Apps that Need Reviewing

I recently encountered a few devices/apps that deal with habit formation and self regulation. I really want to review them in the future. Here are two recent ones:

Be Still: An app that helps structure prayer time

Pavlock: A “fitbit” like device that uses shocks and other positive and negative reinforcement to help change habits

Be still is intriguing because I do feel that habituation is a process that can be applied to all spirituality - not just eastern meditation. I think it can be used for daily prayer, reflection, or scriptural study.

Pavlock is intriguing because I really haven’t been able to implement negative or positive reinforcement in any way. And I think it’s something I’d like to incorporate into this plan

Day 207 & Cyclical Depression and Work as a Habit

Day 207 Record Keeping
Day 175 Fixed Meditation (42 - 1:40)
Day 121 Bodyweight Exercise  (back stretches, 2x6 diamond pushups, 2x8 bent knee inverted rows)
Day 48 Writing = 68
Day 221 Eating = 79
Great sleep, great wakeup. Back is still out of wack - just doing stretches again. Meditation was interesting. My single pointedness was more sustained but it would dissolve rather than shift focus to another point or object. Eating continues to be on point despite not officially continuing my no bread challenge - I’m still taking pictures of food, just not posting it much.

Cyclical Depression
The last two days I’ve been going through immense mood swings. Yesterday I had a series of instances of depression that lasted almost the entire day. It would shift back and forth between depression and irritation at random events and people. This anger would eventually shift inwards into depression.

The quality of the emotion was interesting as well - I found it hard to get out of the mood despite employing multiple techniques. I felt like a small child, unable to control my emotions.

What’s interesting about this in light of this project is that I get the feeling I’ve experienced this before. It feels cyclical. And it almost seems like it has to do with a particular phase of my project.

Over the last week I’ve had good news and bad news with work. My initial anger seems to stem from work - and it’s that particular cocktail of frustration, sadness, tiredness, and helplessness at progression that is a hallmark of ego or endurance depletion.

And indeed if I look back, I did have a particular struggle with work this last week. I’ve been trying to do 2 hours of a certain task, and though I’ve struggled mightily with it, last week was really the first time I accomplished the task - and it took a lot out of me.

Work as a Habit
It’s interesting that there really isn’t anything that isn’t a part of this project. The finite amount of will or endurance I have doesn’t really care about what I want to include - work problems inevitably leak over into problems with discipline with the entire project. So though I do not record my automaticity with work it probably should be included.

I think a lot of things preclude this psychologically/socially. Of course I don’t want to include it - it’s work - presumably I have that pretty automatic. And what a shame it is to not have it down pat!

But sadly, as a freelancer it’s a constant struggle, and one that is allowed to be pretty sporadic. And it seems to be struggle that’s pretty universal amongst freelancers. Also, how many people with 9-5 jobs can really prove that it’s a habit, and not something they drag themselves to. After all, repetition does not guarantee habituation.

I’m working on this with my daily writing - but perhaps I should seriously consider this in other factors of my daily work.

Day 25 and Lower Willpower=More Habits?

SRHI = 35

Great night sleep, somewhat groggy wakeup

Absolutely completely forgot to do this yesterday. It is shocking how it just completely slipped my mind. Needless to say all the questions about if “you feel weird NOT doing the task” on the SRHI were ranked at “strongly disagree”.

Lower Willpower and Other Habits

I’ve been following a basic logic that deliberately cultivating a habit through recording lowers my overall general discipline. This is the reason I changed from doing multiple habits to cultivating them just one at a time.

While I’ve been deliberately keeping up with this “record-keeping” habit I’ve almost miraculously been eating perfectly well. Eating right was a habit that I wanted to cultivate later on down the line. But yet, right now, and for the last month, it’s been fantastic.

Now a part of this is the location I’m living - it’s a little town in Florianopolis, Brazil that’s in the middle of nowhere. There aren’t really that many restaurants etc. But I could, if I wanted get pasta and bread at the local store or grab pizza all the time (there’s a fantastic pizzeria nearby). I could, and have in the past, just as easily eat bad.

Just to go out on a limb and freely brainstorm - what if the drain from deliberate practice actually causes more to happen? What if deliberate habituation actually causes a window where non-deliberate habituation could happen?

I don’t know why this would happen. Maybe lowering willpower actually opens up the parts of the brain that allow habituation to occur. In the past I remember developing bad habits  - which makes sense during this time of weakened willpower - but maybe it’s more widespread than that.

Anyway, just something to watch out for in the future.

Day 11 and Habituation is not Mastery

SRHI=46

Great sleep, woke up groggy and soar

Habituation is not Mastery
This is one point I’d like to underscore what with my obsession with habits. A habit does not mean you’ve mastered a skill. Some habits are a win in and of themselves - if you eat right, you are going to reap the rewards. The same goes for exercise in losing weight and things like flossing.

But the same does not go for many skills - i.e. learning a musical instrument, becoming functionally strong, learning an art, etc. At some point you’re going to get stuck in a plateau where you habitually practice a task but do not progress. It’s natural to practice parts of the skill you feel most comfortable with but not actual aspects that you have to work on to become better.

Busting through these phases involves mental anguish and may involve changing up your practices. But that’s all in the future and there is no doubt I’ll have to talk about methods to bust through plateaus. But for me, the first step in that long walk towards skill acquisition is forming the bracketed period of time in which you practice.

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.