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Comment by kosmischemusik | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying to build habits forever. The problem is I try to do too many things at once - exercise, get more sleep, read more, write, study.

As much as I know that habits need to be stacked, I just can't get myself to be patient and do one thing at a time.

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Recently started running again and I have to consistently remind myself to take it easy and not overdo it. 3 weeks ago getting through 20 mins was a struggle. Now after 20 mins I feel like I can do 20 more. That's a good way to get hurt.

Consistency is like compound interest. If you get 15-20 mins of easy-paced exercise in 6 times a week (or even daily), you will get more exercise done than if you do 2-3 hard workouts. In addition, you reduce the chances of injury.

This seems to be true of learning as well. It's strange how easy it is (for me at least) to break the cycle of doing something every day--I tell myself that it's okay to skip today so long as I make it up tomorrow (or on the weekend or whatever). At that point it's easy to keep putting it off just through inertia.

I learned this over and over again in college. Cramming is never as effective as smaller chucks of daily studying.

Learning a new mathematical technique or programming paradigm is similar to exercise. Your brain needs to develop some "muscle" memory for a new way of thinking to stick.

I think exercise probably gives the most bang for your buck, since it directly improves sleep and mood.

I used to do the same thing. I'm impatient and I want to see results asap, which makes it really hard to slow down and take it one thing at a time.

The thing I've learned lately is that with habits, going faster in the short term slows you WAY down in the long run. Counterintuitive, but 100% true.

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