I pegged the kettle bell exercise habit at 250 days to habituation - I estimated this based on Philippa Lally’s paper on how many days different habits take to reach automaticity. The paper estimated that it would take 250 days to form a habit of doing sit-ups in the morning.

So for my theory, at the halfway point, 125 days, things would start to get easier. Days 62 - 125 would mark the most difficult time for the process.

So far I’ve had multiple problems. I went on several trips and moved to a different city. I started developing back problems because of it - I’ve always had a sensitive back, but it’s caused me to stop doing kettle bells for swaths of time. Instead I replaced it with a series of back stretches that worked in the past.

Now it’s going well. I’ve bookended it immediately after my 750 words and I’ve incorporated the stretch routine as part of the process. I keep trying to remind myself that it’s not about the kettle bells, it’s about bracketing a spot for physical exercise - and that’s the thing I’m trying to habituate.

The other thing that’s different about this from 750 words is that I am not using gamification yet - my theory is that gamification can be used to lower the threshold of discipline needed for a habit - which would work best during the ¼-½ way mark. When I hit that point, I’ll probably be using Fitocracy.

This is day 35. Consistency has been sketchy, and I haven’t even gotten to the hardest part, at least according to my theory. AND, I’m going on another trip today!