Formalizing Wakeup Walk

Implementation Intention: As soon as I get up I’ll put my clothes on, grab my coffee thermos and notebook, and walk around the block or to the pier. I’ll drink my coffee, and plan my day and do emotional control meditation to positively flip my mood. This meditation will be separate from my formal vipassana/samatha sit.

Tiny Habit and Step Ups: Daily minimum will be once around the block in the sun. Will always attempt emotional meditation, and will include planning, though I think all of it is a Tiny Habit that will not require a step up.

Mental Contrasting:
1) Positive Aspects
The idea of starting my day out on a good note is rather foreign to me - all too often I get up in a pretty bad mood, feeling as though I’m already behind on the day. I think a positive vibe is really important - I usually come back feeling amazing. I think it has many side benefits - potentially better sleep, not feeling like a total shut in, feeling like I’m a part of this city and not a useless habit hamster, and it makes me more likely to get out later in the day rather than feeling scared and wanting to hide. I feel that it energizes me. And it’s something that can replace my failed attempt at getting excited at waking up via my “bacon and water” habit. I also think it will dissuade me from late nights or drinking or eating badly the night before and tie me to a better family of habits. I want to tie myself to great mornings rather than great nights, which will in turn help push me towards a better night time ritual and hopefully better sleep.

2) Obstacles
Rain. I hate going outside in the rain. The first rainy day is not going to be fun. I can counter that by getting a good rain coat in the States when I’m back - I had a great one that was light weight and made me utterly comfortable in bad weather, but I have no idea where it went. I finally got good shoes that are more waterproof - now all I need is more socks. Luckily these are all things easily solved by a few relatively cheap purchases.

Day 1037 & Wakeup Alarm Habit

Day 1037 Record Keeping
Day 1009 Fixed Meditation (10 min)
Day 883 Writing (2/30)
Day 423 Rowing (100 15 lb kb swings, 4x25, Russian style)
Day 164 Mobility/Stretching (back smash, hip smash)
—–
Eating
Day 261 Pantry Check (DiD NOT DO)
Day 259 Food Recording (DID NOT DO)
—
Early to Rise
Day 192 Water (DID NOT DO)
Day 192 Sleep Recording  (12:30|7:40|8:30)
Day 163 Bedtime Curfew
Day 1 Wakeup Alarm 19
–
Good sleep, great wakeup.

Wakeup Alarm Habit
Whelp, I think I’ve unlocked becoming a morning person. Over the course of the last week or so, I’ve casually started setting an alarm 8 hours after I go to sleep. In every case, I’ve automatically woken up about 20 minutes before my alarm goes off. And it didn’t matter when.

It’s important to me that I’m waking up automatically without jerking awake. It’s also really important that I’m getting enough sleep. These things seem to be happening, and they seem to be happening based on things I do the night before. There is something about the act of setting the alarm that seems to make me know I’m going to wakeup to beat the alarm. I’ve always wondered how people who woke up naturally did this. I know I’ve done this while traveling, for fear of missing a flight or something like that, but I never thought I had it in me in regular life. This is a huge huge breakthrough, one I’m going to test out by formalizing the habit.

Implementation Intention
As soon as I record on my iPhone when I’m going to sleep for my Sleep Recording Habit I will set an alarm 8 hours later. This is another habit I’ll record for the previous day’s behavior.

Tiny Habit & Step Ups
It’s already Tiny, and I don’t think any progression is needed. For my Early To Rise family the only progression is the time I go to bed/sleep, and maybe how much time I dither in bed after waking up.

Mental Contrasting
1 positive aspects associated with completing your goal.
I’ll feel better since I associate, right or wrong, a person who has got his “shit together” with someone who gets up early. I’ll be able to feel like I have time in my day rather than feeling that it’s a constant rush. I’ll be able to take my time to do things. I’ll be able to progress in skills that involve time - like meditation or mobilization. I’ll be able to have time to actually do some decompressing should I need to add that later. This will help me accomplish more, do more, and cram more changes and experiences into my day. I won’t have to rush! I’m beginning to actually feel excited about getting up in the morning, something that I haven’t really felt since I was a child. That’s incredible!

2 obstacles:
I think the largest obstacle has nothing to do with this habit - it’s getting away from dithering on the computer to go to bed early. If I over do this habit I think it might cut into my meeting people/going out time, even though that is something I want to change anyway. I need to be very sure to plug in and charge my phone, something I tend not to do since I misplace my charger and especially my wall outlet charger.

Day 651 & The Little Details Make all the Difference - Metrics and Implementation Intention

Day 651 Record Keeping (78)
Day 620 Fixed Meditation
Day 497 Writing (74)
Day 37 Rowing (77)
Great sleep, great wakeup.  

The Little Details Make all the Difference - Metrics and Implementation Intention

I finally got around to measuring my body for a solid metric on weight loss. I have been procrastinating on this for probably a year now. It really reminded me of a talk I recently had with my mother on meditation. I was advising her on how to make it a habit, and told her that the one thing that made all the difference for me was a basic measurement tool - a stop watch. 

One of the first stories I ever read on meditation was a book called Henry Sugar and Six More, a couple of short stories by Roald Dahl. Henry Sugar is a British gentleman who becomes very very good at meditation. His tools were a candle and flame and a stop watch. Ever since reading that story, which must’ve been when I was 10, I thought about doing exactly what he did.

I laughingly told my mom that I had been procrastinating getting a stop watch for well over 2 decades. I told her that since she has a stop watch now (she only procrastinated for a week or two) she was probably going to make faster improvements than I had. But it really is true - we always seem to overlook this key ingredient.

What your skill level is now is an important piece of data - a talisman that shows us that we are indeed improving despite feeling like we are endlessly churning our legs in the mud. It’s what the quantified self movement is all about. It keeps us focused through the danger zones and keeps us moving forward, because we have evidence that we have moved forward. This is particularly key in a habit-centric formulation of self improvement, when you’re doing a task automatically, with no feeling, at least initially, of pushing a skill. 

Another, similarly overlooked talisman is implementation intention, and forming a particularly crisp if-then parameter. I formed one for my writing habit, which has been lagging since I’ve been pushing it lately. Even the most mundane of solid actions can be used to create a fold in the mind that promotes automaticity.

For me, I tend to rest and drink a glass of water after rowing. So my implementation intention now is “after I finish my glass of water after rowing I sit down and start my writing habit.” Pretty easy, but like metrics, I bowl right over it, and later on I wonder why my SRHI scores aren’t improving. And now, I can already see the improvement occurring.

I’ve been writing down little maxims in a book I carry on self improvement. From all of this I’ve extracted two:

Tools and data pertaining to metrics are invaluable to self improvement, but are almost always forgotten

The more precise the implementation intention, the stronger and quicker automaticity ensues.

The Holiday Effect Part 2

Yesterday I described the Holiday Effect, how this time of year tends to really mess with self discipline.

Specifically, a last minute trip to my personal kryptonite, Tex-Mex food.

What I did was use mental contrasting and implementation intention. I also took my phone along and, a la my No Bread Challenge and the Flash Diet, took pictures of the bread, tortillas, etc, that I would have problems with.

 

This went well, and the picture taking really underscored and boosted my willpower. I even, in the last picture, took an appetizer - a breaded and fried stuffed jalapeño, and took it out of it’s breading and ate it. That’s a lot of willpower for the problems I had and described before we went.

Here’s where I can improve:
-Make the implementation more detailed. I didn’t describe how I would treat getting a Margarita, so I ended up getting one and drinking the rest of my dad’s when he couldn’t finish it.
-Ask for more food. I was hungry after sharing fajitas for one, so I ended up eating a little bit of the breading after I ate the de-breaded stuffed jalapeños. After that I was still hungry, and I could have very well just asked for something more in order to be full. The key is eating enough - or at least having enough options - you can always take the rest home, which makes it easier for the next few days. In that way you can think of it as an opportunity in addition to being a challenge.

Again great job - I didn’t eat ANY chips, no tortillas, no rice, maybe half a spoon full of the beans, and none of the sopapilla that they ordered. More than anything implementation intention and the “flash diet” of taking pictures helped. Did mental contrasting really help? I don’t know, but it really helped with underscoring the situation before I went out.

Let’s see how it works the next time - AND it may very well be a great protocol to put into motion when I’m home or visiting friends for the holidays in general.

The Holiday Effect

I just got a text message from my mom:

Can u get back by 6? I think dad wants to go to Los cucos

I was just talking about lapses in willpower caused by friends. But really it’s not just friends - it’s family as well. And this is so natural during the holiday season. I’ll call it the Holiday Effect.

It’s almost like the universe just provided me with a perfect opportunity to practice a protocol to handle this.

There’s nothing wrong with Mexican - it can be great as a high carb day. But Mexican is my kryptonite. I want nachos and flour tortillas. I have so little discipline right now.

But I know how to deal with it in theory. Using my meditations I take several steps back from the problem, and I’m also using blogging to step back. Implementation intention and mental contrasting are techniques that work. I can do this. So….

Implementation Intention:
When I go to Los Cucos tonight I will drink water instead of reaching for chips.

When I go to Los Cucos tonight I will order fajitas or something meat and veggie intensive and tell the waiter I don’t want any tortillas.

Mental Contrasting:
Positives: In nailing my eating I get to lose weight. I can lose fat. I can gain the body I need in order to do other things - like breakdancing and martial arts and more advanced bodyweight exercises like pullups and enjoying travel and take advantage of new experiences that come with that - surfing, hiking, climbing. I will look and feel great, which will increase my confidence so that I can take that energy and invest it in everything else.

I can move on from the eating habit instead of floundering. I can nail it, I can move on, and master all the other skills I need to have the life of my dreams, including writing a book on all this - techniques that will actually help other people improve in their life when it comes to fitness, but also in habit formation in general. And I will be the one who has broken through this skill that humans have yet to master.

Things stopping me: I’m hungry. When I’m hungry my discipline plummets. I love Mexican food. I will think to myself - well, I messed up the last two days, so why not forget this for today and pick it up another day?But I must know that in that path lies the destruction of this entire project. I fear this - I fear falling back into failure, and it’s hilarious because this isn’t as hard as my depression. I know that I can summon up willpower through my meditative techniques. I fear that I will just flounder on in fixing my body, and somehow that fear of moving on makes my flounder on, because I can be secure in knowing that the world is out to get me. Because if it’s out to get me than I have an excuse to not be my best.

Floundering is what everyone does in this - how many people do I know who have learned how to eat right and keep doing it for years at a time, such that it becomes a part of who they are? This is the power of real transformation, and not just floating in these concepts without any real lasting self change. And I’m afraid of being that non-changing person.

These tests always come when you’re at your weakest. But it’s a fantastic opportunity and challenge to show excellence - it’s like jumping ahead of the curve instead of just incrementally advancing. It’s a chance to gain major points if this were a game.

I’ll use this as an experiment, and we’ll see how it goes afterwards.

Day 240 & Back from Destroyed Schedule

Day 240 Record Keeping
Day 208 Fixed Meditation 
Day 154 Bodyweight Exercise  (1x8 burpees)
Day 81 Writing = 62
Day 254 Eating = 63
Day 11 Work = 24
Horrible emotional control today. Back from travels. Back from finally getting my computer fixed. Back from overcoming the inertia of not having recorded in 8 days. My schedule is totally shot from all of this, and I’m rather pissed off about it.

I think the important thing is to keep calm and keep going. Having done so it’s important to analyze what went wrong.

1. I didn’t have a solid implementation intention on how to travel and do my habits.

When I went to England, I thought that I could record and would have time to record. I didn’t. This time in Germany it was a lighter schedule and I had my own room. My computer died. The universe is trying to tell me something - don’t ever trust a computer when traveling - ALWAYS GO LOW TECH.

2. When recovering don’t get overwhelmed.

The process of recovering from time away can get incredibly emotionally claustrophobic. I felt like I had failed and I had 20 things to do. Don’t focus on this. Remember that restarting is the most important thing - the numbers will pick up afterwards. Also focus on one thing at a time - the task right in front of you. So it’s not “I have to do my exercises, my work habit, and my fixed meditation” it should be “I woke up…first thing is my work - let’s do that." 

3. The process is key

It’s easy to think in terms of progress of numbers and the project as small bits - i.e. how fast can I master the habit and form a superhabit. The point of this project isn’t ONE habit - it’s all of them. In forming all of them, I have to realize this is a bigger task than what others before me have done.

One of the things I hated about Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit was that he essentially focused on one thing - not eating sweets at work.  My latest read - Minihabits by Stephen Guise - the author essentially focuses on a few - pushups being the outstanding one that I remember.

A more robust treatment is going to be a lot more difficult.

A useful mental exercise I read once was to look at the trajectory of a process and take it out across time dispassionately. Of COURSE I’m going to fail at this - I’m going to mess it up when it comes to travel, and since I travel a lot this is something I will have to grapple with. Of course computers fail and mess ups are going to happen.

But instead of seeing these as steps back, I need to start viewing them as learning about the whole process - as failure giving me the data to step forward.

The key to this whole project is consistency. The ideal day isn’t one where I perform the best - with 1,000 words or 20 one armed pushups - it’s setting up a day where I hit my daily practice of habits automatically and as fluidly as possible in order to highly increase the percentage of success in anything in the future. And even though it’s what this project is based on, it is so incredibly difficult to focus on this type of process oriented thinking.

Day 137 & Coaching Friends

Day 137 Record Keeping SRHI = 77
Day 105 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 76
Day 51 Burpee SRHI= 68 (1x8)
Day 151 Eating SRHI = 43  
Good sleep, ok wakeup. Depressed last night.

Coaching Friends
Lately I’ve been coaching two friends through some behavioral changes. It’s very intimidating being put in a position where you have the potential to help. And because I care for them I worry about the opposite - messing up.

One friend is trying to cut back on drinking - she gets withdrawals and she really needs to stop. Her doctor told her to cut back without any other advice. An old friend of mine recently died from alcohol-related problems (he had severe withdrawals and was put on medication to help him with it) and to see this happen again is gut wrenching. It also makes me feel incredibly pissed off at the doctor.

Another close friend is going through a really bad breakup. Actually, calling it a bad break up is mild - he’s in an immense amount of pain and is trying to get over what amounts to an addiction to the girl he was in a relationship with.

For the former, I’ve advocated record keeping, a la the quantified self - the idea being that if you can note your patterns you will naturally start to reduce the negative activity. My own project was revitalized with record keeping, and it’s a much better and more effective step than simply going cold turkey - something she can’t really do anyway due to her severe withdrawals.  It has worked so far - she still drinks quite a bit, but has been cut back through her diligent record keeping. I’m now advocating making a small change, like BJ Fogg talks about with his TinyHabits. I’d position this by suggesting that she reduce the number or amount of her alcohol consumption by one unit.

For the latter, I’ve advocated an implementation intention strategy. He tends to obsess and then engage in the standard negative breakup activities that aren’t really conducive to recovery  -  so we brainstormed a list of 8 or 9 activities to do to get him over the emotional hump. Things like doing a crossword, progressive meditation, listening to music and podcasts, taking a walk, and writing. I feel that such a strategy would work well for “negative habits” or “habits of omission”  - things like not smoking or not eating clean or whatnot - because often enough it’s a rising emotion that leads to a splurge - and simply distracting oneself and waiting until the emotions subside is enough to get over the potential negative behavior.

I want to later include more advanced meditation techniques - I’ve already advocated Vipassana, but understandably, it hasn’t been taken up. I myself was incredibly skeptical about it until I tried it, and I think walking through a meditation so he experiences it himself would be much better than just talking about the theory. Gratitude is something that’s talked about a lot in terms of mindfulness, impulsivity, and self-control training. It’s also something I approached with extreme skepticism until I actually tried one exercise (List and describe 10 things you are grateful for) and found that it jolted me out of my depression.

These are both circumstance that make me realize the importance of this project - not only for myself, but for those I care about. I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked for advice about such things and had no real answers to give. Now that I have implemented and researched these strategies in depth, I have something worthwhile to offer up. But teaching it and getting people to do it is in additional step, one I’m still working on. Being able to clearly elucidate these ideas and work with them in a way that they start changing is hard.

Today I did just that for the friend going through the breakup and I think I did a good job. However it’s interesting to note I didn’t do this earlier - before I just talked about generalities thinking that he would go through the details himself.

Today I worked with him to come up with an effective if-then protocol.  We started with brainstorming activities - well it was mostly me brainstorming as he was in a state of mind where he was incapable of coming up with anything. Having concrete steps, assignments, and commands seemed to work better than gentle suggestions.

But sometimes when a person is in such a frail state going that extra distance is exactly what is called for to engender real change.

Day 102 & A Second Danger Zone

Day 102 Record Keeping SRHI = 71
Day 70 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 70
Day 16 Burpee SRHI= 55 (2x5 and another few later in the day for fun)
Day 116 Eating SRHI = 61 
Good sleep, good wakeup.

Second Danger Zone Theory

I have been suffering an additional dip in scores from record keeping. This makes me wonder - is there another “danger zone” well after an SRHI of 70 (ish) is initially reached?

It could just be the normal problems I’m having with record keeping - namely, the lack of a precise, “crisp” trigger. 

I’ve changed my intention to “record keeping is the first thing I do after rising from bed.” BUT, I tend to do other things. I go to the bathroom and I get my coffee made, then sit down. Perhaps it should be “after I make my coffee, I do record keeping.”

Another possibility is that the magnitude of the task has increased. I now record 4 SRHI scores each day when at first I had one, and since I do it all by hand, it is quite tedious.

Still another possibility is that habits need to be rotated and charged - I talk about that possibility in THIS blog post.

But there is something that feels…I don’t know…RIGHT about having another dip in the graph. There’s a general boredom of doing the task - a monotony and a annoyance that feels like it fits with other times I’ve had habits.  There is something that tells me that simply reaching the 70’s on the SRHI isn’t the full story. I don’t know what that story is, but it’s something I’m definitely keeping my eyes on for other habits.

Day 88 & Stabilizing Record Keeping

Day 88 Record Keeping SRHI = 63
Day 56 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 70
Day 2 Burpee SRHI= 22
Day 102 Eating SRHI = 55 - Failed to do yesterday
Good night sleep, great wakeup.

Compared to my fixed meditation, my record keeping seems….wobbly. When I take the SRHI my scores are lower in automaticity questions compared to my fixed meditation. And I believe this is because I didn’t set up a clear implementation intention - specifically, I don’t have a trigger. With fixed meditation it’s

“When I wake up, I meditate”

But if I unpack it for record keeping it’s

“sometime after I get up, I do my record keeping”

And that usually is after I piddle around the internet, check Facebook, etc. The problem is that I don’t want to do it, because it involves the somewhat tiresome practice of doing the SRHI several times, then counting them out manually to get the number.

I’m already feeling a, for lack of a better description, clockwork mechanism starting with burpees. When I close my record keeping stuff - my tumblr, my google docs which hold my spreadsheet of records, I do two burpees.

So to progress, I’m going to have my implementation intention be:

“Immediately after I finish my morning meditation, I will open up my email to start record keeping”

One thing that will help is to find a program that calculates scores automatically. And another thing I need to keep in mind is my upcoming three weeks of travel. My travel protocol will be discussed in a different post.