This is the second part of the series “Productive, a visualization”
You can find the 1st part of this series on this link.
In the last part, we talked about how will we design the Todo part of the app so that they have a very high chance of getting done.
In this story part, we will talk about why it’s hard to maintain long-lasting good habits & how will we track and monitor them and increase their chances of maintenance over the long run. Habit is the most important part of the puzzle in being productive, so we might take 2 or even 3 parts discussing it.
Like everyone else, I always wanted to make good habits like waking up early, workout 🏋️♂️ , reading a book 📚 , meditation 🧘♂️ , side projects or opensource contribution as a regular part of life. Like everyone else, I have failed in living those habits. It’s not that I have not improved from where I started, I usually wake up surprisingly early nowadays (5 AM), I read more than 10 pages per day on average(though not every day), I work out sometimes, I am going on morning walk with 2 other friends and we pay fine if we come late, I am getting back to my side projects but this still is not even close to what I think is good enough to be called a good habit.
So habit tracking is one of the most important things if we want to keep doing a habit. I currently use the app uHabits for habit tracking (which is also an opensource project) even though I have tested many others like Fabolous, Habitbull, Timetune, etc. But I still have failed to get a consistently satisfiable result. The major reason is myself but the apps are also playing some role in not enabling me to be mindful and conscious about what habits I try to track. Like every other app, they let us create as many habits without even us being mindful about where and when will those be done.
Few reasons I realized for failing to maintain new habits:
- We create too many habits to start with. We try to do all of them the first day but as the initial motivation fades away so do the habits.
- While writing a new habit, we do not care anything about how, when and where those habits will be done, what situations and excuses we make might stop us from completing them. That reduces the chances of them getting done by a vast proportion.
- We do not become mindful about another habit that backs a habit. For example, if you want to have the habit of the waking of early, you must have the habit of Going to bed early so that you can get enough sleep. Sometimes we have two habits are mathematically possible but practically impossible.
- We overestimate our motivation & think if motivated enough we can maintain many habits for a long time but the truth is no person in this world can keep the motivation for as long a habit should last. Habits that are easy last longer.
- We do not reward or punish our habits. If you choose the right rewards and punishment it seems to work surprisingly well. I am a huge Barca fan. As I want to be in Barcelona before Messi retires I have a reward of $10 for each day for my tour to Barcelona when I complete my Todos. I have to wear Real Madrid Jersey and post it to social media with “Hala Madrid” if I wake up after 5:00 AM for 2 consecutive days. We have a group of 3 guys if anyone does not show up in front of their home before 5:15 AM for morning walk/run he has to pay $2 to budget our short/long drives.
There are many other reasons, but these are the major reasons that came to my mind.
On the next post, I will discuss how I have tried to solve mitigate these things with Productive.
Thanks for your time. Stay healthy, stay productive.
