Posts Tagged ‘habit building’

Perceived Momentum Solidifies #Habits

Posted: February 13, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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I’ve been a premium subscriber to Lumosity (brain games app) on and off for a decade now. I find it helpful. The older I get the more I realize my brain can use all the help it can get. Real, imagined, or placebo I don’t care. Don’t tell me about the labor pains just show me the baby.

I would use it reasonably consistently here and there then drop off. I would subscribe to the premium version when there was a sale on Cyber Monday or on New Year’s Day something like that. I’d start and stop and start and stop. I’d unsubscribe and resubscribe. Does this cycle sound familiar or relatable?

I never confused it as a magic pill for a bulletproof brain. I just knew myself enough to know that I’ve done enough detrimental work on my brain that a brain training app could at least serve as a beneficial use of time.

It has helped me at least a little. But what made it finally stick, just in the last year, was when I dropped the expectation of it helping my brain and doubled down on it helping me structure my time/daily schedule.

I realized that the value of just going through the motions, even half heartedly, provided as much value to me as putting full effort into using the app. How? Consistency.

I found that for me, the consistency of using the app everyday, without exception, even if I picked the quickest, easiest games, without enthusiasm or even a quarter of my concentration, did more for me that applying myself fully to the game once or twice a week and then forgetting about it for stretches of time.

As I did that more and more, and built up more and more streaks, a funny thing happened…my scores in all the games went up. I set my personal best records in all the games I played consistently. How? Consistency. I didn’t half ass it every time I opened the app.

But I did some of the times. When I was busy, feeling burned out, hungover, melancholy, distracted, multitasking, etc I still would take the time each day to open the app, and play the five games required to warrant completion and a little graphic at the end showing how many days I had completed my brain training consecutively.

There were however plenty of times where I was motivated, concentrated, caffeinated, enthusiastic and excited to play the games and try to beat my previous best score, to make up for a poor performance from yesterday and/or because I felt training extra memory or attention games would help me at an upcoming event.

This isn’t a paid ad for Lumosity (I wish) because it’s not about the particulate it’s about the general. It’s about doing the thing consistently. It’s about doing it every day, even half assed. Because if we do something everyday, half heartedness is inevitable but so is doing our best and so is doing better than we perceive we are capable of.

How?

Consistency.

#Habit Building is About New Not Old

Posted: January 9, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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It feels like I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to improve my habits.

At least the periods of time I care to remember. Which are the periods of time in which I cared to care and tried to try. I also remember many instances of the internal resistance to trying to build new habits being so strong, it felt like a literal force from within my body pushing me the opposite direction.

In 2023 I read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. One of the best books I’ve ever read. I strongly recommend it for a host of reasons. While reading the book and after reading the book, one of the concepts that stuck and that I noticed when consuming other material related to habit formation, is the necessity of focusing on and doing the new thing rather than focusing on not doing the old thing.

That was a light bulb moment for me. Reading about that in the book, I knew both in my heart and in my head that I had spent the majority of time when trying to form new habits on what I didn’t want to do versus the new action I wanted to cement.

This concept legitimately helped me and is actively helping me now. You reading this blog is a product of me focusing on writing and publishing my work, rather than focusing on the time spent not writing and fixating on the details of what I want to write through the paradigm of perfectionism.

I like writing. I like blogging. I wanted to write again. I wanted to blog again. I posted an article that I liked one day last year. I just wrote it, revised it, and posted it. Then when I sat down to do the next one, the old habits of focusing on the topic, the title, the body, a catchy opener, and a well wrapped up closing line all creeped into my mind and put a writer’s block in front of the habit of blogging.

A couple of months later I read Atomic Habits. After finishing the book I read various articles and watched various YouTube videos on habits. The concept I found myself implementing the most in my day to day life was thinking about the new action, rather than thinking about past actions, past mistakes, past failures, etc.

The value of this concept is directly proportional to the action taken. It’s real value that can be measured externally, based on the real action one takes. I’m very grateful to have this paradigm taking hold in me. I hope it can do the same for whoever reads my words.