Depletion and Why I Missed Day 547

On Day 546 I did Tabatas after not doing them for a while. I did not adequately understand the impact that would have on my daily habits.

The rest of that day after recording, depletion hit me. It hit me physically, but it no doubt affected me as a hit to my willpower - several studies have linked glucose depletion with willpower depletion.

The next day (547) I was utterly sore and tired. Nothing got done.

This was to be expected  - the “physics” of this system seems clearer and clearer. What’s necessary is to plan in advance and prep what a course should have been. 

And really the main problem was my first habit in my regiment - writing. Writing takes a lot of will for me to do in this phase of mastery. That should have been something I should have planned to do very minimally. But right now, I don’t have minimums clearly stated as I did before (e.g. 50 words).

A few days ago I wrote to my Dad, who is trying to start a new healthy eating habit. At his request, I sent him a few solid suggestions on what to do to stick to it. The relevant ones were Recording, TinyHabits, Implementation Intention, and Mental Contrasting.

What I’ve realized is that I don’t really strictly do these, and I should. In order to continue progress, I need very clear daily minimals - TinyHabits. I need to know in advance what’s going to mess me up in order to plan around it - that’s Implementation Intention. I don’t have a solid if-then protocol of when I’m going to do anything, which is Implementation Intention. And not having that results in a slapdash daily regiment (I have a tendency nowadays to record more towards the end of the day after a huge break, which doesn’t help in solidifying my recording habit). 

I think the problem is that I think that these habits are all done - I got to superhabit level on all of these. But with the introduction of mastery - pushing habits to new levels - it’s essentially introduced turbulence to each of them. I have to start thinking of them as new in that vector.

Another element in the mastery vector that’s missing is mid-range goals. The idea is to push a behavior so that it’s solidly at the next shelf, rest it, and work out another behavior. So 2 pushups became 3x8, that transformed into harder variations, and finally now I’ve shelved it at 2 typewriter pushups. Having a very clear knowledge of what the next level is allows me to naturally work for it.

What’s happening in meditation is a perfect example of doing it wrong. I made all sorts of progress and now I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m meditating every day, it is sometimes good, it’s sometimes bad, but I don’t have direction.

These are serious deficiencies that lead to a hamster wheel state I absolutely hate: The feeling of having toiled and worked over long periods of time and not having concretely accomplished anything.

A New Beginning?

I feel like I’m in the same spot I was before. The first time I updated this project was HERE, when I added new behaviors without forming them into habits. I began again by occasionally taking the SRHI scale in order to focus on habituation, but stalled out again HERE. Afterwards I started to not only think in terms of habits, but started recording the SRHI every day to keep myself on task.

Every single time I’ve done this, I’ve gained more insight and more fluency at behavioral change. I’m hopeful and confident that this will occur again.

I’m at the point now where my project is stalling completely again - not because I cannot sustain a habit, but because habit formation is getting in the way of concretely and efficiently getting tangible goals.

I think the best way to get around this problem is to refocus on families of skills that bolster each other. Initially two families came to mind: 1) Eating habit and working out and 2) meditation and writing, since fear seems to be a big issue with me and writing.

The problem I run into is that I know that vortex forces will be an issue - I’ll feel like I’m neglecting one side of myself. If I focus on writing I know I’ll feel horrible not eating correctly and vice versa. The way to end feeling horrible is self confidence and faith, and ability to realize the truth of how I can’t do everything at once - but in this system that’s not a vague factor, that’s a direct result of meditation.

There seems to be no way to win, and I’m beginning to appreciate the reason why few people are masters of more than one thing.

Progression Dilemma Part 2: Pros and Cons

What’s the best option? Let’s list out the virtues of each path:

OPTION 1 - Establishing All Habits
Pros: Steadily working on things. Better regimentation. Circle of support. vortex forces are not in play (because you’re doing everything!). Accrual of long-term benefits, like writing “two shitty pages”, allows for great benefits simply because you’re doing it every day even though it’s in incredibly small amounts. This latter benefit only occurs in some skills…like writing or fixed skills like flossing.
Cons: Glacially slow progress. Incredibly difficult to regiment - overwhelming. problems with house of cards, problems with time, problems in willpower - you have to do ALL of it in one day. Vortex forces might actually be in play on another level because you aren’t progressing in everything - there will be times when the impatience in some skills will affect you. Depletion forces in play.

OPTION 2 - 1 Skill Progression
Pros: fast progress. lots of willpower
Cons: no support. no regimentation practice. Vortex forces definitely in play.

OPTION 3 - Family of Skills
Pros: Fast progress - arguably the FASTEST progress due to skills backing each other up (ex, diet AND exercise) Seeing fast progress helps with motivation, saves on vortex forces. Saving some on willpower, therefore fewer depletion forces. Targeted relevant support. A little regimentation practice.
Cons: Vortex forces in play (a little). downside of regularity to prevent things like writer’s block. Accrual of long term benefits a la two shitty pages not in play.

CONCLUSION:

Option 1 is definitely out - there’s just too much going wrong for it. I think the best option is the third - it seems to have the best of both worlds - the only real thing wrong with it is a lack of small accrual in certain tasks. 

What does all this mean for the future of the project? It’s something I’ll discuss in my next post. I think the important thing to remember is that these are three phases. Regimentation, habituation, and mastery. I think clarifying what success means and separating out these three vectors is critical for any further progress and discussion.

What is good for habituation isn’t necessarily good for mastery. And making decisions like that are what’s crucial for continuing this project - it also definitively signifies a turning point in this blog. What started out as a project on habituation has definitely outgrown its starting parameters. 

And that’s a good thing.

Depletion and Vortex Forces

I started getting more into this Progression Dilemma…but while I started writing about it a few concepts emerged that I’d like to define first.

Vortex: I described periods emotional flux through the habit/mastery process in THIS RECENT POST. Feelings include needing to do more, feeling you should’ve done everything years ago, anxiety, depression, panic. The urge to hop ahead and start trying to improve in multiple arenas. These feelings can be compared to its opposite but equally detracting phase Depletion, Ego or Endurance, where you feel drained of energy. In a vortex progress slows because you feel ripped a part by the need to do it all. In a depletion phase progress slows because you feel emptied of energy. I’m not sure if these are the best names, but we’ll keep it as such for now.

Vortex/Depletion Forces: Why add “forces”? I think of it as making it into a sliding scale. When you’ve entered a Vortex or a Depletion pocket it’s almost already too late. The forces may be in action far before - for example, when focusing all energies in one skill like writing, Vortex forces will increase if you’re surrounded by people who are working on physical exercise. You see people progressing physically, they may make some comments like “you should really at least get out, or eat better” and you’ll have this urge to start improving - you feel like you’re not improving on all vectors, which can eventually lead into a full on Vortex where all progress slows. The same dynamic can occur when pushing TOO much, manifesting in increased depletion forces.

**On a total side note, I’m horrible at naming, and fully intend on going back and really thinking about apt descriptors for these concepts. The more I think about it the more all of this terminology seems to mimic aerodynamics, and I might need to pillage jargon from that discipline.

One Skill or All - The Progression Dilemma of Mastery

This is going to take me a while to unpackage, so get settled in.

Lately I’ve been feeling….Idunno….conflicted as to the continuation of this project.  This project started out about habits - I have no problem with habits now. Yay!

The problem has to do with skill mastery. Mastering the thing itself. What’s that mean? It means losing weight. Being able to smoothly execute writing projects at a high level. Maintaining equanimity and progressing in meditation. And though progress is coming slowly, I have to wonder when looking to my peers…is this progress fast enough?

My buddy James has focused all his energies on eating - he tracks calories and he’s lost a LOT of weight in the last year. Now, I  don’t want to do it exactly like he does, but in terms of HIS goals - he’s succeeded. I can’t say the same for myself. 

Although I’ve lost some weight and I’ve made fantastic long-term behavioral changes I haven’t gotten the THING ITSELF - the end goal, when I feel like I should have. I can expand this out to another guy I know who got into bodybuilding - immense payout from focusing on one thing. Writing a book, huge breakthroughs in meditation - they are not there. 

Should I be focusing on one habit at a time? To clarify - the problem doesn’t come into play with habits - only with habits that require that added mastery step. Mechanically repeatable tasks accrue merit just by doing them at one level - flossing comes to mind. But most tasks aren’t like that - they require upping the ante a lot.

Certainly all the literature suggests I should focus on one thing. The oft-repeated advice is that it takes 10,000 hours or 10 years to gain true mastery of a craft. I’m certainly not talking about that level of skill. I’m talking about a year. But something bothers me about this approach and I think it’s because I want the self sustaining relationship of related skills.

Eating well and exercising tends to go together. Meditation can help deal with all frustrating situations. There’s a urge within me to do all things because they’re like a circle that supports everything. 

The problem is that it often feels like I’m stuck doing 2 pushups. Yes the habit is there, but the benefits aren’t. And it’s really hard to be constantly pushing all skills.

There are a couple of ways to approach this.

1) Get basic habits in all my basic tasks. Focus on just habituation, then start pushing mastery in each of them.

2) Engage one skill from habituation to a decent level of mastery. Then move on to the next skill. This seems to be what most people attempt doing.

One of the other things I’m scared of is that engaging completely in one skill will take too long, and I will have in fact then abandoned my project of mastery in all skills. But this only comes into play if going after super mastery with 10 years of practice - I’m not after that (yet).

But perhaps it’s not either or. Perhaps an ideal is to focus on the benefits of both. I want to focus on few tasks but I want the benefits of a circle of skills. So why not deal in families? Why not focus on groupings? Meditation and writing would go well together because they both deal with deep seated fears. Exercise and food complement each other.

3) Engage in sets of skills. Groupings that support each other.

I think the additional key to either way out is to understand that pushing skill mastery depletes more “energy” - endurance, willpower, what have you. And though you want to push all skills, you have to avoid being ripped a part by depletion forces. This means exercising restraint and focusing on fewer things - you have to let some things go to push mastery.

Back to Recording, State of Habits, Emotional Vortexes, and 2 Year B-Day of BijuHero

Got a message from tumblr saying that this blog is officially 2 years old!

It’s hilarious to me that I reach these anniversaries in the habit project specifically at times where my habits are all over the place.

I had 16 days of jam packed work travel. As such my habits are in shambles - but that’s ok. The key is to get back in the groove even if it’s not much, even if it’s not perfect (it’s not going to be).

The problem is that in addition to being depleted of energy, I’m entering one of those times that periodically comes up where I feel pulled in all directions. I’m going to call this entering a vortex, in order to give it a technical term and to distance myself by labeling it as a pattern.

A vortex is when you feel like you have to do everything at once and it should’ve been done yesterday. You lose sight of the idea that progress occurs best with one habit at a time on a specific schedule. When entering these emotional maelstroms clarity is lost.

For example, I was doing the DiSSS protocol to improve my basic travel writing. The gap caused me to freak out because I want to start another website. Should i focus on continuing my DiSSS protocol, or should I throw my energy into the writing and marketing necessary for bringing up my website. Both need to be done, but the uncertainty contributes to leaks of willpower and a feeling of hopelessness. That in turn leaks into other habits - recording, other tasks that would normally not be affected.

Lydia has suggested a few things. One is alternating weeks. One week of pushing DiSSS protocol for writing, and the next week for pushing the website. That way both tasks that need to be done ASAP are taken care of - it satisfies the need to push and improve and thus avoid the feeling of being stuck in the mud. 

She also suggested that when entering a vortex, perhaps the best thing to do is put all energy into meditation for a week in order to calm the mind and prevent it from grasping to feelings of panic.

Panic really describes the vortex best - it’s caused by a chronic forgetting that progress happens across multiple fronts and a momentary amnesia regarding trusting the greater plan.

Negativity in Task Reductionism

My initial view of this project was to collect data on habits, and later on self development and mastery. From the data I was hoping that rules and maxims would emerge. Mind you I don’t exactly know the exact difference between rules, laws, maxims, and theorems, etc… but I feel that they have started to emerge.

One recent one is what I’m calling the Law of Task Reductionism.

And I’ll define it like this:

If a complex task is not broken down into its component parts, failure becomes a negative emotional reflection on one’s character.

The corollary to this law is that :

the chances of failure (defined as failure in improving the skill, loss of efficiency, and as abandoning the endeavor in general) increase substantially

Per Timothy Ferriss’ DiSSS protocol, the reverse seems to be true. That when complex tasks are broken down, individual aspects can be improved upon with relative ease, and “mission success” and efficiency increase substantially.

I’ve found this to be the case in my current cycle of improving my writing. When faced with a writing task, things can get emotional. I fumble, efficiency is lost I get nervous, and though I’ll get the task done, it comes with it a large amount of questioning as to my abilities personally and needless expenditure of emotional energy. But when broken down, I’m surprised by the amount of progress I make in relatively small amounts of time.

Character attacks are a critical problem in this type of self help. You push writing, and people mention how much weight you’ve gained. The habit mania - the urge to do multiple tasks all at once (which has little chance of success) increases. And with it comes cycles of worthlessness and other emotions that prevent stability of practice.

When a task is just a thing, not a reflection of who you are, emotions subside and you’re able to progress calmly and steadily.

Which brings me to my Maxim of Character Reductionism:

Do not associate tasks you approach for self improvement as a reflection of your character. This disassociation prevents habit mania and promotes rapid improvement.

Widgets and an Expanded Plan of Habit Formation Towards Mastery

Habits are a pain, Mastery of a skill is even more of a pain. But doing this for several habits? That’s a war on multiple fronts.

I’ve had a year’s worth of habit formation under my belt - it’s not even a problem to form one anymore. When I think about pushing this project for the future, I think about a smooth graph of habits working in harmony with one another. What’s this look like?

Imagine an entire plan for a year comprised of superhabit formation, growth cycles smoothly kicking in, ratcheting up, switching of to other skills, a year that’s a symphony of perfectly progressed advancement in all skills. Harmony is achieved by pressing just enough, but not too much to interfere with the continual upkeep of other skills.

What I feel hasn’t been discussed are small protocols that kick in at those breaking points - I’ll call them WIDGETS for now, after the small third party programs on websites or computers that kick in when you need them.

And that’s exactly what I want them to do - a small kick when the system needs it that then go away once their mission is complete.

What are some examples?

-Timothy Ferriss’ DiSSS protocol to push skill mastery
-Protocols for absorption and flow states for progression
-Flow and ritual protocols for regimentation, specifically to avoid worrying and thus leaching willpower when I’m not working
-Having absorptive habits or hobbies to help in not obsessing about pushing skills when not working
-A litany of past successes in order to push past HABIT MANIA - the feeling of needing to do everything at once because everything needed to be in place yesterday
-Other protocols for specifically getting past the emotional aspects of breaking points - like Vipassana to push past depression or that drowning feeling
-Taking weekends off in order to preserve sanity

I think this might be different from a previous idea I had - nested habits . Nested habits are protocols within an already established habit, while widgets would be auxiliary protocols to make sure the whole program (across all habits) is moving as smoothly as possible. So that may or may not include skill mastery pushes.

Timothy Ferris, Rapid Skill Mastery, and My Writing Habit

Timothy Ferriss talks here about how to become world class in any skill within 6-12 months.

It’s a great talk and it touches on a lot of things I’m about - minimalism, and optimizing progress. And it talks about complex skills that are composed of a number of smaller skills. Conglomerate skills that have a tendency to easily frustrate people because there’s not something you can latch onto. Cooking was one such skill for Ferriss, and the reason why he called his book on mastery The 4-Hour Chef.

His methodology is DiSSS.

Deconstruction, Selection, Sequencing, and Stakes

Deconstruct a complicated task, focusing in the first 5 sessions to avoid basic mistakes people make in the task. Select the minimal skill that the majority of the larger skill relies upon (the Pareto Principle), question sequencing with the knowledge that in many cases doing things out of order might be better, and up the stakes to increase behavioral change through motivational factors. He adds that repetition of deconstructed skills when it’s not for real (learning how to sautee with coffee beans on a carpeted floor) is key, as is the belief that it can be done, questioning best practices, and focusing on removal and minimalism.

My question: how do I apply this to writing?

After brainstorming and thinking a lot, here’s my protocol based on my key weaknesses when writing any given article:

Week 1

Research. I have a tendency to get bogged down, so I’m going to practice quickly researching articles. What do restaurants have on their menus? When were places opened. In a lot of cases it may just involve cutting and pasting in a list. I should avoid getting bogged down in research and general internet distractions.

Week 2

The majority of articles are good because of transitions which meld research fragments and personal descriptions to a storyline. On my writing blog I’ve already researched an analyzed a number of transitions. So I’ll just choose transitions that work between the research points - this is also sequenced out of order, per Ferriss’s advice. 

Week 3

Actually writing the middle adding personal descriptions to the research and the transitions.

Week 4

Doing the same for endings. 

Week 5

Editing

The idea with all this is that beginnings are actually not really key. I can take a lot of articles and write them from different high points in the action. But the other things are, in my opinion, key points starting from research and descending.

My plan is to ATTEMPT to do this similar to a newbie mission - 2 articles in one hour, for 2 hours. Depending on how fast I get, I want to expand that to 3 per hour for 3 hours. The key is to do this quickly yet well, working on broken up skills in order to gain familiarity and to be able to execute each part with no hesitation because I’ve done it so many times.

I believe that I will be able to pare this methodology with habituation, which is why I’m not including the Stakes aspect to this. I might be wrong, I might need it, but we’ll see. This skill pushing will constitute completion of the instance of habit exercise, i.e. a “check” for having completed my habit of writing for the day.

This might not work. I might have to do each task until it becomes the new ratchet point, and I have NO idea how long that will take. Do I need to do each part longer? Is this the growth phase, and after this 5 week cycle will I have to come up with a new daily minimum? Probably. Do I need to record the writing habit again until the daily minimum becomes a superhabit? Will Ferriss’s skill mastery methodology trump my own habit heavy methodology? I have no idea…but I’ll find out.

Strategies Towards Skill Mastery

photocred: Alexandre Keledjian

I’ve been struggling a lot lately with Skill Mastery.

I have no problem creating a habit. But moving forward with skills is another story. 

It all started when my mom talked to me about why I didn’t try mastering one skill and then just moving on. It stayed with me….why aren’t I doing that? And what should I be doing? Should I be focusing on one thing or should I be expanding to encompass the full complement of what I think of as basic habits?

On one hand, basic habits back each other up. Writing and marketing are great complements, as are eating right and exercising. Some habits just need that - habits with no skill mastery. But on the other hand I can’t shake the sense that I’m not progressing enough. I see a friend who got into weight lifting and is now ripped. Another who is into writing and is now publishing a lot.

My conclusion is that I need more than one habit. The point of this project isn’t to do one thing and then move on. It’s to do many things at once - so how can I strategize to move forward in skills.

I’ve talked about this in a recent post, but I believe it’s about strictly maintaining all habits to daily minimums and dialing up one skill. I envision it as a line of attack…like Go, skill mastery, habit acquisition, and regimentation involves multiple fronts and battles.

Strictness is important - regimentation becomes incredibly hard when Endurance and Willpower are leaking out, even in tasks that are easier or addictive. I enjoy meditating, and I often do more, but when I get to my skill I want to really improve - in this case, writing - I don’t have the energy.

So here’s my overall daily minimals:

Fixed Meditation: One bout of single pointedness

Bodyweights: 2 typewriter pushups or bridges

Dynamic Meditation: 20 minutes

Marketing: 1 action-oriented task

Ratcheting Specifics

On my trip to Dallas I’ve done pretty well, but because my food choices have been poor, it’s once again led to thinking about the specifics of daily minimums when traveling -  as well as ratcheting.

Here was the list in my own head about ratcheting structures for current habits:
Fixed meditation: anchoring and tantric transformation –> vipassana and jhana
Bodyweight exercises: 2 pushups –> 2 typewriter pushups
Writing: 50 words –> 200 words
Dynamic meditation: 20 minutes –> 1 hour

What’s left out is a clear minimal for eating, marketing, and if it’s possible to have a daily minimal for recording. And this is important, because I’ve noticed that not having a clearly distinguished line between failure and completion is an anathema to this project. You never know when you’ve won, and things just start to break down.

For marketing I’ve gone back and forth between doing a time or just one actionable task. I don’t like time requirements - they feel harder to grasp onto. An actionable task could be reading about marketing, doing research, or just doing one thing - lately that’s been folded into my writing editing for tasks needed to launch my new website.

Eating is really hard. I think any line drawn in the sand is better than none. If it’s just one meal a day that’s clean, so be it. That could be minutely increased later to one clean meal and one glass of water instead of a bar drink, then two clean meals, etc, etc.

I have a friend that became vegetarian. What I like about him is that he just owns it. He doesn’t eat meat, period, whether or not he’s traveling or not. Why can’t I work up to that as well?

Recording can be ratcheted. I think a note at the end of the day even if it’s not fully taking the SRHI could be one. Another could be learning to take it from memory, like I’ve discussed before.

How Lack of Proper Weekly Planning Caused Depletion And Messed up Progress in My Week

Like my title? Couldn’t think of one.

So yesterday my project went of course - I ended up getting quite depleted. Willpower reserves 0 after bashing my head into my writing habit. And not really having direction in my marketing habit. This caused me to mess up eating and not record yesterday. Why did this happen?

A number of reasons. One was not properly planning my week. I scheduled a bunch of tasks for Monday which I KNEW I wasn’t going to finish. So I spend the rest of the week trying to catch up, which is not a good feeling, AND it ended up messing up the course of other things I had to do later in the week.

So first - properly plan things out. A part of that is to really break a part tasks. I can’t just say - “Throw up a huge post with pics on my website.”

That task isn’t one task - it’s writing the post, it’s editing it, it’s sourcing the pictures, etc. By NOT breaking it up I am encoding failure in the planning part of my week - I’ve guaranteed failure.

Breaking up tasks is also important because it contributes to a flow state. You get the most progress by having small accomplishable tasks that are challenging that you can go through. Each victory contributes to a momentum of success.

Secondly get up earlier.  I have a sleeping problem. Whenever I wake up late, like I’ve been doing since being in Houston, I wake up behind. Everything shifts. I wake up, and people want me to do stuff. I’m always several steps behind. I’m beginning to understand why a lot of authors got up early early in the morning. There’s no way to get into a groove if you’re being rushed.

But it’s not particularly surprising that all this happened. I’m BAD at planning, and this was only the second time during this project I’ve ever really done it. It really should be a habit for me, as should an early morning wakeup schedule.

Unusual Reflective Tendencies in Habits

I have uncovered a pattern in my urges lately. I have been meditating as I lie in bed about to fall asleep. I’ve been doing some sort of exercise in the afternoons (biking or basketball). I’ve even had strong urges to do casual reading on marketing and do some fun writing in the evening. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about regimentation. Specifically about tasks that are absorptive yet fun that will take me away from worrying about my daily habits - yet most of the tasks are almost mirroring my beginning day tasks. It’s almost as though I’m subconsciously bookending the end of the day to reflect the beginning.

One explanation is that I’m grasping. I’m clenching at tasks and using regimentation as an excuse to worry through doing the same tasks again.

But I really didn’t notice this as a pattern at all until late last night. I was wondering how weird it would be (and what the repercussions would be) if I doubled down on habits per day. Then I realized - I kind’ve already do it!

I have no idea what this means. And I might actually try to double down in a day and see how it affects my endurance reserves throughout the week. We’ll see.

Regimentation Strategies and a Rudimentary Scale

Here’s my first rough Scale for Regimentation:

1) When I do a scheduled task I do not think of other tasks
2) When I end a scheduled task I do not continue to think of it afterwards
3) I am able to leave off thinking of work when work is done
4) I don’t work when it’s not time to work
5) There is a strong line between work and non-work for me
6) Work stress doesn’t tend to worry me out during non work times
7) I quickly get into a relaxed state once I finish work

Each question is a 7 point Likert Scale as is the Grit Scale and the SRHI. Do not agree at all = 1, Strongly agree = 7. I just took this and I scored a 17 our of a possible 49 points. Which sounds about right.

Some possible additions?
-I tend to put off tasks (procrastination seems to be a factor in regimentation)
-I tend to ramp up and ramp down depending if it’s work or relaxation (might be too simple to question #7

Some Strategies:

“Sticky” or Absorptive Hobbies 
Not looking at things like Facebook/work email
Spend time outside
Try to steer clear of staring at a computer screen.
Having weekends
Charting out a schedule for free time - I have a  tendency to let everything drop which inevitably leaves me feeling like I didn’t DO anything during my free time. Some amount of lazing is great, but total lazing makes me feel like I didn’t quite relax enough, as odd as that sounds.
Having an intention to not think of work stuff and to relax

The Weekend Power of Habit

I endeavored to take this weekend off. 

I automatically did all my habits on Saturday. And I did several of my habits yesterday (Sunday). There was a point where I was out with a friend and we had planned to go to a place that had only clean meals. We instead went to a Tex Mex place (my kryptonite). 

I automatically ordered a salad. It came completely covered with fried tortilla strips. And I just automatically pushed them to the side and ate everything else.

This is actually working. It’s something that I don’t really believe because the results aren’t immediate. But it’s in moments like that where I begin to understand that my self control is shooting through the roof - that’s definitely no the person I was 1 year ago.

My weekend in general was incredibly relaxing. I am starting to really focus on regimentation and am now really convinced that the art of regimentation is a significant and important part of this project. I think it’s something that most people have problems with - the ability to be completely caught up in something and just, in the next moment, completely forget about it. I think an inability to do this results in massive leaks in self discipline across time.

Weekends Off?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the off time regarding this project. A lot of sources highly encourage things like taking weekends off to prevent to boost productivity for the week. Other sources also highly recommend increasing the value of time off with things like hobbies - Warren Buffet plays the ukelele, Bush oil paints, etc.

These are, perhaps, two separate issues but they’re only getting more distinct as I mull it over in my head. For weekends off, on one hand, it seems antithetic to my project. A habit is something you do automatically with regularity. Ideally that means every day because the more regular a task is the more (presumably) benefits you’ll reap. Automatic tasks don’t sap will, so why take weekends off?

There are some counters to this. Certain tasks are a pain to do and do take energy no matter if they are habits or not. The act of sitting down to write is automatic, but actually working through editing a text is hard. And presumably that’s because I’m not just executing a habit, I’m also working on a difficult skill, which does sap resources. 

It becomes more and more clear that all of this isn’t just 2 dimensional graph, it’s at least three dimensions with various phases. And rejuvenation may not just be needed for habituation, but it may well be needed for increasing in skill towards mastery.

So perhaps habits not yet in 70′s or 80′s can be dropped on the weekends. After all, the more I do a task, the more it gets to be a superhabit. But once it’s a superhabit, I’m on the skill/mastery track. Perhaps weekend habits can be maintained by doing something fun and easy - a fun bit of writing, a walk for working out, a pinterest safari for marketing, etc.

But another argument for weekends even while forming a habit comes from the SRHI. It’s pretty hard to gauge whether it feels weird NOT doing a habit if you’ve never not done it. A weekend away from habits can, at some point, be a proving ground for that feeling, gauging its strength.

The worry with all this is getting so exhausted that all of it collapses. I’ve been taking more weekends off in year 2, and I’m still wondering if it should be a part of my schedule. Definitely hobbies and regimentation and not worrying after work will help. But I have to wonder if this is another hole in the system I need to plug in.

Right on Schedule: Emotional Breakdowns a Week into New Habits

Yesterday was rough, and today started really rough. Ego depletion, rapid surging of worry and insecurity, a difficulty keeping my emotional state steady. I feel totally overwhelmed. 

Last week I had tons of energy. My sleep was great, my wake ups were great. Lydia noticed I had a restless energy about me, and she stated that it had happened before. Apparently there’s a trend I have that when I start a new habit, I get excited - I want to do more AND I then get into a slump afterwards - a feeling of being up to my eyeballs with work and a sensation of drowning etc.

I just went back into my logs and did find this trend to be true (when I recorded my emotional states). There are several habits where I had fantastic sleep, energy, and emotion in the first week of a new habit, followed by a depression and bad sleep, followed by a stabilization. 

This is really interesting and really REALLY important, practically speaking, and is exactly the reason why I wanted to record all this - to spot trends. In knowing I’m going to go through this I can distance myself from it and understand that it will take a period to stabilize it. It also makes forgiveness and setting really low completion thresholds a la TinyHabits incredibly important.

Why is this the case? My tentative theory is that Endurance reacts slower than Willpower. Willpower, according to the studies, depletes immediately - you do a task designed to deplete willpower (don’t eat that donut!) and then do an unsolveable puzzle and the time it takes you to get upset and storm out of the room on the latter task becomes noticeably less. 

The Endurance load only settles after a time - it has to by definition because it’s willpower across time! But it only settles to affect daily emotions later. 

As to why I feel all energetic in the first week ….well that’s beyond me!

A Few MORE Thoughts on Regimentation

If we were to define Regimentation it seems as though it consists of a few aspects:

1) Focusing on the task at hand to the exclusion of other tasks
2) Not clinging to tasks after their appointed time
3) Rest and Relaxation (which ties into number 2)

To accomplish this I need to, for 1) have a list of tasks that are completely broken up to their most basic composite actions. That helps me start and forget with ease because I don’t have a hesitation when I start a task - it has already been decided beforehand. The progression and movement forward has already been decided upon. I often worry about what comes next, and that frequently happens in my free time.

But the tasks need to be broken up correctly.

For example one task I have is formatting a blog post correctly to my new website. That’s not an accurate assessment and the structure of that to-do list results in immense frustration and (not to mention willpower leaking all over the place) It’s built into the structure because I’ve planned it improperly.

A better to-do list involves what I really had to do. I had to find a movie clip for the overview of the post. I had to figure out how to stabilize the video, how to select and move clips, how to do a good transition. I’ll then have to figure out why the original video didn’t work in the post preview. Proper planning and breaking up tasks results in a mental feeling of winning. Something I don’t have now even if I’ve worked for hours on something.

That’s the beginning of a task and its execution - for the ending I need to, as I said in a previous post, have a set time - I can’t just keep working and working - that causes a blurring between “work time” and “off time” - and that usually results in me banging my head on the table feeling I’ve failed at life. This also results cheat meals and exhaustion throughout the week, destroying other habits.

The next part of regimentation involves forgetting. How do you forget? Dynamic meditation can be used to stay in the present moment after my habit sequence is completed. My tendancy is to replay and worry and go on tangents about work in my head throughout the rest of the day. This is difficult but might be an unusual case where my habits can actually back each other up, especially if I increase the number of times I do the dynamic meditation habit.

A second strategy is to find some hobbies, which I have severe problems coming up with on the spot because I almost always want to fully master them and put them through the habit formation process. The hobbies have to be casual - HERE’s a site for finding a hobby, and it’s something I’m going to have to think more about.

Another aspect of regimentation is to delve into viewing it as a capacity, like Endurance, Willpower, or Grit.

I’m sure a simple Likert scale could be constructed with questions regarding the ability to stop thinking about tasks outside their appointed times, absorption of other tasks during their structured time, the strictness of work time versus free time, having hobbies, absorption and relaxation index of hobbies, etc.

Why is this important? Because it solidifies it as a skill that can be learned, like habituation or grit - and it formalizes it as such.

Regimentation Part 3: The Fog of Fear & the Repulsion of Planners

In a previous post I took a pic of old habit notes I had from high school and discussed my habits in middle school. I was really bad at them. But that’s ok, I’m getting pretty good now.

Another thing I was really really bad at despite trying constantly was planning. Planning ANYTHING. I had so many planners, but it was really difficult for me to keep to a schedule - it was almost like as soon as I wrote it down something would emerge from me, a perfect procrastinator who would see it as a challenge, preventing me from finishing a task when it was scheduled.

And I still have this difficulty. There’s an almost nebulous revulsion that arises when someone tries to pin me down to something for, say, next wednesday at 4 pm. I start immediately squirming and grasping for ways to at least have an exit should I not want to go to a date when the time comes up.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to nail down tasks for the next 6 weeks. I believe that one aspect of this project that I’m lacking in is week to week, month to month progressions. I should know what I want to accomplish for a month, and how, week to week, the sub projects contribute to that overall goal. And how that goal progresses to the future. Which is essentially the realm of planners.

When I did this a great fog arose in my mind - like some subconscious part of myself was trying to erase the focus for the task of planning. It was agony, which was pretty hilarious. I take this as a positive sign a la Stephen Pressfield - when he talks about that quality as being a compass pointing north - it tells you exactly what you need to work on.

So I need to work on this, and I have to believe that if implement it correctly, I can improve my regimentation ability. Should this be a separate habit? I can see it as a Sunday task, sitting down to plan out what I need to do for the week and course correcting. It would certainly give me the opportunity to experiment to see how only doing a task once a week affects the habituation process. It’s something I’ll have to think about.