Hey there 👋,
Welcome to the 14th edition of Anticynical! In the last edition, I wrote about incentives and incentive structures. Incentives are appeal to an individual’s self-interest to perform a specific action, and incentive structures are a set of one or more incentives applied together in a context.
This week's idea is habit tracking.
Idea: Habit Tracking
In a nutshell: Habit tracking is the meta-habit that makes all other habits more achievable and effective. As long as you can define a repeatable action in a life area or domain, you can improve that area by tracking the repeatable action.
Whenever I want to bring significant change into my life, I start by tracking a related routine action or habit.
Barring extreme experiences—trauma, mystical psychedelic trips—it’s impossible to bring meaningful changes to your life by doing something just once or a few times. You need hundreds and thousands of repetitions for lasting change. You need habits and routines.
Sticking to a new habit is simple: you just have to get yourself to do that thing X times per day/week/month consistently for a long time. Simple.
Although simple, it is far from easy. After all, if it were easy, many more would have a fit and strong body, run marathons, produce novel research, and be virtuoso musicians, masterful meditators, and rockstar programmers.
There are many obstacles to being consistent with habits and routines.
You probably know that it’s easy to do something when you’re motivated or inspired. But after the initial spark of inspiration wears off, motivation can be elusive.
Moreover, a habit can take a long time to “set in.” It is a myth that this takes only 21 days.1 It usually takes many months, if not years. Even after setting in, it’s possible to “fall out” of a habit due to change in the environment or circumstances.
Further, if you’re working on more than just a handful of new habits, it can feel overwhelming to be on top of all of them. When life gets in the way, and many things compete for your attention, it’s easy to simply forget or lose track of your habits.
Therefore, an effective solution for managing habits must:
help you feel more motivated and satisfied, especially before the habit/routine sets in,
keep track of all your habits, and
be highly conspicuous and visible so you never forget about your habits.
I have been doing habit tracking for many years and can confidently say it is incredibly effective. I have used it for starting and sticking with regular meditation, exercise, and reading over many years. I have also used it to improve my fashion sensibilities, be more social, and sleep better.
I currently use a habit-tracking app called—wait for it—Habit Tracker,2 but you can use other apps, calendars, bullet journals, or anything else that is good for the above three things.
Let’s go over how my habit current tracking process passes the effective solution-for-managing-habits checklist.
First, habit tracking can be a source of motivation and satisfaction.
A habit tracker allows you to measure your progress on your habits. This measurement and progress can be extremely motivating and satisfying.
One such metric is streaks. The power of streaks has been very well documented and popularized. You must have come across mentions of Jerry Seinfeld's Don't Break the Chain! technique at least once. Many video games give you incrementally increasing "daily rewards" to make you sign in daily (hoping to turn the game into a habit). Snapchat streaks are another popular example.
You can use this power of streaks to help you with your habits. For example, when I see that I've been sticking to my writing stint for the last 19 weeks, I feel motivated to keep going, and even the idea of breaking the streak sounds painful.
There are also other metrics about past performance (see the image above for examples). A few weeks ago, I noticed that I had actually exercised ~4 times per week for the past year. Although I've been exercising regularly for many years, a part of me always thought I wasn't doing enough. For the first time, I had proof, and it felt really satisfying.
Second, habit trackers are great for tracking many habits at a time.
I keep track of exercising, reading, sleeping on time, violin practice, meditating, and many more habits. Many of those still need to set in, and some have fallen out after setting in multiple times.
Tracking all of that in my head would be highly intractable.
Third, visible habit tracking can prevent “out of sight, out of mind” for habits.
Finally, I have my calendar and habit tracking widget on my phone's home screen. This high visibility has been a game-changer. Before the home screen widget, I often forgot about my habits for weeks at a time, especially when I was busy.
Now I’m reminded of my habits every time I use my phone.
…
Habit tracking is a simple but powerful exercise. It is the meta-habit that makes all other habits more achievable and effective.
As mentioned, I use the Habit Tracker app to track my habits. You can use Habit Tracker or other apps or go analog with a journal or physical calendar. If your method helps with motivation, keeps track of habits, and has high visibility, it will help you change your life.
Question: If you could press a button to turn any action into an unshakable habit, what would you choose?
Would you want to meditate for an hour or longer every day? Lift weights? Run every morning? Do math problems?
I'd love to hear from you…
Have you tried habit tracking before? How did it go for you?
What is your wished unshakable habit?
Or anything else at all. Just hit reply.
This myth originates from Dr. Maxwell Maltz who said something along the lines of it takes “a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and new one to jell.” (emphasis mine)
I’m not affiliated to Habit Tracker in any way. It’s just the app I use currently for habit tracking and am pretty happy with it.