Day 44 & Vigilance in Continuous Habits

Day 44 Record Keeping SRHI = 62
Day 12 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 55
Day 11 Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 54
Great night sleep, great wakeup.

Early this week I got depressed and had problems deliberately choosing positive thoughts in my Dynamic Meditation habit.. I got it back on Tuesday, but I’ve definitely been slacking off in the last two days, and this seems to be reflected in my SRHI. 

Habits like this are hard. You have to be constantly vigilant for backsliding, and it’s very hard to sit there and record every instant of it. Yet that might be exactly what’s required for another few days.

But perhaps there is a halfway point. In a posture habit, I’d probably use something like Lumo Lift, which just buzzes whenever you have to straighten up. Perhaps all I really need is a periodic reminder to check my emotional state. I’ll fiddle with that idea and see what comes up.

Day 27 and Basic Habits

SRHI=43

Great night sleep, great wakeup

Throughout this project I want to put attention on basic tasks that we all generally want as a habit. You always hear people talking about how they want to workout everyday, or start flossing, but we rarely turn our full attention to just how few of those statements we actually follow through on. And sometimes even if you do, it’s hard to remember the habits you’ve stated. 

When we say “I really need to improve my posture” I rarely really think about it. It’s something to say and mean in the moment, but all too often it takes a back seat.

Luckily gamification is bringing some of these to light. KWIT is a gamified program to quit smoking. I haven’t used it, but it seems to be a great setup with achievements, a social element where you can share those achievements, and even a running statistics list to show how much money you’ve saved. 

Lumo Lift is another one for posture, one I believe I’ve mentioned in the past. I’ve ordered mine, and it is something I’ve vowed to work on many times in the past.

Unfortunately flossing has not, as far as I know, been gamified yet - makes me really want to start a “learning coding” habit - but if I’ve learned anything in this endeavor is it pays to be slow and methodical.

Day 6, Lumo Lift, Categories of Habits

SRHI = 29

Remembered in the morning again - It’s interesting the stages you go through with this - First forgetting entirely and “catching yourself” later, then remembering as soon as you get up, then getting a degree of autamaticity about the whole thing…

A few months ago I was indundated with ads on Facebook about Lumo Lift, from http://www.lumobodytech.com/

Basically it’s a device to help with body posture. It’s a device that syncs with your smartphone to remind you when you are slouching.

It’s a great idea to combat a different habit - the correction of a general state of being that you should do all the time. They way I see it, there are several categories of habits that should be attacked in different ways.

1. Habits of Instance - a regular habit, like flossing or working out - you do these once a day

2. Habits of Omission - a habit of not doing something i.e. not smoking, or not facebooking

3. Continual Habits - a habit like good posture or relaxing, something that ideally should be kept up at all times

I’m glad Lumo Lift got put on my radar because it really is one of those core habits like learning an instrument or flossing - everyone says they want better posture, but very few people ever actually go about trying to achieve it. As such I’m putting it on my list of future habits, and have ordered the device.