The Journal App Making Journal: Day 51

User experience with the Clear Habit Journal

Continue to journal on two questions everyday in this Journal App Making Journal.

1. What have I learned about app design and development today?

Taking a break from coding today.

2. What have I learned about journaling products / technologies / other journal users today?

Continue to look into journaling products / technologies out there today.

Featured journaling technology today: The Clear Habit Journal

> About the Clear Habit Journal

This is a physical notebook designed by James Clear, the author of the bestselling book, Atomic Habits. I have been using it as an implementation system for the book, and experimenting with my own habit change over 21 days, to assess how effective the journaling system is. This experiment will end on Day 56.

> Key ideas I learned from Atomic Habits today

From the book:

• Read Chapter 7 today, on “The Secret of Self Control”, which turns out to be about changing the environment, more precisely by removing the cue of a bad habit, the opposite of what to do for a good habit. For example, removing the phone to create a productive session of work.
• Bad habits work in “autocatalytic” or self-reinforcing feedback loops that makes will power an overrated quality in the long term. Environment is the more powerful influence on behaviour change.
• Surprisingly, negative or punishing cues for a bad habit reinforces it, such as “Shaming obese people with weight-loss presentations can make them feel stressed, and as a result many people return to their favourite coping strategy: overeating.”
• In the author’s words, “To put it bluntly, I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment. … Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.”

From the companion Habit Academy video course:

• Went through Module 6 of 7 today. On a similar topic, “Feedback”. I love the highlight here about the conflict between actions that deliver powerful long term results and their lack of short term gratification which makes them hard to implement. The delay in this feedback between action and reward becomes a key barrier for taking necessary actions.
• The key behavioural solutions include providing timely warnings and regular corrections, tracking streaks, and practicing resilience to get back on track rather than perfection to never miss a day.

> The UX of using Clear Habit Journal for my own habit change

• So far I have been using this 21 day experiment to establish a daily meditation habit.
• The experience with the Clear Habit Journal has been one of using it as a normal though dedicated notebook for writing out exercises from the book and the video workshops. This has proved impactful. For example, the exercise to think about how to make meditation easy had me download the Calm app.
• What appears to be most impactful in the last few days is the writing of this journal. On days I skipped journaling about Atomic Habits, I skipped practicing the habit too. This means the simple act of consistent journaling is a direct application of the Atomic Habits idea of “implementation intention” on a daily basis. And that makes journaling, whether or not using the Clear Habit Journal, very effective for creating the new habit.
• I realise I do not need to use the Clear Habit Journal’s Habit Tracker feature, because it is only one habit I am changing and the Calm app has a streak tracker.

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