Day 1680

Day 1680 Record Keeping
Day 1652 Fixed Meditation (DID NOT DO)
Day 1526 Writing (1, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1065 Exercise (15 min walking, 15 min biking, 15 min elliptical)

Day 806 Mobility/Stretching (15 min, anterior and interior shin smash)
Day 116 Flossing (ALL TEETH!)


Bad sleep. Yesterday had an errand that interrupted work and was incredibly sore from the shin smashing, which makes total sense - it was incredibly painful. I have a tendency to get shin splints, which is why running was so difficult when I was obsessed with trying to do long distance running in high school and was in good shape. Now it’s even worse, so I’m trying to work on that tissue. Today I was also sore, but also getting sick.

Day 1678

Day 1678 Record Keeping
Day 1650 Fixed Meditation (10 jhana, 10 gratitude, 10 metta, 10 intro Houston Zen Center sit)
Day 1524 Writing (3, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1063 Exercise (20 min walking/running, 15 min biking, 15 min elliptical)

Day 804 Mobility/Stretching (15 min, anterior and interior shin smash)
Day 114 Flossing (ALL TEETH!)


Bad sleep. Checked out the Houston Zen Center, which is quite close to where I live. They had an intro talk with a 10 min sit.

I’m beginning to think that there is this weird connection with bifurcating habits into small cross trained bits and increases in overall outputs. I understand how that would work - I think I was thinking about increasing habit loads as a matter of willpower when it was more about boredom and attention. When I do one type of cardio for 45 minutes it’s boring and I can’t do it. But when I break it up, it’s new, it’s interesting, much like the Novelty Affect or gamification, it just keeps my attention.

But further than that, it seems to have a system wide impact. I naturally increased mobility and flossing without really intending to. I shall monitor this to see if it continues, but it’s definitely an interesting result, and one that could offer an answer to what I long considered the missing link to my system.

I am curious in the future of really zoning in to the ecology of going from super habit to habit terminus. There really isn’t often that much to go after a tiny habit. Flossing with all teeth vs flossing 4 teeth isn’t that much of a difference. And for meditation or exercise, you really wouldn’t want to do more than 45 minutes or an hour of each. So zooming in to what it feels like increasing output is important, even though I’d be really fumbling as to metrics and even definitions of things like willpower versus attention or energy.

Day 1677

Day 1677 Record Keeping
Day 1649 Fixed Meditation (10 jhana, 10 tantra, 10 vipassana, 10 scrolling, 10 metta)
Day 1523 Writing (3, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1062 Exercise (15 min walking/running, 15 min biking, 15 min elliptical)

Day 803 Mobility/Stretching (15 min, hip stretch, back & foot smash)
Day 113 Flossing (ALL TEETH!)


Good sleep. Incredibly productive day in terms of output. Modulating tasks within habit brackets seems to be working really well, but is it sustainable? Flossed all teeth today, we’ll see if this too is sustainable. If so, it’s very close to my first fully complete habit.

Day 1672


Day 1672 Record Keeping

Day 1644 Fixed Meditation (10 min gratitude, 10 min metta, 10 min vipassana)
Day 1518 Writing (3, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1057 Exercise (15 min walking, 15 min biking, 15 min elliptical)

Day 798 Mobility/Stretching (10 min, foot & back smash)
Day 108 Flossing (20 teeth)


Ok sleep. Last 7 days have been a wash. Very depressed and frustrated. Also been trying to rethink writing. Pushing through has resulted in what I think is a better process for writing, and perhaps a solution to pushing habits.

Day 1664 & A Note on Cross-training Meditation and Exercise

Day 1664 Record Keeping
Day 1636 Fixed Meditation (15 min, applied tantra)
Day 1510 Writing (3, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1049 Exercise (15 min, walking/running, 15 min, biking)

Day 790 Mobility/Stretching (10 min, back, back erector smash & hip stretch)
Day 100 Flossing (20 teeth)


Good sleep. Early day with lots of errands. Had to get Lydia to the airport and left at 5:30. Yet, I did all my habits.

A Note on Cross-training Meditation and Exercise

I’ve been really thinking quite a lot about cross training in order to push habits. Normally I think of cross-training in terms of switching up things in a week. One day walk, the next day bike. But I remember when I was attempting body for life several years ago in China, I found that I just got bored, for lack of a better world.

I knew I could bike for an hour, but it wasn’t just boring, it took a lot of effort to will myself through the same movement. But if I changed it up - walking, biking, and the elliptical, suddenly it just felt easier. And I improved - for the first time since high school I began to run.

They say that making any decision drains willpower - in this case it feels like sticking to things despite boredom does as well. In this case, changing things up in a session appears to access something akin to the Novelty Effect.

I noticed the same thing when I was switching things up in meditation in a session. But in this case it again seemed to not only yield longer times with ease, but stronger meditation.

This is something to seriously think about in the basic progress of any habit.

Today in mediation I did another sort of cross training - applying meditation, not just to my normal mental state, but after bringing up negative emotion, and then using tantra to change it. Adding rigor through making training closer to the negative aspects of real life, and ratcheting the base difficulty may be yet another way to push habits.

Whether these methods are enough to raise the base intensity of habits over longer periods of time remains to be seen.

Day 1659

Day 1659 Record Keeping
Day 1631 Fixed Meditation (DID NOT DO)
Day 1505 Writing (2 hours)
Day 1044 Exercise (DID NOT DO,)

Day 785 Mobility/Stretching (DID NOT DO)
Day 95 Flossing (20 teeth)


Bad sleep. If yesterday was really low willpower, today was a total collapse of willpower. I feel that there is a pattern to this. I upped everything in the beginning of the week, and within four days it collapsed.

Day 1657 & Thoughts on How to Measure Increased Habit Loads

Day 1657 Record Keeping
Day 1629 Fixed Meditation (15 min, metta)
Day 1503 Writing (7, 13 min Pomodoros, very hard)
Day 1042 Exercise (25 min, biking)

Day 783 Mobility/Stretching (10 min, back & back erector smash)
Day 93 Flossing (20 teeth)


Ok sleep.

Thoughts on How to Measure Increased Habit Loads
One of the last pieces of the whole self-improvement puzzle (for me, anyways) is how to efficiently increase the amount of work I do on a habit. This is all the more confusing because I’m starting every habit so that it’s incredibly small, to increase the likelihood of it getting to automaticity. But what I’ve found by just naturally going by feel is that I bite off more than I can chew.

So if I start a small habit of biking for 10 minutes, once it’s up to a superhabit, I’ll have a day where I go for 30 minutes. This never works out, and I’m almost always forced to drop down. Maybe not back to 10 minutes (there’s usually a natural swell after the habit is established), but perhaps 15. But if I do it too quickly, the habit not only shrinks back, but it affects other habits.

Initially I thought of it in terms of performing an experiment - maybe I can try the gradual method of slowly adding minutes or I can test out 30 day challenges and see if that gets me further. But another method I was looking into was periodization for athletes.

When I was in high school my friend wanted to join the cross country team. Over the summer he was given a program to follow to get him from running a mile to running up to 9 miles. It involving some days of rest, some days of increased loads, and some days of average or light runs. I never was certain as to whether it was based on some study or if it was just passed down as coaching wisdom. It worked for my friend, but when I tried it, I failed miserably.

While I search for the background on that kind’ve training, it might be helpful to just monitor what days I feel more energized and what days I don’t, based on a rudimentary scale, after I increase the load of a habit. This week I increased my biking by 5 minutes, moving from 20 to 25 minutes. Yesterday I felt great and did 30 minutes. Today I felt like I was dragging even to get to 25. That could mimic the pattern across time if the energy patterns are similar with every push.

That’s, of course, a big if. I don’t, for example, know if it is system wide, since I’m also working really intensely on writing, and upping flossing. I also don’t know how long I’ll have to wait to get things completely automatic with a higher load, nor do I know how to test it in any sort of efficient, elegant way.

Day 1655

Day 1655 Record Keeping
Day 1627 Fixed Meditation (15 min, mindful scrolling)
Day 1501 Writing (3, 13 min Pomodoros, incredibly hard)
Day 1040 Exercise (25 min, biking)

Day 781 Mobility/Stretching (10 min, back smash)
Day 115 Sunday Groceries
Day 91 Flossing (12 teeth)


Good sleep. Tried a new meditation, mindful scrolling, that deals with social media and meditating through the negative feelings that arise from it. Had an amazingly productive and difficult writing session. Despite the small amount of time, it was something that was incredibly hard and worthwhile.

Day 1643

Day 1643 Record Keeping
Day 1615 Fixed Meditation (10 min, metta)
Day 1489 Writing (3, 20 min Pomodoros)
Day 1028 Exercise (DID NOT DO)

Day 769 Mobility/Stretching (DID NOT DO)
Day 79 Flossing (12 teeth)


Bad sleep. Interrupted sleep, interrupted schedule, and just felt kinda down and tired the entire day.I had attempted to reverse my schedule in order to get more writing out put, but I ended up just draining everything at the beginning.