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

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

#1

Post by traumivator »

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?

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

#2

Post by themodelplumber »

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.

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

#3

Post by 7ur1n9 »

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...

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

#4

Post by sickmartian »

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.

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

#6

Post by balnaphone »

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

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

#7

Post by villasv »

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).

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

#9

Post by hideo »

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 ;)

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

#10

Post by zaptheimpaler »

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.

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