DAY 1147 & Back from the States

Day 1147 Record Keeping
Day 1119 Fixed Meditation (30 min)
Day 993 Writing (1 round/30 min)
Day 533 Rowing (DID NOT DO)
Day 274 Mobility/Stretching (DID NOT DO)
—
Early to Rise
Day 302 Sleep Recording  (1|2:30|9|1)
Day 273 Bedtime Curfew
Day 111 Wakeup Alarm
Day 28 Wakeup Walk 22
–
Great sleep. Nixing my Wakeup Walk habit for now. This has got to be a record for the shortest habit!

Back from the States
I had a fantastic time going back to the States for my 20 year high school reunion. I left on March 25th after sort’ve unsteady routines due to having a guest. I got back last week on April 12th after a mammoth flight back - What ended up being 5 flights, 6 if you count being rerouted to San Antonio due to a storm and only getting to Austin after sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours. Then a separation due to an overbooking on our last flight, which delayed getting back to the homestead for about 2 hours. And they lost Lydia’s bags! 

After all that, I was pretty down - I felt like I hadn’t done anything. But the more I look over things the more impressed at how much I’ve improved. The stoics about hedonistic adaptation - the more you get used to pleasurable things the more you expect them in your life. Well this is self improvement adaptation. The more you improve the less you notice your own improvement. You have to force yourself to recognize your successes.

I meditated a lot. I usually went to bed early, and even kept recording my stats for the week and a half I was in Houston even though I wasn’t recording anything formally. I did partial cookups every Sunday, going to the store and getting bags of salad and veggies to throw together for lunches during the week. I went on walks, did an instance of kettlebell swings, and went kayaking. I worked a bit and didn’t do any mobilizing. I did not record.

But man - that’s a lot for a jam packed couple of weeks split between two states. And what’s even better? I’m already starting up again and it’s been less than a week. It usually takes me a full week or 2 to get back to even thinking about starting up everything again.

My plan now is to just to stabilize my habits. I’m down to my daily minimums, and I’m not going to do my morning walking (big mistake starting that the week I was leaving, hehe). I have a long time of stability with no trips planned, so I can really hunker down and experiment, test, and add new habits. Jet lag has been horrible, and I had an immensely trying day emotionally today - but that’s to be expected these first few weeks back. Right on cue.

Day 946

Day 946 Record Keeping
Day 918 Fixed Meditation (10 minutes, really good)
Day 792 Writing (2/30 min, hard)
Day 332 Rowing (walking, 1 hour)
Day 73 Mobility/Stretching (couch stretch)
—–
Eating
Day 170 Pantry Check
Day 168 Food Recording
—
Early to Rise
Day 101 Water
Day 101 Sleep Recording (1|4|12:20|1:40)
Day 74 Bedtime Curfew 74
–
Good sleep, good wakeup. Thinking about either adding a new “Early to Rise” mini habit or pushing a skill. Eating is surprisingly going fairly well. Will be going on a 3 week trip around Spain and Morocco, so will probably try to do that travel sandbagging protocol that I did for Aruba soon.

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 232 & Travel Nuisance

Day 232 Record Keeping
Day 200 Fixed Meditation 
Day 146 Bodyweight Exercise  (1x8 burpees)
Day 73 Writing = 69
Day 246 Eating = 62
Day 3 Work = 46
Travel Day. Flight to Dusseldorf, Germany, train to Cologne. Will be in Cologne until Monday.

Travel Nuisance
Last time I traveled I boiled my protocol to 2 things: Keep it simple, and keep it offline. I’m keeping it simple and boiling down the habits to tiny ones. But the offline part is rather a failure, and pointedly so.

I didn’t bring along my notebook with the SRHI, because, once again, I thought I’d have enough time - and I do. The hotel I’m staying at has free Wifi and I don’t have to meet anyone in the mornings. But it’s almost as though the universe is telling me the flaws in this, because my computer died. It’s already been having troubles - my battery is drained and needs replacing. But now my hard drive had some sort of failure and I cannot start my computer.

And normally I would switch to  my smartphone, but the hotel had a limit on the number of devices the free wifi applies to.

So I’m now sharing a computer - and though this works, it’s not ideal and points out why I should stay offline as much as possible in habit formation. Especially since for writing I’ll need to either hand write something and the hotel has one sheet of paper for writing notes on or I’ll need to do it via a google doc.

This also prevented me from working….though oddly enough today my SRHI actually increased.

Day 224, Back from Travel/Sickness - Analysis

Day 224 Record Keeping
Day 192 Fixed Meditation
Day 138 Bodyweight Exercise  (1x7 diamond pushups)
Day 65 Writing = 53
Day 238 Eating = 62
Great sleep, great wakeup.

Travel Analysis
Actually did far far worse at keeping up with habits this trip than the last trip through Brazil.

The main reason is the my failure at the real lynchpin of it all - recording. The first few days I had easy access to internet and just assumed that I would in all other places. This prevented me from getting into a low tech version - recording it all on a notebook - something I did in the Brazil trip.

Instead I just didn’t even think to reach for the notebook - I didn’t have the notebook protocol as an implementation intention - so there was no implementation.

Secondly, I failed at over simplifying certain things. Meditation could have been simplified and compressed so that I did it in the shower. Writing could have been a note scribbled in an notebook, etc. I did do very well with exercising but only because my back was wonky, and I needed to do back stretches to survive the day.

On the positives it really did take a lot of effort to NOT do things. Eating badly was particularly hard to do, especially since it had me feeling horrible afterwards. IT made me really eager to get back to eating well. It does make me feel that scheduled cheats like this might be a very good thing.

For superhabits I had to ask myself - did circumstances overbalance the habit, or was it a simple non-flexing of will? Considering how many early days and exhausting mornings I had, I have  to say that circumstances were hard to do these habits.

This is good because it hones my travel protocol - OVER SIMPLIFY and most importantly - go low tech with recording.

These leaves me with several questions - are my “superhabits” superhabits anymore? I’d be curious to find out after a week of getting back to my routine. 

Other than that, though I had a great time on my trip  it’s great to be back!

Day 212 & Travel Protocol

Day 212 Record Keeping
Day 180 Fixed Meditation
Day 126 Bodyweight Exercise  (back stretches)
Day 53 Writing = 67
Day 226 Eating = 80
Great sleep, great wakeup. Still having problems with emotional control - depressed, easily frustrated yesterday.

Travel Protocol
I’m going to be traveling for the next 10 days (England and France). Last time I really traveled it was for the World Cup in Brazil, and my travel protocol worked pretty well. I lowered every habit to it’s basic TinyHabit (as far as I could) - and it pretty much got me through.

So, for this bout of travel, I’ll be recording (I’ve got a notebook for that somewhere in case I can’t access my computer…my battery is dead so I have to continually have it plugged in and I don’t have British plugs…), basic fixed meditation in the mornings, and back stretches.

Writing and eating are more dicey. For writing I think a journal entry about the day - 50 words - would be great. And for eating I"m going to be pretty relaxed about it - I still don’t know how I should deal with it overall, but I’m curious to see how fixed it is as a potential “superhabit.”

Last time it worked pretty well to do some tasks in the mornings (meditation, exercising) and other tasks before going to bed (record keeping and writing) simply because mornings were often the most rushed times. I’ll do the same this time.

See ya in 10 or 11 days!

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 108, Second Danger Zone Revisited & Travel Protocol

Day 108 Record Keeping SRHI = 62
Day 76 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 61
Day 22 Burpee SRHI= 56 (2x6)
Day 122 Eating SRHI = 55  
Ok sleep, bleary wakeup. Depressed yesterday.

Second Danger Zone Revisited

In THIS post I mention a possibility of a second danger zone due to falling record keeping SRHI scores. Well today I have a falling score with Fixed Meditation, and this is something I’ll have to keep an eye on. Is it depression? Am I attempting to habituate too many things? Is it a fluke? Only time and further record keeping will find out.

Travel Protocol

UNFORTUNATELY, i’m adding a whole new variable to the mix. I’ll be traveling extensively throughout Brazil for the World Cup. As such my protocol will have to change to accommodate the change in daily routine.

With most of my habits I’ll just reduce them to TinyHabits - 2 burpees still counts. For my eating habit my intention is to  eat one clean meal a day and have that count. Fixed meditation doesn’t take long anyways.

But record keeping is dicey - it’s a habit that can’t be made tiny-er. I’m looking into offline survey creation and scoring programs so that I can keep it on my iPhone (so far no luck). I think my best bet is to have this all by hand - the low tech methods are often the best.

I know this will completely throw everything out of wack. My main goal is to just get through the next three weeks - even if the habits are ragged, even if I miss a bunch of record keeping, so long as I am doing it afterwards, I’m fine.

Needless to say, it is doubtful I’ll be blogging much - but I’ll try! Wish me luck!

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.