Day 160 & Site Format

Day 160 Record Keeping SRHI = 81
Day 128 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 83
Day 74 Bodyweight Exercise SRHI= 79 (3 bridges, 1 min side and decline planks)
Day 1 Writing = 12
Day 174 Eating SRHI = 62
Good sleep, ok wakeup. Great mood yesterday. 

Site Format
A friend of mine who is interested in this blog made a joke yesterday - that he was trying to form a habit in order to read it!

This makes complete sense - the blog definitely isn’t structured for ease of reading. What I’d like to do is see if tumblr has different layout options. Ideally I’d want a “Start Here” section, with a writeup outlining the project, followed by links to key posts. I’d like another section on my graphs. And perhaps another on links to key academic articles, like Verplanken’s SRHI or Lally’s 21 days do not a habit make article.

I was initially thinking about separating out my daily log, but I’m leaning against that. In my mind it helps underscore that this is a work in progress, it’s one being done right now, and that theory does not trump the actual practice. 

I’m hoping I can change this format fairly soon without too many problems, but I won’t even attempt it until I’ve moved (t-minus 6 days).

Day 138 & Burpee Habit Update

Day 138 Record Keeping SRHI = 77
Day 106 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 81
Day 52 Burpee SRHI= 70 (1x8)
Day 152 Eating SRHI = 46  
Good sleep, ok wakeup. Depressed last night.

Burpee Habit Update

My burpee habit today is an SRHI of 70. Of course I need to see if this stabilizes, but this at least nominally makes it a habit. 

And this is surprising. From reading Lally’s experiments, I expected anything related to working out to take a significant amount of time. If I remember correctly, she concluded by extending her graph that such things would take about 250 days to achieve habituation.

I’d be curious to see what the differences were with her experiment and what I’m doing. I’m also curious to see if my burpee habit is indeed at a habituation level or not. 

My theory is that it’s not. The numbers in this habit have been remarkably consistent - and even while traveling I only missed doing them once, maybe twice. So in effect, there was no “danger zone.”

So either the danger zone is coming, or by dropping my exercise into a BJ Fogg approved Tinyhabit (my travel protocol was to do only 2 reps) I somehow skirted the danger zone. That is really exciting.

Also I’m wondering if simply doing the habit in changing circumstances sped up the lifecycle of the habit, something I feel is highly plausible. It certainly seemed to supercharge my fixed meditation and my record keeping. Though for these it might have also been the fact they’re just older habits.

These are interesting to note, because it provides at least some data when it comes to SRHI hacking - the ideal is that this project provides a more  streamlined approach to habit formation.

Day 91, Eating and Burpee Status Update

Day 91 Record Keeping SRHI = 70
Day 59 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 72
Day 5 Burpee SRHI= 42
Day 105 Eating SRHI = 58
Good night sleep, great wakeup.

Eating and Burpee Status

I feel generally back on track with eating. Will monitor carefully, because now I’m in uncharted territory - I’ve done eating habits and diets for 3 months, never for more, so this is really quite exciting. Yesterday I was thinking of habits that would help. I had in mind BJ Fogg’s Tinyhabits. Tinyhabits seem to work by lowering the threshold needed to endure a habit until it reaches full habituation. Hence his “brush one tooth” mentality.

What are some individual habits that make up eating right? I came up with several - making a salad or an omelette every morning. Cutting out anything but water. A shopping habit, since a lot of cheating involves not having material for cooking on hand. A cooking habit. Eating one clean meal a day. 

I’m thinking of these because, if my theory is correct, I’ll be sorely tested in these next three months. My theory that the universe conspires to throw a wrench in habits seems to be true for this one as I will be traveling for three weeks and will have to have a “travel protocol.” Again, the point isn’t perfection - the point is just surviving this period.

Also, I can’t help thinking about an ideal - if I were to do it again or teach someone else how to eat right, I’d definitely start with smaller steps - eating right is just way too complicated and is made up of many small habits. Doing it all it once seems highly untenable. But I’ve gotten this far, might as well charge on ahead.

I initially thought that I’d have to only do one habit at a time. And I still think this is generally a good idea. But with Tinyhabits, I have a sense that it’s not necessary. Which is why I’m continuing my burpee habit.

Lally’s graph extension indicated 250 days for a basic exercise habit. But employing implementation intention combined with the lightened Endurance load, I really feel it’s going to take a lot less time to achieve automaticity.  Which brings up another issue…

If these techniques change the full lifecycle of a habit, then it’s just one more variable that’s on a sliding scale. We’ll see, but it might be just that much more difficult to come up with a concise equation.

Day 90 & Eating Danger Zone

Day 90 Record Keeping SRHI = 71
Day 58 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 73
Day 4 Burpee SRHI= 22
Day 104 Eating SRHI = 30 - Failed to do yesterday
Bad night sleep, great wakeup.

Eating Danger Zone

With a three day bad eating streak and an all-time low in my SRHI my eating habit, which was absolutely steady for three months, has faltered badly. Before I had mused why 12 weeks was such a common denominator for 3 month transformations and clean eating regimes. In previous diets I’ve only lasted 3 months - sometimes a few weeks longer, other times a few weeks shorter. In those times I felt that feeling of just being sick of it, which to me is the signal for what I’ll call Endurance Depletion.

My theory is this time coincides with the Danger Zone of my Quarter Mark Theory. As an aside, this would put the entire life cycle for a good eating habit to be almost an entire year at 360 days (if we calculate from 90 days as the quarter mark). This, to me, makes sense. from Phillippa Lally’s graph, she extrapolated 250 or so days for the completion of an exercise habit. And I think of eating habits as being more involved - the eating habit is continual, performed several times in a day under different circumstances while an exercise habit is usually made once.

So, what can I do? Well for one, it’s good that I’m not recording it. Record keeping is my first line of defense for making it through because it gives you a bit of distance, and shows you just how bad  your doing in your habit. Without recording, the tendency for me is just to absently forget. It doesn’t explode, it just quietly fizzles out, almost before you realize it. When attempting habit formation as a kid (I used to have charts, just not as detailed as this) I’d remember weeks later.

I’m trying to decide if this is enough, or if I need other tools. Perhaps more cheats? Perhaps telling myself I need to eat clean once a day, then I can cheat the rest? 

The main point isn’t to perform the task perfectly - and this is a point I continually lose track of. It’s to survive this period (another 3 months - ugh!) in any way possible. Even if I come out limping and ragged on the other end, my prediction is that afterwards it gets easier.

This phase has also come with an emotional toll. I’m noticing a moodiness with a chance of depression. Things frustrate me easier, and I get down in life in general. This is, in my mind, the hallmark of Endurance Depletion - a general malaise. 

Day 19, Gaps in Record Keeping

SRHI = 28

Great night sleep, great wakeup with no grogginess.

So this is the part I was waiting on - the inevitable place in the cycle of a habit where it goes to crap. The last few days I didn’t record. But not only did I not record my habits - I lost track of the non-recording - I had no idea 3 days were lost!

This of course knocked my SRHI down - all those questions like “Do you find it weird when you DON’T do the action?” had to be scored really low.

Personally I think this shows that Philippa Lally’s conclusion that you get the most out of the first few days out of a habit is wrong. Of course I’ll need more info - but I don’t believe that the smooth curve she gets out of her data sets is correct. There is no way that it just gets easier and easier the more you do a task - you inevitably get a crash where you are knocked down - and that’s the point where most people give up on a habit. And there are a lot of broken attempts at habits out there.

This makes record keeping a vital habit - from what I’ve read she didn’t get the full amount of data she needed because people kept not recording it.

All I can do in MY project is to keep chugging along. By my quarter mark theory (that habits get extremely difficult from a quarter to the halfway mark in their lifecycle) I stopped at day 16, so midway would be about day 30, and the full habit cycle will be 60 days.