Delayed Onset Willpower/Endurance Drain

In the post entitled “Why Do Depletion Days Happen?” I asked the question - why do I have some low willpower/endurance days?

There must be a reason. And in the post entitled “Right on Schedule: Emotional Breakdowns a Week into New Habits” I talk about noticing a trend in emotional fluctuations (normally combined with low willpower/endurance) when exerting discipline to start a new habit.

Lydia has noticed that this also occurs the second week of really pushing a habit. In fact, a lot of my recent questions has to the efficacy of the entirety of the project could be laid at this door. After all, I had been roughly a week into the DiSSS protocol for writing when I essentially had a melt down.

But with my recent travel I’ve also noticed that in the past I’d often have the wherewithal to perform habits while traveling but would be exhausted the day or two after even when I had plenty of time to do them.

I’ll call this Delayed Endurance Drain. What is this? The theory is that if we use the engine metaphor, where forward momentum equals habits, and mastery, drag is caused by higher degrees of Endurance that overwork the system’s threshold. Too much, and drag forces (ego depletion, endurance depletion, negative emotions) come into play.

In this case the endurance load takes a while to settle. For a new habit, it may be week two, as it seems to be the case for pushing a new skill towards mastery. For travel, it’s the day after that the load settles, causing setbacks.

What’s this mean? Protocols should be enabled during these breaking points - lowered thresholds, or even a strategic planned “weekend” for those days to conserve strength.

Day 346

Day 346 Record Keeping
Day 315 Fixed Meditation
Day 261 Bodyweight Exercise (5 typewriter pushups)
Day 188 Writing (69 words)
Day 361 Eating = 75
Day 118 Work = 42
Great sleep, great wakeup. Incredibly ego depleted. Feeling of the need to do so many things that I feel like drowning. Very depressed. A relatively small incident got me very down. Feeling that my project is breaking a part. Also have that feeling of panic - like I need to have had so many habits down years ago. This last one is especially familiar and dangerous, because in the past it had me chasing projects I couldn’t finish and abandoning others.

Day 345 & Habit Depression

Day 345 Record Keeping
Day 314 Fixed Meditation
Day 260 Bodyweight Exercise (wall walk down walk up bridges)
Day 187 Writing (97 words)
Day 360 Eating = 69
Day 117 Work = 50
Great sleep, great wakeup. Incredibly ego depleted. Battling massive amounts of depression and emotional exhaustion. I feel as though no matter how much I try to do an overwhelming mountain of weight is poised above to crush me screaming “You’re a failure!” and the worst part is I start to believe it. 

Habit Depression

I’ve practiced my meditation multiple times today, and I’m trying to disassociate myself from the power of the emotion. A part of it is how difficult it is to do my work habit - it’s like pulling teeth, and I think it’s because I’m holding myself to 2 hours per day. If it were any other habit I would start with 20 minutes - a ludicrously easy habit. But somehow making it ok to do 20 minutes isn’t enough - I feel the weight AND how much work I have to do on top of that - pitching, writing, discharging PR debts.

When I feel this it combines with my anxiety over this project. Am I making any progress here at all? Am I doing anything unique. I’m reading a book about a similar topic that skims the bare minimum of interactive journalism - she did something for a year and wrote about it. Books like this are all over the place now - what’s sad is that I genuinely love this style of writing. Unfortunately this lady, and many like her, are just pumping out crap - they’re doing the bare minimum to get published, and moving on without a care in the world.

One year is nothing for this project. As I approach it I feel torn a part - should I be marketing this blog? Should I make it more click-able? I probably should if I want any of this work to see the light of day. But I can’t… I need to do it my way…but oh god today it’s just so depressing. I have this stone in my stomach - a feeling like no matter how far I get with this, I won’t be able to sell it, and I’ll have to watch while others like this lady sail past me with crap and a New York Times Bestseller.

I have to remember that I’ve had these breaking points before, where my endurance was stretched, where I fell into that feeling of churning in the mud, exerting everything and feeling like I’m getting absolutely nowhere. I’m going to do a few more meditative techniques, take a break, look over old similar times in my blog, and try my best to get through this. 

When I have moments of distance, I can see that these feelings are the battle. And I have to believe that afterwards I’ll get to habit flow, where worry-free steady improvement stretches out in front of me as far as the eyes can see.

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.