Comment by sheepolog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sheepolog | Hacker News Reader

The #1 thing that has helped me stick to habits over the long term is starting out as easy as I possibly can. I've been exercising consistently for years now, and what finally got me to stick with it was doing 1 pushup per day. That's it. I did one pushup per day for 5 days, then I moved to 2 per day, and started ramping up faster as time went on.

I've applied the same "make it as easy as humanly possible" to other habits (working on something for 5 minutes, for example) and it seems to work really well.

I believe the reason this works for me is because 1) it's laughably easy at the start, and I can knock it out in practically no time, and 2) I ramp up slowly enough that by the time it actually starts feeling difficult, I already have the habit established. The surest way for me to abandon a habit is by trying to do too much early on.

Another thing that is death to my habits is feeling guilt/shame about missing a day. If you miss a day, don't beat yourself up. It happens. Just remind yourself why you picked the habit, and try again. Maybe lower the difficulty a bit next time.

+1.

Plus, in my experience it helps to develop an easy habit first, reestablish one's belief in oneself, and then do the harder habit(s). When I was struggling with dieting - cutting out the unhealthy stuff - I first started playing the piano daily, and after hitting something like a 50 day streak it was a whole lot easier for me to start dieting (and keeping at it).

As someone on the spectrum, though, it takes very little to break a habit - as someoneone else has posted here as well. Just one or two days where I am travelling and it's very difficult to get back, and one broken habit often leads to all of the habits-in-progress being dropped all at once. (So, I bought a travel piano, for instance).

I find it helpful in those situations to remember what David Allen said about when that happens: "you may have fallen off the horse, but you can always saddle up again"

Those things come with a cost. Erode self esteem and reinforce the idea that failure is a very real option, since "its easy to get back on the horse later".

My piano teacher tells me that every single mistake takes two successes to undo, and I think this is the same with habit forming. Keep failing and you are not going to get better at getting back on the horse, you will get better at quitting and accepting defeat.

> Erode self esteem and reinforce the idea that failure is a very real option

I feel differently about failure. I think failure failure is always, constantly, an option. But that doesn't mean it should erode my self esteem.

I don't want to negate your piano teacher's advice, because I think there's an element of truth in there, and I'm not sure what your goals are. But as a fellow (hobby) pianist who gave it away for 5 years from burnout, I now prefer to follow Stephen King's advice:

"If there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good."

There’s also the problem where avoiding failure leads to more conservative goals. If you look at failure as a thing to avoid, you won’t try as hard as songs when you’re learning piano. You might get good, but you’ll never reach your potential.

Reaching your potential may not be compatible with experiencing joy through. In my experience I’ve been happier and better at doing things I like doing.

Always wanted to learn playing guitar, interact socially or starting a business but boy those makes me so bored.

That’s a good point. Sometimes you do something just to do it.

Breaking the chain of habit is something everyone will run into at one point and it's important to understand that it's the natural order of things that it will happen. Inevitably at one point you will either be sick, or have something important, or life will throw a wrench at you — and that's okay. The important thing is that if you still want it, you get back at it. I've been lifting weights nearly all my life and I can't even begin to count the times I've missed days, weeks, sometimes months because of various reasons. What matters is that you get back to it after.

I did something similar with HIIT workouts (don’t be fooled, the intensity wasn’t super high to begin with!) which worked because I couldn’t possibly tell myself I “didn’t have time” for a 10 minute workout.

Same. When I started running 5 years ago, I started with under 1km runs. Slowly built up to 5km runs over a 3 or so years. The hardest bit is getting out bed, once that habit is in the rest is easy.

I also found that not timing myself worked really well. Too many times I would finish a run feeling good, check my time and then feel bad that I didn't beat my pb. Stopped that and every run was positive.

There is this saying which helps me a lot. “Motivation follows action!”

Exactly, make things as convenient as possible. That's why I have weights and a yoga mat, no excuse to take 30 minutes from the day to do a HIIT workout.

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