Day 393 & Why Do Depletion Days Happen

Day 393 Record Keeping
Day 362 Fixed Meditation
Day 308 Bodyweight Exercise (2 pushups)
Day 235 Writing (58 words)
Day 408 Eating
Day 43 Dynamic Meditation = 71 (1 hour)
Great sleep, slow wakeup. Sick. Really depleted. 
Possible factors: Sick, cheat day yesterday. Went biking for the first time yesterday. Slept well last night. Had beer last night. The days before had a lot of travel - errands that kept me busy. The end of last night I felt utterly drained - I fought on to do more things work-related beyond what I needed to do. Perhaps cutting off writing …or any habit….is just as important as starting it.

Dynamic Med Notes (1 hour):
x10 fidgeting
I’ve started catching fidgeting - the urge before
x4 shoulders
x4 arising caught
x1 an arising
X1 laughter

Why Do Ego-Depletion Days Happen?

There are some random days, like today, I feel utterly depleted and have to go down to basic executions of habits. Why?

Of course today I’m sick, but I’m really curious as to why in other circumstances. I think this is a really important factor - does a high output day that causes a higher willpower expenditure cause an ego depletion state the next day? Is this something that takes time? Is that ego depleted state a delayed reaction to high will expenditure? Because it certainly feels like it some days.

Some days it’s not a case of doing something difficult, and then later feeling depleted - there are days I just start out feeling utterly exhausted.

Baumeister has a daily correspondence - you do something that expends willpower, the next task is going to suffer, and regeneration occurs after ingesting glucose or sleeping. Could this be how endurance depletion works? It would explain waking up depleted - that weeks of higher endurance loads culminate in a day that starts off with depleted willpower. It also makes sense of treating endurance as a separate (but related) factor with it’s own dynamic.

It’s something I really want to pay attention to. When I’m experiencing these days I need to note any other abnormal circumstances.

Also, is there a corresponding high willpower day with great output earlier in the week? I might have in this case - I’ve been having really good writing days and meditations….again, something to keep an eye on.

Day 372 & Habit Formation Speed &

Day 372 Record Keeping
Day 341 Fixed Meditation (brought up neg emot to quell - HARD)
Day 287 Bodyweight Exercise (bridges - HARD)
Day 214 Writing (didn’t do - very difficult to summon up willpower)
Day 387 Eating = 75
Day 22 Dynamic Meditation = 70 (30 minutes)
Great sleep, great wakeup. Very sore. This is a good thing, a reflection of pushing my workout habit. Unfortunately my willpower was very depleted today.

Increased Speed of Habit Formation

Today I talked to Lydia about habit formation. This planning is working for her - she’s recording and flossing, and it seems to be really working for her. She mentioned that her flossing habit is almost a habit at 50 days, and her recording is almost a superhabit at 100 days.

I mentioned that my dynamic meditation is coming quite quickly, and I started to think about it in terms of what it would mean for a habit formula. It seems as though my ability to form habits is increasing (Time to Habituation), and the Grit Scale might just be used to represent that in an equation.

I’ve only taken it three times, but it might behoove me to take it every time I start and achieve a superhabit.

Dynamic Med Notes (30 minutes):

x5 fidgeting or almost fidgeting
x3 an arising of nervousness

Notes: Another spontaneous arising. Makes me think that doing it multiple times in a day will help foster that spontaneity

I had a cheat day and the sugar spike noticeably effectd my mental capacity to keep at a more relaxed level

metaphor: it feels like a solvent - the ability to take an incoming experience and detach that cohesion to my internal mental state.

Just like habit amnesia, I have a dynamic meditation amnesia with this - I’ll forget to observe my thoughts and prevent arisings. It can be very annoying when it doesn’t work out positively, but absorption is a case where I just forget everything and it prevents negative arisings.

Art of doing two things at once is important. It’s very difficult to focus on work and this. Or even watching a tv show and this. Doing three things is almost impossible - I’m hoping this will get to the point where it’s just automatic.

Day 183 and Restlessness and the Dangers of Endurance Repletion

Day 183 Record Keeping 
Day 151 Fixed Meditation 
Day 97 Bodyweight Exercise  (3 bridges, 15 sec 1-hand, 1-arm planks)
Day 24 Writing = 49
Day 197 Eating = 67
Great sleep, incredibly bleary wakeup. Still restless at night. Lacking willpower in bodyweight training.

Restlessness and the Dangers of Endurance REpletion

IN this post I talked about the importance of noting adjectives during this whole process. To continue on that trend, during the last couple of days I’ve experienced immense restlessness right before going to bed. I think it’s interesting and can better help describe the beast called endurance. I think I’ve been focusing too much on defining endurance and less on how endurance acts in the context of this project.

When I’m endurance depleted, like last week, I tend to be irritable, depressed, and physically and emotionally tired. I feel like there’s a void that needs to be filled. A pressure that’s about to break, and it does break in various actions.

But at the beginning of this week I dropped a bunch of scheduled actions, and felt I was in a state of endurance REpletion.  A “sand bag” effect occurred. 

I feel happier more constantly. Lighter. Breezier. I have more concentration at my disposal. More willpower. 

But at nights I get restless (and this started from the first day). And it’s the restlessness of too much energy - like I should do something more. I have the urge to start another project - I call this Andrew Syndrome, after a friend that always wants to start another project without mastering the first. This too is a void needing to be filled - but it’s more one of boredom.

This is equally as bad, because like my friend Andrew going after a new project, it can result in the total collapse of continued slow, steady progress in previous tasks - which is the point of this whole project. 

So what should I do? I think one option is to increase the difficulty of current tasks. But I don’t really find myself having an excess of energy during the day. And I’m kind’ve hesitant when it comes to doing more at night when I have tons of restless energy - thought this might work when it comes to bodyweight training. It’s an option.

Another option is to do something that I feel is productive, but one I’m not going to pursue definitively over long term just quite yet. I think some Khan Academy classes might work - when I experienced something like this before I started an art history course. It’s great because there is no time limit and I can go at my own pace - so I can pick it up and drop it when I want. And it has nothing to do with my current goals - it’s something totally different.

Day 161 & Inexplicable Anxiety & Perfect Score

Day 161 Record Keeping SRHI = 84
Day 129 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 82
Day 75 Bodyweight Exercise SRHI= 79 (2x8, 1x4 burpees)
Day 2 Writing = 12
Day 175 Eating SRHI = 62
Good sleep, good wakeup. Severe bought of anxiety yesterday. FIRST PERFECT SCORE ON THE SRHI!!!

Inexplicable Anxiety Yesterday
Yesterday was perhaps the most efficient completion of my habits I’ve ever had. I woke up early, went from task to task without any dithering and finished my work before lunch.

Then my mind started racing, thinking about tasks I wasn’t at yet. Writing, future assignments, tasks I have yet to get done, photography, wishing this whole process would hurry up. Basically goal-oriented thinking, instead of the process oriented manner that this entire project is based on.

But stepping back, all this negative emotion is right on queue - I’ve started a new habit, adding to my endurance load. And this is a habit I’m quite fearful of. What is needed is forgiveness -I’m going to mess up, and I’m going to be assailed - it’s just the hallmark of endurance depletion.

What I ended up doing is taking a moment to relax. I went to the beach, I did some meditation, and the feeling faded and I had a great rest of the day. Next time this happens I’m going to watch some funny youtube videos - a task that worked really well when I was experimenting with regimentation. I wanted something that acted to counter ego depletion - Baumeister found that sugar did the job. I wanted an alternative, and youtube seemed to work.

Perfect Score
I think the only reason I got this was because I was so loopy from doing my burpees. I couldn’t think straight, and basically found myself slogging through my daily SRHI - it was completely automatic. I’m beginning to think that self awareness is important - not only as one factor for the SRHI score, but it somehow enhances all other factors. It becomes shifted and seated as more a part of who I am. Knowing that I do the task without thinking in my mind makes it more a part of me, which shores up identity questions.

Day 147, Affects of Bad Sleep on SRHI, Endurance Depletion

Day 147 Record Keeping SRHI = 79
Day 115 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 78
Day 61 Bodyweight Exercise SRHI= 72 (3 bridges, 30 sec plank)
Day 161 Eating SRHI = 58  
Bad sleep, bleary wakeup.

Bad Sleep and the SRHI

Today I had a really bad night sleep - it was interrupted, filled with bad dreams and when I woke up I felt incredibly bleary and slow. I noticed that when I took the SRHI I appeared to pessimistic in all my answers, which lead to slightly depressed scores. 

I seem to recall this on other days, and I’m curious if there is a correlation. My meditation wasn’t as effective as it usually is today either, which probably leaves me feeling much less optimistic and chipper about the day. 

Endurance Depletion

Last night I also felt a serious case of what I’m calling Endurance Depletion - that feeling of being sick of everything - but more than that - a bone tiredness. Not physical, just a mental torpor followed by extreme pessimism and an inability to see any progress that I’ve made. Basic tasks became hard to do. It felt like I was trudging through sludge or like a fly caught in honey. At one point described myself as “feeling sludge-y.”

It’s important to describe this feeling in order to identify what is going on and prevent “ah-screw-it!” moments. And in fact I did have one, and ended up having a cheat meal.

Individual moments of weakness aren’t so important. What is important is a collapse of the whole system. What I’m essentially building is a house of cards where the bottom row is slowly SLOWLY turning into concrete. If I build too fast, the entire house falls down.

And the truth is, I am doing quite a bit - I have a new position at work that’s taking some getting used to, and I’m still trying to get back on track from the most difficult of habits - eating. This is why I’m giving myself a little more time and space before adding a new habit.

Day 90 & Eating Danger Zone

Day 90 Record Keeping SRHI = 71
Day 58 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 73
Day 4 Burpee SRHI= 22
Day 104 Eating SRHI = 30 - Failed to do yesterday
Bad night sleep, great wakeup.

Eating Danger Zone

With a three day bad eating streak and an all-time low in my SRHI my eating habit, which was absolutely steady for three months, has faltered badly. Before I had mused why 12 weeks was such a common denominator for 3 month transformations and clean eating regimes. In previous diets I’ve only lasted 3 months - sometimes a few weeks longer, other times a few weeks shorter. In those times I felt that feeling of just being sick of it, which to me is the signal for what I’ll call Endurance Depletion.

My theory is this time coincides with the Danger Zone of my Quarter Mark Theory. As an aside, this would put the entire life cycle for a good eating habit to be almost an entire year at 360 days (if we calculate from 90 days as the quarter mark). This, to me, makes sense. from Phillippa Lally’s graph, she extrapolated 250 or so days for the completion of an exercise habit. And I think of eating habits as being more involved - the eating habit is continual, performed several times in a day under different circumstances while an exercise habit is usually made once.

So, what can I do? Well for one, it’s good that I’m not recording it. Record keeping is my first line of defense for making it through because it gives you a bit of distance, and shows you just how bad  your doing in your habit. Without recording, the tendency for me is just to absently forget. It doesn’t explode, it just quietly fizzles out, almost before you realize it. When attempting habit formation as a kid (I used to have charts, just not as detailed as this) I’d remember weeks later.

I’m trying to decide if this is enough, or if I need other tools. Perhaps more cheats? Perhaps telling myself I need to eat clean once a day, then I can cheat the rest? 

The main point isn’t to perform the task perfectly - and this is a point I continually lose track of. It’s to survive this period (another 3 months - ugh!) in any way possible. Even if I come out limping and ragged on the other end, my prediction is that afterwards it gets easier.

This phase has also come with an emotional toll. I’m noticing a moodiness with a chance of depression. Things frustrate me easier, and I get down in life in general. This is, in my mind, the hallmark of Endurance Depletion - a general malaise.