Making good habits and breaking bad ones

[Nydex]

I recently read Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, and while the book contains a good amount of unnecessary filler in the form of examples used to prove a point that should not need that much proof, there were a few pretty valuable takeaways, most important of whom was the so-called "habits cheat-sheet", which I wanted to share with you in this thread.

The reason why I started reading this book is because I have a few bad habits I want to break, as well as a few good ones I want to create. The bad ones include being more mindful of my complicated relationship to food and its role in stress modulation, as well as a particularly bad habit of staring at a phone screen far too much before trying to sleep, and spending too much time on YouTube in general.

The good ones I'm trying to make is to always read a book for at least 1 hour before trying to sleep, as well as being more mindful of how, what, and how much I eat, and also playing my handpan more.

I'm still working on all of these, but as the book explains, it's a process that needs mindful repetition over long periods of time for the habit to break or settle in. Patience is key in all of this, just as much as consistency and determination.

One of the first things one can do to gain a better understanding of their habits is the so-called "habits scorecard". Taken from James Clear's website:

To create your own Habits Scorecard, start by making a list of your daily habits.

Here’s a sample of where your list might start:

• Wake up
• Turn off alarm
• Check my phone
• Go to the bathroom
• Weigh myself
• Take a shower
• Brush my teeth
• Floss my teeth
• Put on deodorant
• Hang up towel to dry
• Get dressed
• Make a cup of tea

… and so on.

Once you have a full list, look at each behavior, and ask yourself, “Is this a good habit, a bad habit, or a neutral habit?” If it is a good habit, write “+” next to it. If it is a bad habit, write “–”. If it is a neutral habit, write “=”.

For example, the list above might look like this:

• Wake up =
• Turn off alarm =
• Check my phone –
• Go to the bathroom =
• Weigh myself +
• Take a shower +
• Brush my teeth +
• Floss my teeth +
• Put on deodorant +
• Hang up towel to dry =
• Get dressed =
• Make a cup of tea +

The labels “good habit” and “bad habit” are slightly inaccurate. There are no good habits or bad habits. There are only effective habits. That is, effective at solving problems. All habits serve you in some way — even the bad ones — which is why you repeat them.

When completing your Habits Scorecard, however, you can categorize your habits by how they will benefit you in the long run. Generally speaking, good habits will have net positive outcomes. Bad habits have net negative outcomes. Smoking a cigarette may reduce stress right now (that’s how it’s serving you), but it’s not a healthy long-term behavior.

If you’re still having trouble determining how to rate a particular habit, here is a question I like to use: “Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?” Habits that reinforce your desired identity are usually good. Habits that conflict with your desired identity are typically bad.

Once you have the scorecard done, you should be able to gauge just how many habits you want to break, and how many you want to reinforce or modify so they become even more valuable to you. And at this point, it's time to look at the cheat-sheet and start implementing changes.

James Clear cleverly breaks down the process of making good habits and breaking bad ones into 4 ideas that he calls "Laws of Behavior Change". Each of them is aimed to help you make a good habit. Their inversions are the tools you can use to break bad habits. Here they are:

• 1st Law: Make It Obvious
• 2nd Law: Make It Attractive
• 3rd Law: Make It Easy
• 4th Law: Make It Satisfying

And their respective inversions:

• Inversion of 1st Law: Make It Invisible
• Inversion of 2nd Law: Make It Unattractive
• Inversion of 3rd Law: Make It Difficult
• Inversion of 4th st Law: Make It Unsatisfying

Each of the above can be further broken down into several sub-points, which combined represent the cheat-sheet. Here it is:

The 1st Law​	Make it Obvious​
1.1​	Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your currenthabits to become aware of them.​
1.2​	Use implementation intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”​
1.3​	Use habit stacking: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”​
1.4​	Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible.​

The 2nd Law​	Make It Attractive​
2.1​	Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to dowith an action you need to do.​
2.2​	Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.​
2.3​	Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.​

The 3rd Law​	Make It Easy​
3.1​	Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits.​
3.2​	Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier.​
3.3​	Master the decisive moment. Optimize the small choicesthat deliver outsized impact.​
3.4​	Use the Two-Minute Rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less.​
3.5​	Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior.

The 4th Law​	Make It Satisfying
4.1​	Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit.
4.2​	Make “doing nothing” enjoyable. When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits.
4.3​	Use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit streak and “don’t break the chain.”
4.4​	Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately.

---

Inversion of the 1st Law​	Make It Invisible
1.1​	Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment.

Inversion of the 2nd Law​	Make It Unattractive
2.1​	Reframe your mindset. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.

Inversion of the 3rd Law​	Make It Difficult
3.1​	Increase friction. Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits.
3.2​	Use a commitment device. Restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you.

Inversion of the 4th Law​	Make It Unsatisfying
4.1​	Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behavior.
4.2​	Create a habit contract. Make the costs of your bad habits public and painful.

Using this cheat-sheet, one can easily create a plan to follow in making a new good habit, reinforcing an existing good habit, or breaking a bad one. It definitely takes some getting used to, but it's a proven and robust process that should work for almost everyone with a very high success rate, provided one truly wants and commits to the change.

We're all a work in progress. Don't compare yourself to others too much, as that often leads to desperation and loss of focus. I hope this will be useful to you.

Love & Light

 

[CommonConduit]

Dang, methodical!
Self-reflection is tough, don’t be too hard on yourself. Pat yourself on the back!

Word of caution:
An "I" who can and must get things done is what's producing all the stress and anxiety.

Do great things

Are you here to do great things?

open.substack.com

 

[modern]

As hard as it seems forcing yourself to make a good habit is as easy as that... just do it... every day even if you don't want to. Don't put it off even if you have excesses. Unless it is some health related issue that will worsen. We will always opt for the easier option since why expend the energy when not 'needed'. Bad habits will not disappear overnight just like good ones won't be easy to do at first.

Being able to follow those incentives and tricks are useful but also another 'step' to something that is already difficult. If you can setup those in a way you don't even think about it thats great but if an extra required step will make it even harder. IMO

 

[🌺🔥🫧]

This is such a powerful topic, and what an incredible write up!

I have been using the laws of behavior change for a while now and they work amazingly. Basically when I’m ‘sober’ (from my impulses) in that psychic place I terraform my environment and make it more or less suggestive. For instance, when things I desire are 3 degrees removed (read as: requires effort) then by the time I’m halfway through seeking them out, i’m sober again. same for difficult or important things. I might print out a document I need to address, or set up my stretching corner so that its set up and waiting for me.

The scorecard is a really cool idea. It reminds me of how I practice dance ~ I do, and then look in the mirror. How did I do? The scorecard is like the dance mirror of my day. How did I do? I find this very powerful!
It is a bit involved though. And quite difficult or awkward to keep track of everything you actually did in the day. In the more esoteric cultures, we might simply set aside 5 minutes(or whatever length of time) every night to recall the entire day (not assess or criticize just recall). This would be an easy mode and practical introduction to reviewing your day, if tracking like that is too much.


One thing I really like about habits, is that even if they help cultivate some disciplined specific goal, at the very least, you are not impulsively comforting yourself as much as you would be. As such, I feel like while structures of habit and goal formation can be subject to internal desires and needs, they
do feel to me like they are an amazing intermediary place for all of us to engage with a more intentional form of desire. This slowly brings intentional energy into our lives which is, in my cosmology, something very divine

one thing I love is what I call “don’t destroy the ship, make a new one” ~ what I mean by that is, for many things that people are insecure about, I try to never destroy belief, or insecurity, or means, story, fantasy etc. instead I try to introduce a new way alongside it. I want to respect the habits we already have, since they exist and the universe has profound reasons for working which I do not want to make the mistake of presuming to understand or hold superiority over. As such, I do not want to call a habit bad. I want to introduce new habits and see how things progress. I never destroy or repress bad habits.
So for instance, if I want to eat healthy (theoretically), then I might continue eating bad, and add healthy food to the mix. Like maybe lunch is healthy, and dinner is the old snack bonanza. This habit style is relatively easy for me since I get both of what I want. I might literally eat healthy and have cookies and ice cream afterwards if I so desire. It’s uninhibited, but if eating healthy is the truth, it will win you over, which is how I’ve found it to be. I really like this transitional habit style which I made up, since it’s effortless, and respects what exists and allows it to evolve naturally. There is only motivational expression of all desires/aspirations/curiosities etc.
The same goes for personal narratives. Maybe I know that a personal narrative is ‘bad’ for me, but I’m attached to believing it anyways. What I do then in meditation is say, ok look, for only 1 hour I’m going to let myself pretend to inhabit another narrative/belief about myself. That way I can still stay this way, and I don’t need to change when I try on other beliefs, since I’m only doing it to an hour. Stopping right away is the most difficult and direct approach for habits, since you get reflective distress right away as well. With my approach, you allow yourself to explore other desires, while maintaining your own. Let the best desire win!

The topic of habit formation is wild though and super deep. The 45 days thing or whatever never made sense to me. It doesn’t seem to align with other phenomena such as things which can instantly habituate like heroin, or also things which never really habituate. That which is habituated to is in relationship to you entire identity which is a profoundly deep topic. I just don’t have the energy rn to look into what exactly it is about this month and a half timespan which habit studyers find so powerful.

 

[Traged]

Have this book, have been playing with some of those concepts. Even thou I haven't read it :/ only parts (watched summary before even buying it... its complicated).

But some time ago when I understood power of small changes... I have set myself on a different path.

For example even nice mechanical keyboard - when you are using your computer every day - will change your life for a better. If you choose things you interact everyday to be better and to make those interactions better you will improve your quality of life.

Changing one teaspoon of sugar for half a teaspoon in your tea/coffee will make you eat so much less sugar you will be amazed, and so on...

Feels sometimes like cooking the frog to get it healthy and happy

Also sometimes changing habits help, stopped smoking? go drink herbal tea instead...

Me and piano goes like this - we do at everyday for at least an hour (even thou I don't now - because I am about to move and have to do other stuff - which is hypocritical). That goes, for many things, start doing it, and do it however you feel. When you got your shoes on and went out for a run, you will run a bit at least...

 

[CommonConduit]

Oh, and a surefire way to form a habit: obsess over something.

 

[🌺🔥🫧]

As hard as it seems forcing yourself to make a good habit is as easy as that... just do it... every day even if you don't want to. Don't put it off even if you have excesses. Unless it is some health related issue that will worsen. We will always opt for the easier option since why expend the energy when not 'needed'. Bad habits will not disappear overnight just like good ones won't be easy to do at first.

Being able to follow those incentives and tricks are useful but also another 'step' to something that is already difficult. If you can setup those in a way you don't even think about it thats great but if an extra required step will make it even harder. IMO

BUILD SELF DISCIPLINE!!!! YOU'RE WEAK!!!!

" STOP BEING A LITTLE B*TCH!!! "

-David Goggins

Let's fucking go bro! Take what you have, be THNKFUL, go out there, and MAKE your own Luck.

Just go cold hearted silent serial killer mindset. Thinking small has the benefit of eliminating complex variables. Go straight for the gold. Just fucking do it. Cost doesn't matter. Fucking do it. yeah fucking go thank god everyone stops there get outta my way or ill kill you yeah you heard me. it's that simple.

 

[Traged]

Love David Goggins,

2023 Christmas I gave his book to 5 different people (had to wait for it to be translated before I could)

Stay Hard!!!

 

[modern]

This is such a powerful topic, and what an incredible write up!

I have been using the laws of behavior change for a while now and they work amazingly. Basically when I’m ‘sober’ (from my impulses) in that psychic place I terraform my environment and make it more or less suggestive. For instance, when things I desire are 3 degrees removed (read as: requires effort) then by the time I’m halfway through seeking them out, i’m sober again. same for difficult or important things. I might print out a document I need to address, or set up my stretching corner so that its set up and waiting for me.

The scorecard is a really cool idea. It reminds me of how I practice dance ~ I do, and then look in the mirror. How did I do? The scorecard is like the dance mirror of my day. How did I do? I find this very powerful!
It is a bit involved though. And quite difficult or awkward to keep track of everything you actually did in the day. In the more esoteric cultures, we might simply set aside 5 minutes(or whatever length of time) every night to recall the entire day (not assess or criticize just recall). This would be an easy mode and practical introduction to reviewing your day, if tracking like that is too much.


One thing I really like about habits, is that even if they help cultivate some disciplined specific goal, at the very least, you are not impulsively comforting yourself as much as you would be. As such, I feel like while structures of habit and goal formation can be subject to internal desires and needs, they
do feel to me like they are an amazing intermediary place for all of us to engage with a more intentional form of desire. This slowly brings intentional energy into our lives which is, in my cosmology, something very divine

one thing I love is what I call “don’t destroy the ship, make a new one” ~ what I mean by that is, for many things that people are insecure about, I try to never destroy belief, or insecurity, or means, story, fantasy etc. instead I try to introduce a new way alongside it. I want to respect the habits we already have, since they exist and the universe has profound reasons for working which I do not want to make the mistake of presuming to understand or hold superiority over. As such, I do not want to call a habit bad. I want to introduce new habits and see how things progress. I never destroy or repress bad habits.
So for instance, if I want to eat healthy (theoretically), then I might continue eating bad, and add healthy food to the mix. Like maybe lunch is healthy, and dinner is the old snack bonanza. This habit style is relatively easy for me since I get both of what I want. I might literally eat healthy and have cookies and ice cream afterwards if I so desire. It’s uninhibited, but if eating healthy is the truth, it will win you over, which is how I’ve found it to be. I really like this transitional habit style which I made up, since it’s effortless, and respects what exists and allows it to evolve naturally. There is only motivational expression of all desires/aspirations/curiosities etc.
The same goes for personal narratives. Maybe I know that a personal narrative is ‘bad’ for me, but I’m attached to believing it anyways. What I do then in meditation is say, ok look, for only 1 hour I’m going to let myself pretend to inhabit another narrative/belief about myself. That way I can still stay this way, and I don’t need to change when I try on other beliefs, since I’m only doing it to an hour. Stopping right away is the most difficult and direct approach for habits, since you get reflective distress right away as well. With my approach, you allow yourself to explore other desires, while maintaining your own. Let the best desire win!

The topic of habit formation is wild though and super deep. The 45 days thing or whatever never made sense to me. It doesn’t seem to align with other phenomena such as things which can instantly habituate like heroin, or also things which never really habituate. That which is habituated to is in relationship to you entire identity which is a profoundly deep topic. I just don’t have the energy rn to look into what exactly it is about this month and a half timespan which habit studyers find so powerful.

With heroin there is an insane amount of chemical flooding that leads to addiction and physical dependency. Is heroin the truth since it will winning in my desires of habit/behavior? That isn’t the best example to use since so extreme.

Going cold turkey or hours of working out will likely cause most to fail to form good habits but the repetition of any behavior will for the habit to become second nature. I think “the power of habits” book goes deeper into this. Been years since I read it

Things are rarely one size fits all however keeping things in theory and preparation won’t help you get closer to by our goals. The issue with many things is we won’t want to change a routine you already have especially if your new habit goes against your norm.

Forcing yourself to start walking or running will get you in the habit of doing that regardless of it being difficult much faster than having specific conditions to be filled before doing it. Association with a reward other than the longtime benefit may cause issues. How would you feel about preforming x if you don’t get the y you conditioned yourself to?

 

[Voidmatrix]

A couple things.

For the "just do it" and "stop being a little b*tch," sometimes there are other deeper issues that can get in someone's way, such as how they view themselves. Value and confidence are keys here. Sometimes there are layers of elements of the mind that need to be addressed first as well as any mental health or neurodivergent concerns.

Secondly, I think we have to take a serious inventory as to why we want certain habit. If it's because we feel we should then we should evaluate that. Should because others say so or because you say so?

And for the idea that it takes "x" number of days to build a new habit, that was information from the medical field that hit the average joe milieu and was bastardized. When that was originally stated, it was with regard to amputees learning new habits after limb loss.

One love

 

[modern]

A couple things.

For the "just do it" and "stop being a little b*tch," sometimes there are other deeper issues that can get in someone's way, such as how they view themselves. Value and confidence are keys here. Sometimes there are layers of elements of the mind that need to be addressed first as well as any mental health or neurodivergent concerns.

Secondly, I think we have to take a serious inventory as to why we want certain habit. If it's because we feel we should then we should evaluate that. Should because others say so or because you say so?

And for the idea that it takes "x" number of days to build a new habit, that was information from the medical field that hit the average joe milieu and was bastardized. When that was originally stated, it was with regard to amputees learning new habits after limb loss.

One love

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Those two saying are a bit extreme but if you are wanting to train for x event or lose weight or this or that you want to do it for a reason. You either will or will not do it. The circumstances may make it easier or harder but in the end it is always up to you.

@🌺🔥🫧 "With my approach, you allow yourself to explore other desires, while maintaining your own. Let the best desire win!" least effort and pleasure will generally win. Hedonism would take over and you would actively avoid pain for the instant or constant pleasure even at if long term would cause health issues or other complications financially or relationship wise.

With layers of elements in the mind to address first; goes to the staying in theory/preparation and never trying. I can't do this because of x so first do x then you never get around to doing what you wanted. If a habit is good or bad or why we want it may be superficial or even programing from adverts or whatever however unless you attempt it and see its hard or not worthwhile IMO/E you will do nothing in the end.

The x amount of time to form a habit may have been blown out of proportions however habits do take hold with repetition. In the book 'power of habits' there was an example of a dementia patient that would take walks daily with his daughter and after he worsened they would still take the walks every day at x time. One day she was late or something and door was opened they panicked but he was just doing his routine/habit and after an hour circled the route. If the story is true or not IDK but when you get into the habit of doing this regardless of if you want to or not; it does help you obtain that habit.

In the end everyone will do what they want. If you to make a new habit you will either do it or make excuses why you can't. The amount of value or confidence will just be the amount of effort you put into it. There are lots of different paths and some may work better than others for different people.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Those two saying are a bit extreme but if you are wanting to train for x event or lose weight or this or that you want to do it for a reason. You either will or will not do it. The circumstances may make it easier or harder but in the end it is always up to you.

Certainly. I was highlighting that sometimes we have to address things a level deeper first.

One love

 

[🌺🔥🫧]

least effort and pleasure will generally win. Hedonism would take over and you would actively avoid pain for the instant or constant pleasure even at if long term would cause health issues or other complications financially or relationship wise.

Clearly you are not a matured hedonist yet. xD

 

[CommonConduit]

Thank you for prying open our heart, Fire.

"Frail of heart
Renounce all fear
Locked away inside
All these years
Remain in the light
Renounce all fear
For you have been
Mesmerised
Break this spell of silence"

Dead Can Dance - Mesmerism

 

[Varallo]

I recently read Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, and while the book contains a good amount of unnecessary filler in the form of examples used to prove a point that should not need that much proof, there were a few pretty valuable takeaways, most important of whom was the so-called "habits cheat-sheet", which I wanted to share with you in this thread.

The reason why I started reading this book is because I have a few bad habits I want to break, as well as a few good ones I want to create. The bad ones include being more mindful of my complicated relationship to food and its role in stress modulation, as well as a particularly bad habit of staring at a phone screen far too much before trying to sleep, and spending too much time on YouTube in general.

The good ones I'm trying to make is to always read a book for at least 1 hour before trying to sleep, as well as being more mindful of how, what, and how much I eat, and also playing my handpan more.

I'm still working on all of these, but as the book explains, it's a process that needs mindful repetition over long periods of time for the habit to break or settle in. Patience is key in all of this, just as much as consistency and determination.

One of the first things one can do to gain a better understanding of their habits is the so-called "habits scorecard". Taken from James Clear's website:



Once you have the scorecard done, you should be able to gauge just how many habits you want to break, and how many you want to reinforce or modify so they become even more valuable to you. And at this point, it's time to look at the cheat-sheet and start implementing changes.

James Clear cleverly breaks down the process of making good habits and breaking bad ones into 4 ideas that he calls "Laws of Behavior Change". Each of them is aimed to help you make a good habit. Their inversions are the tools you can use to break bad habits. Here they are:

• 1st Law: Make It Obvious
• 2nd Law: Make It Attractive
• 3rd Law: Make It Easy
• 4th Law: Make It Satisfying

And their respective inversions:

• Inversion of 1st Law: Make It Invisible
• Inversion of 2nd Law: Make It Unattractive
• Inversion of 3rd Law: Make It Difficult
• Inversion of 4th st Law: Make It Unsatisfying

Each of the above can be further broken down into several sub-points, which combined represent the cheat-sheet. Here it is:

The 1st Law​	Make it Obvious​
1.1​	Fill out the Habits Scorecard. Write down your currenthabits to become aware of them.​
1.2​	Use implementation intentions: “I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].”​
1.3​	Use habit stacking: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”​
1.4​	Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible.​

The 2nd Law​	Make It Attractive​
2.1​	Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to dowith an action you need to do.​
2.2​	Join a culture where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.​
2.3​	Create a motivation ritual. Do something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.​

The 3rd Law​	Make It Easy​
3.1​	Reduce friction. Decrease the number of steps between you and your good habits.​
3.2​	Prime the environment. Prepare your environment to make future actions easier.​
3.3​	Master the decisive moment. Optimize the small choicesthat deliver outsized impact.​
3.4​	Use the Two-Minute Rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less.​
3.5​	Automate your habits. Invest in technology and onetime purchases that lock in future behavior.

The 4th Law​	Make It Satisfying
4.1​	Use reinforcement. Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete your habit.
4.2​	Make “doing nothing” enjoyable. When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits.
4.3​	Use a habit tracker. Keep track of your habit streak and “don’t break the chain.”
4.4​	Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately.

---

Inversion of the 1st Law​	Make It Invisible
1.1​	Reduce exposure. Remove the cues of your bad habits from your environment.

Inversion of the 2nd Law​	Make It Unattractive
2.1​	Reframe your mindset. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.

Inversion of the 3rd Law​	Make It Difficult
3.1​	Increase friction. Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habits.
3.2​	Use a commitment device. Restrict your future choices to the ones that benefit you.

Inversion of the 4th Law​	Make It Unsatisfying
4.1​	Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behavior.
4.2​	Create a habit contract. Make the costs of your bad habits public and painful.

Using this cheat-sheet, one can easily create a plan to follow in making a new good habit, reinforcing an existing good habit, or breaking a bad one. It definitely takes some getting used to, but it's a proven and robust process that should work for almost everyone with a very high success rate, provided one truly wants and commits to the change.

We're all a work in progress. Don't compare yourself to others too much, as that often leads to desperation and loss of focus. I hope this will be useful to you.

Love & Light

Ow wow, that is so intense, for me this would be an nightmare, so many rules. I mean life’s too short for this kind of thing and I would much rather try and accept myself with all the shortcomings (a lot) that I have.

So as an gesture of solidarity I have found the ultimate paper, it helps me every year and is really soothing.

On a more serious note, the only thing that has ever worked for me is to really want to do something, uncompromising wanting something genuinely getting done.

 

[Nydex]

Word of caution:
An "I" who can and must get things done is what's producing all the stress and anxiety.

Right, but at some point we have to get realistic about our lives and accept that there are things we do which we don't want to do as much because they make our lives worse in some way. This thread is really aimed towards that instead of the metaphysical ideas about "I" and everything around that.

Being able to follow those incentives and tricks are useful but also another 'step' to something that is already difficult. If you can setup those in a way you don't even think about it thats great but if an extra required step will make it even harder.

Agreed, often an extra step puts people off of things. But if you really want to get to some point, and you're struggling to do so by conventional means, perhaps following a structured plan like that is your best bet. That's why one of the laws is to make it easy - to alleviate the additional difficulty of following a protocol like that by making the actual thing you want to achieve easier.

The scorecard is a really cool idea. It reminds me of how I practice dance ~ I do, and then look in the mirror. How did I do? The scorecard is like the dance mirror of my day. How did I do? I find this very powerful!
It is a bit involved though. And quite difficult or awkward to keep track of everything you actually did in the day. In the more esoteric cultures, we might simply set aside 5 minutes(or whatever length of time) every night to recall the entire day (not assess or criticize just recall). This would be an easy mode and practical introduction to reviewing your day, if tracking like that is too much.

That absolutely works too. The scorecard can be daunting, especially for busy people with days that differ wildly from each other, but in general it's something you do once and then move on. Your mainstay daily habits shouldn't change that much over time. A 5min recollection definitely works too, though less organized and structured than a scorecard.

The topic of habit formation is wild though and super deep. The 45 days thing or whatever never made sense to me. It doesn’t seem to align with other phenomena such as things which can instantly habituate like heroin, or also things which never really habituate. That which is habituated to is in relationship to you entire identity which is a profoundly deep topic. I just don’t have the energy rn to look into what exactly it is about this month and a half timespan which habit studyers find so powerful.

I'd say stay away from such timeframes and don't attach any time expectations to the process. Doing so just puts more stress for no reason - "I have to achieve this in x amount of days or else..." - pointless. Trust the process and let yourself assume the new state of being as quickly or as slowly as you need to. Everyone is different and comparing yourself to others is but a source of frustration and anxiety.

Have this book, have been playing with some of those concepts. Even thou I haven't read it :/ only parts (watched summary before even buying it... its complicated).

But some time ago when I understood power of small changes... I have set myself on a different path.

For example even nice mechanical keyboard - when you are using your computer every day - will change your life for a better. If you choose things you interact everyday to be better and to make those interactions better you will improve your quality of life.

Changing one teaspoon of sugar for half a teaspoon in your tea/coffee will make you eat so much less sugar you will be amazed, and so on...

Feels sometimes like cooking the frog to get it healthy and happy

Also sometimes changing habits help, stopped smoking? go drink herbal tea instead...

Me and piano goes like this - we do at everyday for at least an hour (even thou I don't now - because I am about to move and have to do other stuff - which is hypocritical). That goes, for many things, start doing it, and do it however you feel. When you got your shoes on and went out for a run, you will run a bit at least...

Precisely. The power of small, incremental, regular change should never be underappreciated. Over time the change becomes obvious and very significant. Take it slow, go at your own pace, and be dilligent. Not much else is required.

Ow wow, that is so intense, for me this would be an nightmare, so many rules. I mean life’s too short for this kind of thing and I would much rather try and accept myself with all the shortcomings (a lot) that I have.

You don't have to follow all of them. As we're all different, specific parts of this "plan" might resonate with how you operate more than others. Take those and run with them. Life is indeed short enough, but if you want to break a habit like smoking, which is undoubtedly making it even shorter, then perhaps it's worth putting in the time to drive some positive change. Accepting yourself as you are is an integral part of being happy, but at some point some personal accountability is a must.

On a more serious note, the only thing that has ever worked for me is to really want to do something, uncompromising wanting something genuinely getting done.

Of course. If you don't truly want something, no amount of planning, scheming, and following routines will get you there. I see this a lot with smokers in particular, with all of their machinations of switching to vaping, chewing gum, etc. All of them that fail quitting admit they never really wanted to quit, they just told themselves that story.

On the other hand, people like me who used to smoke 2 packs a day for nearly a decade quit overnight without any issues as soon as they reach the point of truly wanting to quit for specific health and perhaps even monetary reasons.

It's all rooted in what you truly want. When you align that with a plan to follow, you can really get things going at a decent speed.

Thank you all for the replies, some really thought-provoking stuff in here.

 

[CommonConduit]

We make this up as we go along, you've got this And mind the neuroses!

 

[highalt]

It must have taken a lot of time and effort and also experimentation for James to have reached such level of understanding!
There's another book that came before this one called "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg. I think he mainstreamed the idea of setting new habits when there wasn't much public discourse about them.

Here's an Amazon link if anyone is interested

The way I see as habits is about delayed gratification. Put off the short term solutions for the long term ones but make sure the long term ones are consistent and congruent with your goals, connect the dots between what you are doing and identify patterns where there are similarities in other things and where the benefits are substantial. Little things make a big difference and I reference here SMART goals and short, medium and long-term categories for those goals so that everything you do is working towards a larger goal. There must be meaning in what you do and tied to this, values. Arguably you can further and seek principles (Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) popularized this approach but it's based in more "older" social and cultural understandings of personal responsibility where character and "the greater good" comes before everything else.

After a while you start recognizing the most optimum paths to traverse because you can envision an outcome that you've had before, or something similar. Another powerful lesson that I've learned is how everything really is connected. You can't live a life where you are, on one side, completely out of control and running from demons while on the other have absolutely no regrets, feel cleansed and have a clear conscience. Our culture tends to create that reality and I guess you could say it's somewhat schizophrenic - how we can live in two (or maybe many) extremes and yet expect homeostasis.
Another lesson is the power of psychic entropy. I believe I learned this from the late Hungarian-American psychologist who pioneered research on flow states, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It's a real thing! The more psychic entropy you create, the more you compromise your capacity to utilize all your inner resources to attend to the most important things. It's like permanently being wired after a long drawn out (and prolonged) speed session. The idea is to reduce psychic entropy by leveraging how you utilize your resources and strategically expending them when necessary while offering little to no resistance when it's not necessary. This leaves you open to effortlessly attend to what needs attending to while maximizing productivity and performance.

Linked to this is cause and effect and also without going too far into the "new age" psychology of our time (lots that is interesting and useful, I might add!) the law of attraction and manifestation. What you put out you get back. Maybe not today, tomorrow, next week or next year but it WILL come back to you. High psychic entropy creates low inner resources which creates changed behaviour (often negative and maybe even destructive; stress, trauma, antisocial behaviour, violence and aggression, avoidance, denial, repression, projection etc) which changes relationships which changes outcomes which can produce more psychic entropy when you don't get what you want. Inner tension which becomes the primary focus of your attention. All while this changes you who you are down to physical changes in the brain and body. I guess that's what falling off the bandwagon is all about! Or perhaps when you hear of someone who was really successful at one point in their life and now lives in the shadows a small semblance of what they once were. What we don't like to accept is that we were responsible for that change as much as the change itself coming from external interactions with the world. We contributed to that because we changed, and we sought what we changed into, from the outside world.

I also cannot emphasize the power of connection. And I don't just mean the sort of connection that happens behind closed doors with loved ones. Connection to the whole world and to the universe. To the store assistant, the bus driver, the homeless person, the antisocial neighbor. The reds, the blues, conversative, democrat and everything in-between. Pure surrender. Connection to all. Trusting the universe. Seeing the divine in all. At the same point, everything can be totally screwed up! As Ram Dass once put it; we are all one but it's MY TV set!
We are all from the same source but there are still boundaries. At the same time there is a sufficient level of ego involved. The more you ground yourself the more you realize that's a good thing but you also are capable of turning it into a strength. It's not about becoming a spiritual punching bag or inert gloop devoid of animating yourself into a force that can be used to good effect.

None of what is mentioned above is possible without understanding what deep, meaningful and transformative relationships can do for you and most importantly, to you.
We like to think in the Western world we ourselves as separate individuals are responsible for our success and that we are self-made and while that might be true on a certain level it also grossly neglects the bigger picture in how we become who we are because of the relationships we have in our life and how they can help us to understand ourselves and others more. A psychology lecturer, therapist and life coach one said in a lecture that I watched years ago; 99% of people's problems are social problems. He went on to add that he hadn't met one person in his professional experience whose problem was not in relation to other people. There is a relational component in everything and when you deal with the social component everything else falls into place.

 

[drpotato]

what could someone with ASD-ADHD do that would work, with or without some adjustments?
people with ADHD generally need very roundabout or specific targeted methods to illicit any real change, by comparison it seems like neurotypicals, from my point of view based on the advice ive read in countless self help texts, just need to be informed that they have the choice to do something, 60% of the work is just awareness, and then thats all it takes for things to lift off on their own.