Ask HN: I keep forgetting the new habits I'm trying to form

33 points by traumivator 4 years ago | 19 comments

This is something I have been struggling with: Let's say the habit I want to form is daily meditation

- research the topic a bit why this habit would beneficial

- make a plan to meditate for 10 min every day

- set up a daily reminder on my phone

- first day: do a 10 min session

- second day: do a 10 min session

- third day: something happens and I skip the session

- fourth day: I skip the session

- fifth day: I skip the session etc. (and ignore the daily reminder on my phone)

- a few weeks later: I am suddenly reminded of the habit I tried to form

Any ideas how I can prevent losing track of the new habit after skipping once or twice? Or how I could regain my focus faster than after a few weeks?

react_burger38 4 years ago |

You should read "Atomic Habits", by James Clear. Basically if you want to build new habits, you need to set realistic goals that you will actually do (and also have self-love, that if you don't get it done, you aren't a failure, every day and even every hour is a new hour you can do better) and then do those goals; then after you meet those goals and establish those habits, then you can move on and make that goal a little harder; or you can set goals in a different area.

Another element of this is that you need to establish when the habit will happen, and where. If you pick the same place every day, with time it becomes automatic.

Also important here is the aggregation of marginal gains - each little thing you improve in your life adds up over time to make a big difference. See this article from James Clear about this concept: https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains.

Remember as well - as Atomic Habits mentions - the goal isn't just to do whatever your goal is; the goal isn't just the outcome; the goal is to change your very identity. A person who wants to read every day, the goal isn't just the reading itself, it is to BECOME a reader. For the person who wants to eat well and exercise, the goal isn't just to lose weight; it is to BECOME a fit, healthy person. As you form new habits every day, what you do on a daily basis becomes part of you, and those actions you take are the evidence of your new identity.

JasonCannon 4 years ago | |

It also mentions chaining your habits. Find something you do already every day, e.g. brushing your teeth, and then chain your meditation to that habit. After you brush your teeth, meditate for 10 minutes. That way as you are brushing your teeth, your mind will be primed to get ready to meditate afterwards.

niklasmtj 4 years ago | |

This. "Atomic Habits" was a game changer in forming new habits for me. Especially the point of habit stacking is something that sticked with me.

I recommend the book to everyone who is interested in forming new habits or getting rid of old "bad" habits

freetinker 4 years ago | |

Beautifully and succinctly captures the book's central message. Thanks!

zaptheimpaler 4 years ago |

overall just understand building a particular habit is not as easy as programming a reminder on your phone, as if programming your phone will program you. since you asked about "habits" in general and not a particular habit, maybe you just want to collect "good" habits instead of genuinely wanting to pursue a particular habit?

focus less on reminders/tools/gadgets and more on honestly articulating to yourself - do you even want it, and why do you want it? do you really, really want to meditate? or do you feel like you "should" meditate because its the new health trend? self-coercion will not work in the long run. i felt like i should meditate for a long time, and i never did because i never really knew anything about it besides knowing i "should" do it and surface level junk from reading books. i practice mindfulness more often now because i stumbled into it at a period when i really, really needed it, and now it genuinely feels good.

one of the fittest guys i know is that way because he was a fat kid and classmates made fun of him and he hated it. he didn't set out to build a "habit" of exercising. he did not spend a little bit of time "researching the topic and its benefits". no, he went to the gym on and off for a while. after a year, he was addicted to how good it felt and spent literally hours daily watching videos on form and obsessing over eating the right thing etc.

that is what intrinsic motivation looks like. if you were really motivated to meditate, you would not just skip a few sessions and forget about it in a week - that just means you weren't really motivated to meditate anyways (which is ok by the way! you don't need to adopt every good habit some blogger/media posts about). just saying there is a big difference between "wanting to want" something and actually wanting it.

croo 4 years ago | |

While trying to exercise more I found a "hack" around this. I was only able to exercise +3 weeks when I priorized it over everything else in my life. Long working hours? Sorry gotta go. Wife needs help cleaning a room? Sorry gotta go. Who should getting groceries? Nah, I have to exercise sorry. Daddy read me more! Sorry gotta go(okay but just one more)

themodelplumber 4 years ago |

Are you doing this for others' reasons that it's beneficial, or for your own?

Are you keeping a log of the perceived effect of meditation on your mind and body?

Just at a glance I wouldn't guess that it's helping you enough to be interesting, based on the outcome where you detach so easily from the practice.

If you need to stick with it in the long term regardless, I would at least combine it with scheduled social pressure, like a zoom meditation group with some friends, or more detailed tracking pressure, like building a composite graph of at least five specific measured factors that are important to you. In the strictest case, some of these factors might only be measurable weekly, for example your weekly weight loss if it's a weight loss meditation, or weekly average resting heart rate, etc.

Good luck, I know it's a practice that a lot of people swear by. I learned a few different types as part of various experiences, and personally ended up developing my own method that works best for me. Everybody's different.

sickmartian 4 years ago |

What I do is have a weekly reminder I call 'alignment' set for the weekend, this one can't be skipped and for that it should be very easy to go through, in my case when I see this one I go to Trello and check some notes I have there that explain how I see the world, what I want to accomplish and the goals, should take around 5 to 10', based on these goals it's when I create those small daily reminders for the habits I want to cultivate.

So, worst that can happen is I miss a week and I'm then reminded of why I wanted to do this and I can get started for next week.

The most important thing is to be kind to yourself, run or walk at your own pace, falling a couple of times doesn't mean you have to give up, eventually you will get there, even if you skip a couple of days or weeks or give up for a short time and take over later on. It's self improvement, nobody is supposed to be perfect.

7ur1n9 4 years ago |

I have also struggled with the same problem for a long time. However, what helped me the most to get over this was to understand how habits work. And for that, I can recommend the book "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg (a good summary can be found here [1]).

The most important insight for me was: It is not possible to train a new habit out of thin air. You always have to change an existing (bad) habit.

Simply put, a habit works in three steps: (1) A cue gets triggered; (2) a routine gets performed and (3) in the end, we are getting a reward.

Let's take the (bad) habit of reaching for our cell phone in the morning after waking up. The cue here is that we have just spent 8 hours outside of any information flow and now feel we need to catch up. So then we start the routine and reach for our cell phone. And the supposed reward now is that we think that we are better informed afterward. But that's mostly not the case because, after hours of doom scrolling every day, we instead feel like wasting our time.

The idea now is that we keep the cue, switch out the routine, and experiment a bit with the reward. So in your meditation example, instead of reaching for the cell phone, we could start a 10-minute meditation while still lying in bed. Now the reward could come from recognizing that the behavior makes us feel better. Since we already internalized the cue, we can't forget the new habit.

(What I have described here is, of course, very abstract and must be seen individually and requires continuous training.)

What could also help would be to simplify the routine. You wrote that you want to meditate for 10 minutes every day. As a start, it may make more sense to set a goal to "meditate regularly." I once set myself the goal to read for at least 30 minutes every day. But as life is, there is not always the possibility to take 30 minutes at a time. And then I started to skip the new habit. I have changed that I also try to read in short free moments and not in a fixed setting. For example, if I brush my teeth for 3 minutes, I can read 1/2 page in the meantime.

[1] https://medium.com/@aidanhornsby/notes-on-the-power-of-habit...

villasv 4 years ago |

The first habit you need is journaling. The NoOp journal (which requires no further habits) would be gratitude journal or dream journal if you’re able to consistently remember them. What matters is that you make it daily.

Then, any other habit becomes easier to incorporate once you talk about it every time you journal. My favorite journaling method is the Theme System by Cortex (Myke and CGP).

Noumenon72 4 years ago |

Beeminder will remind you more and more urgently as you approach the deadline when skipping your habit will cost you money. https://www.beeminder.com/

j-rom 4 years ago |

I started tracking my habits using Daylio 3 years ago and haven't looked back: https://daylio.net/. This combined with reading Atomic Habits has helped me stick to habits I'm trying to form. Basically, set the bar super low. Instead of 10 minute sessions, set it for 30 seconds. If you meditate for 30 seconds in a day, that counts as you meditating. The goal is to get into the habit of being consistent. Increase the duration (if you want) can come later.

forgotmypw17 4 years ago |

I, too, experienced this challenge, specifially with meditation.

What helped me, after learning the basics of breath meditation (and reading Wherever You Go) was committing to "trigger-based" meditation.

I decided that whenever I was...

* annoyed by something, anything. experiencing annoyance.

* waiting for something.

* in a work meeting I didn't need to actively participate in.

... I would, internally, begin a breath meditation, and hold it for as long as I remembered to.

This technique by itself has been life-changing for me, and I can't recommend it enough.

It helped me train my attention-focus, and gradually but quickly improved my experience.

cl42 4 years ago |

How many individual habits are you trying to form?

I have this problem when I try and form lots of habits at once. It's easy to remind yourself to meditate daily if it's the only habit you are trying to form.

Once you have two or three of these, you're moving into checklist territory... And then it's easy to have them slip.

My recommendation: pick one habit to form and work on it for several weeks. Once you notice it's actually habitual, then start working on a second one.

A few others have mentioned "Atomic Habits". It's a good book to review as well.

beaconstudios 4 years ago |

don't just remind yourself of what you want to do; remember why you want to do it. You won't keep up a habit long enough to engrain it if you're not providing yourself sufficient motivation.

balnaphone 4 years ago |

Use a medication tracker on your phone, for alerts that are distinct from alarms/meetings, and are easy to setup with a label for multiple times per day. Also, "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg, does give a good intellectual basis for resetting habits.

This post does bring a bit of comedy into reality...

Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nYElwd1mNM

pps 4 years ago |

Two scientifically proven methods:

- https://woopmylife.org/

- mental simulations https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Ewa+Jarczewska-Gerc+mental+simulat...

hideo 4 years ago |

Is there something you already do every day? My most effective habits are the ones that are piggy backing off existing habits. E.g. I made it a habit to stretch for 15 mins every day after I shower. Pretty soon the end of shower signals that it is time to stretch.

The harder part is trying to keep my family from taking up that time but that’s a separate problem ;)

sheinsheish 4 years ago |

I’d recommend Leo’s wizardry https://duckduckgo.com/?q=stick+site%3Azenhabits.net