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 105 & Time Dialation, SRHI Hacking, and Theorized Additions to the SRHI

Day 105 Record Keeping SRHI = 70
Day 73 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 70
Day 19 Burpee SRHI= 49 (1x6)
Day 119 Eating SRHI = 52 (2x6) 
Ok sleep, ok wakeup.

Time Dialation, SRHI Hacking, and Theorized Additions to the SRHI

In THIS post I talk about potential hacks to the SRHI. I discuss certain aspects - like deliberately missing a habit to boost missed day questions in the SRHI or repeatedly doing a habit throughout the day (similar to how Pavel Tsatsouline increases ability in body weight exercises through a technique he calls “Greasing the Groove”).

I was just thinking of another potential method - in social dynamics time dialation is used to increase rapport. Meet someone at a cafe for 3 hours and you’ll (hopefully) have good rapport. Meet someone for coffee, then move to a restaurant, then move to a park within those same three hours, and later you’ll both feel as though you’ve spent much more time together.

What if this was the case with habits? Do them in multiple places throughout the day to dialate time in order to affect time questions.

Additions to the SRHI?

This leads me to the possibility of adding to the SRHI. The specific type of questions I want to add deal with sticking to a task despite changing conditions. I think we’ve all gained or lost a habit when we’ve gone on vacation or moved houses or whatnot. It’s easy to eat right when you’re at home, but when you’re inevitably dragged out, will your habit continue - our experience says no, because we haven’t trained with outside triggers.

A strong habit presumably is something that’s so ingrained that it ideally doesn’t change without trying to change it.

If that’s the case, then when you achieve a high number on the SRHI, it should be difficult to get the number back down - this isn’t the case from my experience. Leading me to conclude the SRHI could possibly need fixing.

But to get back to the original point, time dialation  would also affect this theorized new habit because it forces you to be solid despite the surroundings. 

Verplanken disagrees with me. He makes a fair point that the SRHI is a holistic exam - changing one type of question isn’t enough. My rejoinder is that it seems that hacking one aspect of the SRHI affects others.

When I do things repeatedly throughout the day, it not only affects my conception of time, how long I’ve done the task, but its automatacity AND frequency.

Now I have no concrete idea how doing this would actually look for using time dialation. For eating, perhaps you could go to as many restaurants as possible and order a salad and water when the waiter asks you for your order….though this wouldn’t be very good for your checkbook. You could attempt to exercise at a certain time in multiple places - but this would depend on your trigger.

I’m hoping after I get further along in this project I’ll be able to test these theories.

Day 37 & Verplanken on Hacking the SRHI

Record Keeping SRHI = 62
Fixed Meditation = 21
Dynamic Meditation = 55
Great sleep, bleary wakeup

This Dynamic Meditation thing is continuing to be quite interesting.

Yesterday I emailed Bas Verplanken, a big researcher in habit formation (I believe he helped created the SRHI), asking if any research had been done on “hacking the SRHI” - manipulating individual facets. I wanted to know if this would actually result in faster habit formation.

His response made sense. The SRHI is holistic - something that is simply frequent isn’t necessarily automatic, and one without the other isn’t a habit.

I’m still interested in this because in this dynamic meditation habit, frequency AND automaticity seem to be going hand in hand. I am shocked at how automatic catching negative emotions when I have them throughout the day is becoming.

The only answer will be to try it with another habit, preferably a more normal one. A fixed habit, like flossing.

Day 36

Record Keeping SRHI = 61
Fixed Meditation SRHI = 29
Dynamic Meditation SRHI = 49

Great night sleep, slow wakeup

44 recorded instances of negative thoughts yesterday, and numerous others I didn’t record. Here are some thoughts:

1. I noticed more instances where I nipped the thought before it fully crystalized. 

2. It’s like cheating. I’ve been so programmed to feel bad about things, that deciding not to about anything is like cheating at the game of life. Even if something bad happens I don’t have to feel bad about it. 

3. I’m starting to feel a very alien feeling - general happiness.

4. FEAR is something I haven’t adequately attacked. It’s still very difficult for me, and is something I need to focus on more.

5. I noticed something very unusual - after I nip things in the bud, I’ll go to record it and I have extreme difficulty remembering what caused my sadness or anxiety, even though it happened a few seconds ago. 

6. Hacking the SRHI - I’ll discuss this in a separate post.

I’m continuing to record specific instances of Dynamic Meditation (Equanimity Training would, perhaps, be a better term), and I will from now on only blog about any trends or thoughts I see when looking them over.