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)
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Eating
Day 261 Pantry Check (DiD NOT DO)
Day 259 Food Recording (DID NOT DO)
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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
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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 138 & Burpee Habit Update

Day 138 Record Keeping SRHI = 77
Day 106 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 81
Day 52 Burpee SRHI= 70 (1x8)
Day 152 Eating SRHI = 46  
Good sleep, ok wakeup. Depressed last night.

Burpee Habit Update

My burpee habit today is an SRHI of 70. Of course I need to see if this stabilizes, but this at least nominally makes it a habit. 

And this is surprising. From reading Lally’s experiments, I expected anything related to working out to take a significant amount of time. If I remember correctly, she concluded by extending her graph that such things would take about 250 days to achieve habituation.

I’d be curious to see what the differences were with her experiment and what I’m doing. I’m also curious to see if my burpee habit is indeed at a habituation level or not. 

My theory is that it’s not. The numbers in this habit have been remarkably consistent - and even while traveling I only missed doing them once, maybe twice. So in effect, there was no “danger zone.”

So either the danger zone is coming, or by dropping my exercise into a BJ Fogg approved Tinyhabit (my travel protocol was to do only 2 reps) I somehow skirted the danger zone. That is really exciting.

Also I’m wondering if simply doing the habit in changing circumstances sped up the lifecycle of the habit, something I feel is highly plausible. It certainly seemed to supercharge my fixed meditation and my record keeping. Though for these it might have also been the fact they’re just older habits.

These are interesting to note, because it provides at least some data when it comes to SRHI hacking - the ideal is that this project provides a more  streamlined approach to habit formation.

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 91, Eating and Burpee Status Update

Day 91 Record Keeping SRHI = 70
Day 59 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 72
Day 5 Burpee SRHI= 42
Day 105 Eating SRHI = 58
Good night sleep, great wakeup.

Eating and Burpee Status

I feel generally back on track with eating. Will monitor carefully, because now I’m in uncharted territory - I’ve done eating habits and diets for 3 months, never for more, so this is really quite exciting. Yesterday I was thinking of habits that would help. I had in mind BJ Fogg’s Tinyhabits. Tinyhabits seem to work by lowering the threshold needed to endure a habit until it reaches full habituation. Hence his “brush one tooth” mentality.

What are some individual habits that make up eating right? I came up with several - making a salad or an omelette every morning. Cutting out anything but water. A shopping habit, since a lot of cheating involves not having material for cooking on hand. A cooking habit. Eating one clean meal a day. 

I’m thinking of these because, if my theory is correct, I’ll be sorely tested in these next three months. My theory that the universe conspires to throw a wrench in habits seems to be true for this one as I will be traveling for three weeks and will have to have a “travel protocol.” Again, the point isn’t perfection - the point is just surviving this period.

Also, I can’t help thinking about an ideal - if I were to do it again or teach someone else how to eat right, I’d definitely start with smaller steps - eating right is just way too complicated and is made up of many small habits. Doing it all it once seems highly untenable. But I’ve gotten this far, might as well charge on ahead.

I initially thought that I’d have to only do one habit at a time. And I still think this is generally a good idea. But with Tinyhabits, I have a sense that it’s not necessary. Which is why I’m continuing my burpee habit.

Lally’s graph extension indicated 250 days for a basic exercise habit. But employing implementation intention combined with the lightened Endurance load, I really feel it’s going to take a lot less time to achieve automaticity.  Which brings up another issue…

If these techniques change the full lifecycle of a habit, then it’s just one more variable that’s on a sliding scale. We’ll see, but it might be just that much more difficult to come up with a concise equation.

Day 87, Walking, Burpee Habit, and TinyHabits

Day 87 Record Keeping SRHI = 68
Day 55 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 73
Day 15 Walking = Total Implosion!
Day 101 Eating SRHI = 61
Day 1 Burpee SRHI = 12
Good night sleep, great wakeup.

My walking habit has totally imploded. And it makes sense - as I said in my last post, I neglected to have a good implementation intention and it was way too much.

I’ve decided to scrap it for something that’s easier and able to be done anywhere. I’m thinking this because I want the ability to do exercise anywhere in the world since I travel so much. I’m also going around Brazil and Argentina for 3 weeks during the up coming World Cup, so walking for an hour everyday would’ve been imploded anyway. 

Not that I’m opposed to it at a later point. But I feel burpees are a good, whole body habit that would be great for me. Fogg states to implement them at a certain time, so here’s my protocol:

After I  finish blogging on tumblr, I will do 2 burpees.

Yesterday I was trying to figure out what Fogg’s protocol was for increasing the load of the habit. At what point do you push yourself from one tooth, 2 burpees, 2 pushups, to a real set that will actually give you a result. In his TedX speech he put up a slide that said “plant a tiny seed in the right spot and it will grow without coaxing”

My assumption is that when the load is so low, you’ll want to spontaneously increase it on your won. He himself stated that his original habit of doing 2 pushups increased so that now he’s doing around 70 a day.

I want to join the next group TinyHabits project - it believe it starts next week. In it you choose three habits to begin and get coached on them for 5 days. My previous concern was that doing more than one habit leads to the collapse of them all. But if you lower the daily load, perhaps you can do more than one. I’ve decided to go ahead and try it and see where it leads. My habits will be burpees, backbends, and another one I haven’t quite decided on. 

In my rudimentary ideas of a habit formation equation, I’m thinking that Willpower over Time = Endurance. If the Willpower of an action is decreased, and Time stays the same, then presumably the Endurance needed for a habit will decrease as well, thereby cementing it easier into a habit. I’m curious if such TinyHabits react with respect to my Quarter Mark Theory - will they even enter a danger zone? Does habit formation occur quicker?

EDIT** Damn! I just missed the signup which closed on Friday. The reason I want to do this is because getting a certification requires you to do one basic session.

Day 86 & Walking and Tiny Habits

Day 86 Record Keeping SRHI = 68
Day 54 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 72
Day 15 Walking SRHI = 16 
Day 101 Eating SRHI = 58
Bad night sleep, good wakeup

BJ Fogg is often quoted when it comes to habit formation and flossing. If you lower the basic dose to something incredibly easy, you’re more likely to succeed at creating a habit. So, instead of saying to yourself “I’m going to floss every morning” tell yourself that you’re going to floss one tooth every day.

My walking habit has hit a wall - My initial protocol was that I’m was going to walk every day for an hour and I’ll do a kettlebell workout if it’s not raining. But after reading more of Fogg’s stuff, I’ve realized I’ve left out a lot.

For one, an hour is a big change. I should say I’m going to walk out to the beach (which takes me 2 minutes) and back every morning. Or, I’m going to get out and walk around the block.

Second, I don’t have it set up as an implementation intention. That is to say - I don’t have an if-then set up for the time I should do it. I should have it chained to a series of daily events. Like “After I post my habit blog, I’ll go walk around the block.”

Lastly, I don’t incorporate a reward - even if it’s just a mental “atta boy!”

I’m still looking at Fogg’s stuff, and here’s some links I’m looking through.

Success magazine did what I think is a good summary of his work.

A link with his work and a video on the Fogg Method.

TinyHabits, where you can earn a certificate in his method and join in with others in creating habits.