Yes, totally agreed. Be precise, define a goal that’s both reachable and testable.
“Fix the automatic response” is an interesting criterion. Am I right you’re saying “it doesn’t count if you can only do it with a special effort?” That’s an interestingly subtle point. The improvement has to be pervasive in your life. It agrees with my preference for a private intent—you can’t always rely on a gun to your head to make you work at peak ability.
But contrariwise, it’s true that the way you learn stuff in general is to do it many many times deliberately, and it gets cached and you can do it automatically. So fixing an improvement in automation could take a long while, longer than a one shot quick commitment.
I wonder what would be the best criterion that would capture the ideal of ongoing use even if not yet automation?
Am I right you’re saying “it doesn’t count if you can only do it with a special effort?”
Doing it with effort is fine; needing to make an effort to do (or remember to do) it in the first place is not, or you’re going to forget as soon as it drifts out of your sphere of attention/interest.
But contrariwise, it’s true that the way you learn stuff in general is to do it many many times deliberately, and it gets cached and you can do it automatically.
How many times do you have to practice non-belief in Santa Claus, before you stop trying to stay up and watch the chimney?
Some learning works better fast than slow. Case in point, btw, the book “The Four-Day Win” presents a very strong case that it only takes us four days of something to get used to it and treat it as habitual, not the 21-30 days propounded by most self-help material.
The catch of course is that it has to be something that you’re not demotivated by, and doesn’t conflict with other goals of yours. But then, if it has one of those problems, 21-30 days won’t make it a “real” habit, either. In effect, 21-30 days is just a survivor-bias test: if you manage to make it that long without giving up, you probably didn’t have any conflicts or demotivations, so you “succeeded”. Woohoo. And if you didn’t make it that far, then obviously you didn’t do it long enough to turn it into a habit, so it’s your fault.
That’s why I think automation improvement via extended-duration repetition is a joke. If your automatic response to something is negative, doing it over and over will only change the response if the response had something to do with reality in the first place.
Whereas, for example, if the real reason you don’t exercise is because you believe only shallow people do it, then actually exercising won’t change that belief, no matter how long you do it!
At best, it will convince you that you’re shallow. Or, more likely, you will make a big deal to yourself about how much of a struggle it is and how much you hate it, because you need to justify that you’re not shallow for doing it.
Bleah. Anyway, this entire rat’s nest of self-confusion is why I emphasize testing automatic response as a success criterion: automatic responses are repeatable, and they are the result you’re really after in the first place! (Who wants to have MORE things to personally, consciously, monitor and control in their life?)
Yes, totally agreed. Be precise, define a goal that’s both reachable and testable.
“Fix the automatic response” is an interesting criterion. Am I right you’re saying “it doesn’t count if you can only do it with a special effort?” That’s an interestingly subtle point. The improvement has to be pervasive in your life. It agrees with my preference for a private intent—you can’t always rely on a gun to your head to make you work at peak ability.
But contrariwise, it’s true that the way you learn stuff in general is to do it many many times deliberately, and it gets cached and you can do it automatically. So fixing an improvement in automation could take a long while, longer than a one shot quick commitment.
I wonder what would be the best criterion that would capture the ideal of ongoing use even if not yet automation?
Doing it with effort is fine; needing to make an effort to do (or remember to do) it in the first place is not, or you’re going to forget as soon as it drifts out of your sphere of attention/interest.
How many times do you have to practice non-belief in Santa Claus, before you stop trying to stay up and watch the chimney?
Some learning works better fast than slow. Case in point, btw, the book “The Four-Day Win” presents a very strong case that it only takes us four days of something to get used to it and treat it as habitual, not the 21-30 days propounded by most self-help material.
The catch of course is that it has to be something that you’re not demotivated by, and doesn’t conflict with other goals of yours. But then, if it has one of those problems, 21-30 days won’t make it a “real” habit, either. In effect, 21-30 days is just a survivor-bias test: if you manage to make it that long without giving up, you probably didn’t have any conflicts or demotivations, so you “succeeded”. Woohoo. And if you didn’t make it that far, then obviously you didn’t do it long enough to turn it into a habit, so it’s your fault.
That’s why I think automation improvement via extended-duration repetition is a joke. If your automatic response to something is negative, doing it over and over will only change the response if the response had something to do with reality in the first place.
Whereas, for example, if the real reason you don’t exercise is because you believe only shallow people do it, then actually exercising won’t change that belief, no matter how long you do it!
At best, it will convince you that you’re shallow. Or, more likely, you will make a big deal to yourself about how much of a struggle it is and how much you hate it, because you need to justify that you’re not shallow for doing it.
Bleah. Anyway, this entire rat’s nest of self-confusion is why I emphasize testing automatic response as a success criterion: automatic responses are repeatable, and they are the result you’re really after in the first place! (Who wants to have MORE things to personally, consciously, monitor and control in their life?)