Day 804 Record Keeping
Day 776 Fixed Meditation (9 min)
Day 650 Writing
Day 190 Rowing (30 min/5200 m)
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Eating
Day 28 Pantry Check (66)
Day 26 Recording (77)
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Great sleep, great wakeup. Low performance in meditation, don’t really know what happened other than I kept falling asleep. Better performance in rowing. Last night I finished doing a read of Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit. Have a bunch of bookmarks I want to go through before writing up my thoughts.
Looks like Dr. Duckworth has updated her page, no doubt in advance of her book - “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” which JUST came out a few days ago (I’ll be reading it ASAP.
This link is an automated Grit Scale evaluation, which is really handy in this format.
This time, I scored a 4.30 out of 5.0, a big improvement from my last score of 3.83
I randomly came across this and wondered…”what in the world is an imagination institute?” - The Imagination Institute’s mission is “measurement, growth, and improvement of imagination across all sectors of society”.
What interested me is their grants competition which seeks to “lay the foundation for the long-term development of an “Imagination Quotient” and how to build imagination.”
This sounds an awful like what this project is seeking to do with habits and self improvement in general. It joins other groups like Duckworth’s lab for grit and other labs for habituation (like BJ Fogg’s TinyHabit program) in attempting to quantify and measure what were previously thought of as vagaries of the mind.
I love it. But unlike habit formation, their grants are being offered from $150,000 - $200,000!!! Up to 15 of them!
I suppose imagination is a sexier idea than habit formation, because I don’t see that much money being offered up to habit researchers. Though Duckworth did get a MacArthur “Genius” Grant…..I wonder if I could apply for a grant?
Hmm….
Day 372 Record Keeping
Day 341 Fixed Meditation (brought up neg emot to quell - HARD)
Day 287 Bodyweight Exercise (bridges - HARD)
Day 214 Writing (didn’t do - very difficult to summon up willpower)
Day 387 Eating = 75
Day 22 Dynamic Meditation = 70 (30 minutes)
Great sleep, great wakeup. Very sore. This is a good thing, a reflection of pushing my workout habit. Unfortunately my willpower was very depleted today.
Increased Speed of Habit Formation
Today I talked to Lydia about habit formation. This planning is working for her - she’s recording and flossing, and it seems to be really working for her. She mentioned that her flossing habit is almost a habit at 50 days, and her recording is almost a superhabit at 100 days.
I mentioned that my dynamic meditation is coming quite quickly, and I started to think about it in terms of what it would mean for a habit formula. It seems as though my ability to form habits is increasing (Time to Habituation), and the Grit Scale might just be used to represent that in an equation.
I’ve only taken it three times, but it might behoove me to take it every time I start and achieve a superhabit.
Dynamic Med Notes (30 minutes):
x5 fidgeting or almost fidgeting
x3 an arising of nervousness
Notes: Another spontaneous arising. Makes me think that doing it multiple times in a day will help foster that spontaneity
I had a cheat day and the sugar spike noticeably effectd my mental capacity to keep at a more relaxed level
metaphor: it feels like a solvent - the ability to take an incoming experience and detach that cohesion to my internal mental state.
Just like habit amnesia, I have a dynamic meditation amnesia with this - I’ll forget to observe my thoughts and prevent arisings. It can be very annoying when it doesn’t work out positively, but absorption is a case where I just forget everything and it prevents negative arisings.
Art of doing two things at once is important. It’s very difficult to focus on work and this. Or even watching a tv show and this. Doing three things is almost impossible - I’m hoping this will get to the point where it’s just automatic.
Day 226 Record Keeping
Day 194 Fixed Meditation (53 - 1:20)
Day 140 Bodyweight Exercise (2x8 burpees)
Day 67 Writing = 63
Day 240 Eating = 66
Great sleep, great wakeup.
The Meta Danger Zone
Lydia noticed that I was having particular trouble with my habits over the last few weeks if not a month. She postulated a meta danger zone - if individual habits have a quarter mark crises where the likelihood of quitting is high, then could the project as a whole have the same thing?
At first I dismissed this - my meta habit really is record keeping, and I do notice a correlation in not recording and not doing my other habits. But this doesn’t actually address the skill of habit formation in general.
And this meta identity is something I’ve addressed before when I talked about Duckworth’s Grit Scale. To me the Grit Scale really is a scale at how good you are at mastering long term projects - and in my mind it can be taking as a metric of habit forming ability as well. If the metric improves, then it seems to me the meta skill exists at least on some level.
If this is the case, it would suggest that forming habits itself is a skill - and all skills go through a shaky period - a plateau or a time with steps taken backwards - that is a precursor to mastery.
This is an incredibly positive idea, even if it is illusory. The idea that fluidity and mastery are right behind a wall made incredibly fragile by your efforts makes you want to redouble them. To use weakness as a trigger for continued effort is a great reframe.
Day 103 Record Keeping SRHI = 71
Day 71 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 72
Day 17 Burpee SRHI= 52 (1x6 and another later in the day for fun)
Day 117 Eating SRHI = 59
Good sleep, good wakeup. Got depressed last night, busted past it.
Improved Grit Score
A while back I mentioned Angela Duckworth’s Grit Scale. I took the test, and was not surprised to find that I had exactly average grittiness (3.5 out of 5).
Looking back, I’m actually shocked it wasn’t lower. The questions ask whether or not you complete tasks, or get side tracked, if you switch projects month to month, and if you’ve ever finished a task that took more than a year.
I have always been that guy - the one distracted by whatever excites me most. And I get excited by a lot - the problem is that dabbling doesn’t get me anywhere. I end up having specialized knowledge on many topics, but few skills, much less mastery, of them.
And this continued to be the case until the last few years. With my job I’ve managed to get a modicum of success after years of work. It has really been one of the few things that I’ve displayed true grit in. And that’s not at all surprising given this project came about from wondering why people aren’t good at more than one or two things.
With this habit project, one I’ve been working on for about a year, I’ve faced a lot of setbacks (all my habits have imploded several times). I’ve also started to build things slowly - in 4 more day I’ll have been eating clean for 4 months - blowing away anything I’ve done in the past. I just celebrated 100 consecutive days of recording habits, also a first. This project has forced me to work on sticking with things over time rather than just in bursts.
As such I recognize a close relationship between this skill, what I’m calling Endurance, and what Duckworth calls Grit.
That being said - has this habit formation project changed my Grit? I just took the test again, and found that my Grit is now at 3.83. This might deviate with repeated taking of the test. And it is a small change from 3.5 - but long term change is what Grittiness is all about, isn’t it?
Take the test yourself HERE.