Day 618

Day 618 Record Keeping (25)
Day 587 Fixed Meditation (60)
Day 460 Writing (58)
Day 4 Rowing (35)
Day 633 Eating (50)
Bad sleep, great wakeup. Rowing is going really well. Talking to my mom about how to properly do her habits got me underscoring how to do my own - the secret that I need to work on is BJ Fogg’s notion of “Crispiness.”

If if there’s a crisp if-then, then it works. For me that’s best with rowing - I do it as soon as I get out of bed. It’s not working with recording which I do “at some point before going to bed.”

I’m starting to record my eating for the day before. It’s been all over the place. I’m glad to know that some things are well in place in comparison to before. Drinking isn’t something I do. I rarely drink cokes or other soft drinks. If I drink coffee it’s black. When I make stuff at home it’s always clean. But when I need a snack or the option isn’t there or I don’t want to cook, I’ll cheat. The whole process of getting used to cooking and shopping - that’s not down, but I’m sure I’ll get there quickly again. Just underscores just how difficult eating clean is, whatever your choice or definition of what “clean” is.

Meditation isn chugging along quite well - the “shelf” I’m at is self sustaining. Really underscores shelving as a useful manner in which to rest habits and move other habits towards mastery.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo which is that habit’s push towards mastery. As such I really need to have a new way of doing the SRHI. Because I answer some questions as though it’s for writing in general - of course I will answer frequency questions really high if I’m answering them for writing in general. But for this push, it really should be treated as a separate habit. Or should it? It’s something I need to think about more.

I’ve also started taking daily shirtless pics of myself to record progress in weight loss and muscle definition in regards to rowing, since I see that habit as being really solid and practical. It can also be easily “shelved” in a way I haven’t been able to do with habits like eating.

Day 617 & NaNoWriMo

Day 617 Record Keeping (25)
Day 586 Fixed Meditation (60)
Day 459 Writing (58)
Day 3 Rowing (35)
Day 632 Eating (50)
Bad sleep, great wakeup. 

NaNoWriMo
This month I’m doing NaNoWriMo specifically for this project. It’s been really exiting going from the very beginning and seeing how much I’ve progressed. I hope to be able to see exactly what information I need with what I’ve covered in the blog, and what I can do to fill those missing bits in.

This is the first day I’ve managed to record from my huge swatch of missing habits. But hey, that’s a part of the project just as much as staying on track. I’m really pushing writing right now, so I’m interested how that strain will affect other habits that I’m trying to recover. I’m also interested to see how fast the habits will “snap back.”

I Just Won National Novel Writing Month!!

This is the main reason I’ve been shaky in recording the last few days, and why my word count has jumped from a few 100 words to several thousands (13,000 per day the last few days). I ended up telling myself I wasn’t going to try it this year, and ended up starting on the 25th, finishing in a week.

My book was specifically on meditation and anxiety relief techniques - it has been something I’ve been working on, but I wanted to dedicate it to my mother, and other friends who have been having problems in this area.

I wanted the book to be simple and practical without any of the extreme esoteric nature that most meditation books have. The emphasis is on practicality.

It also gave me a place to really delve into techniques that I had read once and forgotten - I have gigs of videos and books, but many of the techniques were hidden in hours upon hours of recordings or pages. So it was a place to remind myself, and also a place to compile all the most effective ones.

It also gave me time to figure out a good implementation plan. I currently do fixed meditation, but I want to rotate the types of mental exercises in this established super habit in order to have a well equipped arsenal of techniques.

I also want to hone a progression for dynamic meditation - I tried this a long time ago to great success, but dropped it from my program because it was just too exhausting to do for the entire day.

In my book I describe a progression based on time - 20 minutes (in Tiny Habit form!) of just noting. And then either increasing times while doing techniques OR increasing time while countering one negative mental habit (like bodily stress) until it slowly encompasses the whole day.

This is exciting stuff - and I will continue to have to experiment with these to see which one works best. It is exciting because it is a practical progression to really changing the self, and in my mind, achieving something lasting.

Anyway despite the exhaustion and the missing recording, it was a fantastic experience, and I’m glad I did it.