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.