SFW Streaking

I have discovered an idea that has made a huge difference in my life in building healthy habits: streaking. Now, get your mind out of the gutter. I mean seeing how many days in a row you can do one small habit.

I've found that I cannot have too many streaks going at once. One is very doable, two are manageable, and three should be possible. I think four streaks would not work and five would just result in nothing getting done.

I currently have two streaks going, and I had the first going over 100 days before I started the second.

My first streak was working out 10 minutes a day, every day. This could be an hour long run (if I could do that without falling over from exhaustion) or as little as a ten minute walk outside or on the treadmill. I am up over 170 days on this streak.

The second streak I started was working on some side project every day. I've got two things I'm exploring: app development and writing. Any post to this blog counts to this, as does any work I do on building mobile apps or web applications outside of my day job. I am up over 40 days on this streak at this point.

3 Tiny Habits Follow-up

I ended up participating in the actual 3 Tiny Habits program instead of trying to do it myself. The results were actually quite surprising!

The three habits I originally picked:

1. After I get dressed, I will look at my todo list & calendar.

2. After I put my daughter to bed, I will brush my teeth.

3. After I log into my Mac, I will build whatever Xcode project is currently open by hitting Command-B.

Habit #2 turned out to be the easiest by far. I am already in the habit of brushing my teeth right before I go to bed. This tweak was to just do it right after I tuck my daughter in, which tends to be when the night snacking begins if I have nothing better to do. There's not much besides water that tastes good after you brush your teeth. Besides, if I had anything else I'd have to brush my teeth again. And that's just no good.

What surprised me is how much I forget to do habit #3 at first. I'd login to my computer just wanting to check something quick - the weather, my email, etc and realize that shoot - I forgot to do my habit. The best solution I found was to make sure Xcode was up & running with an open project when I left the computer.

You'll notice I left habit #1 for last... This is because what I found with that was most interesting. My morning routine goes like this - get up, use the restroom, weigh myself, eat breakfast & do my devotions, get dressed, head off to work. What I found was that some days the kids get up between me starting to eat breakfast and getting dressed. When that happens, all bets on me doing anything I didn't absolutely need to do to get ready for work are off.

My fix was simple - I put my planner & iPod Touch on the book shelf I pass going from the bedroom to the kitchen & changed the habit from checking my todo list & calendar after I get dressed to after I weigh myself.

In summary: two big things I learned from tiny habits:

1. For a habit to be automatic, you need to tie it to something you already do.

2. To keep doing it, you need to set up as much as possible to reduce resistance to the habit. For example, I'm not going to even look at my development project in Xcode before I check my email unless Xcode is already up and running. I'm not going to run downstairs to check my todo list before breakfast, but I will pick up my planner on the way to the kitchen if it happens to be handy.

I also get the feeling that my best bet for accomplishing what I really want to accomplish - the things that take more than 30 seconds to do - is do them before anyone else in my family gets up or at night once everyone else has settled down to some point. While family is up & about - well that should be family time. After all, they are the most important people in my life! I need to fit the things I want to accomplish in around them, not the other way around.

It will be a work in progress for quite a while - I expect for my whole life.

Three Tiny Habits Different Than Three Small Habits

I got a surprise comment on my previous post on the 3 Tiny Habits program. The creator of the program actually commented on the post.

It seems I missed two things by trying to do the 3 Tiny Habits based off bits & pieces I heard on podcasts and the general description from the website. I went back and read the instructions (that's the last thing anyone does when they have issues, right?)

1. I didn't have "anchors" in place. This is saying you'll do your habit after some trigger or anchor. For example, I said I'd work on a side project every day for 5 minutes. I never said WHEN I'd do it, so it didn't happen every day. I should have said something like I'll do it right after supper.

2. I was doing small habits, rather than tiny habits. The habits I was doing could be 5 minutes as with my "do a side project for 5 minutes every day" habit. Or longer with my "have quiet time after breakfast" habit. The definition of a "tiny habit" for the purpose of this program is something you can do in 30 seconds or less. These are truly tiny, tiny habits.

The point of the 3 Tiny Habits program is not to build a small habit to make life better, it is to build the skill of building habits.

Three Tiny Habits - or Five

I’ve run into multiple Podcasts and blogs that talk about a program called 3 Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg and decided to check it out. It’s very simple actually. Saturday or Sunday, you pick three tiny habits you want to adopt for a week. Monday through Friday you do your tiny habit.

I haven’t signed up for the program, but I decided to give it a try. I couldn’t decide on just three habits though, but I did pick five habits I think are most important to what I want to accomplish in my life.

1. Quiet time after breakast every day.
2. Drink pop with lunch (trying to cut back on pop)
3. Track what I eat for lunch
4. Brush my teeth right after my daughter goes to bed.
5. Work on a side project 5 minutes a day. This can be programming, writing, or blogging.

I’m using a program called Sciral Consistency to track my habits. You could use paper & pencil, a spreadsheet or web application called Joe's Goals. I’m sure there are millions of other options, but those are the top ones I know of.

I've got DERI on my calendar

At the beginning of this year, I have some goals I want to accomplish. I've not been very good about making things happen in previous years. I read about an idea I decided to try. Decide what you can do each day in order to make your goals happen and do a little each day. I've also found that if I have too many goals, I tend not to do any of them. If I keep to a few, it becomes much more doable. Five major goals seems to be about my limit.

Here's my big ones:

1. Improve my spiritual life. For now, doing devotions every day will make this happen.

2. Improve my health and get down to a healthy weight. I am making sure I do a little exercise every day to make this happen.

3. Become more successful. I am reading a book about success a little every day.

4. Develop an additional source of income. I am doing a little every day to build up other income sources.

So on every day on my calendar I write at the beginning of the week: D E R I

short for Devotions, Exercise, Reading, and Income and place a checkmark next to each one as I do it. I have not managed to do every one of these every day since I started, but I have been doing them on average 5 days a week, which is a HUGE improvement over previous years.

I ask anyone who reads this try this idea with their own goals and let me know what happens.