fades with Fitocracy.

I’m sure that For the Win has something to say about this, but I’m too lazy to look up a reference right now.

Flu

I’ve been horribly sick with the flu for the last month.

My two habits - 750 words and exercising - petered out to nothing. But I want to specifically document my failures as well as when things are on track.

I found that the first thing to go was the documentation of my habits. I started having problems trying to figure out when I had instances of doing or not doing. This was difficult because I had just pegged all my charts based on the number of days I had been doing the habit - I’ve since updated this so I include the date, which I should’ve done in the beginning.

Once I started to lose track of swaths of the documentation, it became harder and harder to get back on track with … keeping track of it all.

I feel better today - I did my 750 words and did my workout. But here are a few questions:

1. Does missing a swath…like a month…adversely effect a habit that has been fully formed like 750 words?

2. Does missing a month adversely effect a habit in the process of being formed, like my exercise habit?

3. I can imagine getting back into the rhythm of 750 words, a fully formed habit. But do I have to completely restart my kettle bell habit?

I need to do a check with the SRHI to see where I’m at at both of these. I also feel that figuring out where that score is at quarter points would be helpful in case this happens again. That way I’ll be able to generally see if where I should be on any given habit at each quarter point, and if I’ve regressed if I miss a swath of instances. 

Because emergencies, sicknesses, etc do happen and in order to have a truly robust program, I need to be able to incorporate all these mess-ups and hopefully figure out methods to counter their impact.