Ask HN: What is your experience with 'doing something' daily challenges?

My daily habits are one of the best parts of my life. Without them, I feel like I'm running in sand in life. With them, I feel like I have solid foundation to build on. With a few challenging ones, I feel like I'm building on bedrock.

I've coined the term sidcha for Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity and written about the concept: http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/self-imposed-daily-cha...

My main challenging habits are

- Burpees, daily

- Blog posts, daily

- Cold showers, every fourth day

I did my first set of daily burpees December 22, 2011 and haven’t missed one since, so I’m about to enter my 6th year of that habit, nearing 80,000 cumulative burpees. I've written about it: http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/burpees

I started posting daily on my blog, http://joshuaspodek.com, in January 2011 and haven’t missed a day since, so I’m about to enter my 7th year of that habit, nearing 2,500 cumulative posts. Here's an archive of all the posts: http://joshuaspodek.com/archives

I took my first cold shower in December 2013. I did them daily for a month and every fourth day since, so I just started my 4th year of doing them regularly, nearing 300 of them cumulatively. My posts about it: http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/cold-showers-rock#30-d...

Less challenging habits include things like brushing and flossing daily, cooking healthy meals daily, and others that aren’t as remarkable, though I’ve done them longer. The last time I went to sleep without brushing my teeth would have been in college, which would be around 1990.

Come to think of it, if you count not eating meat as a habit, I’ve eaten no meat since 1990.

The process was accidental:

1) I started by focusing on counting (obviously). Then counting to larger numbers and backwards.

2) During timeouts (when he had a tantrum etc.) I often made him count backwards or forwards instead of setting a timer. This actually isn't as cruel as it sounds, it refocused him and he calmed down earlier. And then counting by twos seemed to work.

2.5) The "endless" series of iPad apps were amazing (endless reader etc.). Their math one made numbers, counting and addition seem like fun.

3) Kumon books were awesome and put him on a good path.

4) When he got older I got him "prime climb". It's an amazing board game because it makes huge chunks of math come together.

5) As far as what age to start goes, I think the kid tells you that in his/her own way. You find out that you skipped over stuff that seemed obvious. For example, my kid knew primes and multiplication before understanding which of two numbers is greater.

And congrats on being a new father!

I've been learning french on Duolingo for a about a year now. Usually I take one or two 5 minute lessons per day for a week and then spend a week "strengthening skills" (reviewing old material). It says I am on 54% fluency atm.

A few weeks ago I tried going though a math course in french (Initiation à la théorie des distributions on Coursera) and was surprised that I actually managed to understand it. (although I have to listen to it at 1x speed and with french subtitles so it is much slower than leaning in english)

The issue I had with Duolingo is that after a while I had advanced to a point where the bulk of my time was spent reviewing past lessons which didn't leave much time for new lessons (which added to the burden of lessons to review). Perhaps I shouldn't have been worried about it but the gamification is quite effective at making me feel bad for not having all my lessons at 100%.

Had left my job over 4 years back and since then have been doing different things time to time. Freelancing, practicing different hobbies. But during this whole time despite achieving moderate success I lost my daily habits and routine. Realizing what was happening to me I have started to be very conscious of what I plan to do everyday and what I achieve. Something as small as cleaning my house to finishing up a trello task for my projects is absolutely worth it. It has not been very long yet but its motivating enough to take it far.