I have had a fairly solid Anki habit for the past three months or so.
I have ankified a few self-improvement concepts (Lukeprog’s posts on procrastination, some of Kaj Sotala’s stuff on habits, random other tidbits), and I believe the constant exposure to those ideas has started having an effect, in that I seem to have started doing a lot of the advice in there (not all though). I may report on it later on.
But more dramatically effective, I recently started using HabitRPG, and have used it to get a few new daily habits:
Always get up before the alarm (previously I’d loaf around in bed for up to half an hour)
Always go to bed before midnight
Update my Gratitude Journal every day (I had been doing that semi-regularly for a few weeks before though)
Do some exercise every morning
It’s also a good motivator for just getting things done in general. My choice of habits have been somewhat influenced by KajSotala’s article on The Power of Habit, and by talking to some LWers who read that book and talked about Keystone Habits around exercise and sleeping. Also, I was influenced by Lukeprog’s talking about success spirals to start by focusing on somewhat easier-to-achieve things (and also, Swimmer’s discussion of goals versus systems.
How do you manage a habit of this? How do you manage to do it intentionally at all? It seems to me that the entire purpose of a morning alarm clock is to counteract the fact that we pretty much can’t control when we wake up.
I loathe alarms, but I still need one for working days, or I would be two hours late every day.
I used to need an alarm every day to wake up; I no longer bother to set one at all unless I need to wake up at an unusual hour to catch a plane or something.
I managed it by spending about six months going to sleep whenever I was tired and sleeping until I woke up. (This was triggered by major physiological trauma I was recovering from.)
At first that meant I was sleeping 14+ hours a day. (Typically in two shifts, so that I had a few hours of wakefulness in the morning and a few hours in the evening.)
By the time I recovered enough that my body only wanted 8 hours or so, my habit was to go to sleep around 10pm and wake up around 6am. I managed this because my recovery was my #1 priority… more important than socializing or staying up late doing other things.
When I started living a more balanced life, I started staying up later, and found my balance-point was going to sleep around midnight and waking up around 8am.
That’s still where I am. When I indulge myself and stay up late, I still wake up around 8, though I sometimes choose to nap for another hour or two and come to work late. (Admittedly, when I’ve gotten enough sleep I sometimes choose to not-nap for an hour or two and come to work late anyway.)
Unless I’m really tired, I’m usually vaguely semi-awake between 7 and 7:30 (where my Alarm rings), at which point instead of going back to sleep I now decide to get up and do stuff.
The going to bed before midnight helps make sure I don’t get too tired.
If you can’t wake up in time without an alarm, you’re probably sleeping too little. I need the alarm about 1⁄10 of the time, so it’s still useful to have it set.
If you want to hate alarms less, use one that starts gradually. You’ll learn to wake up even to the slightest of sounds.
Could be a real problem, but this didn’t happen to me. My brain recognizes only the specific alarm sound as important. Just make sure you don’t use a sound that resembles anything else in the environment.
Me also. It’s gratifying to start the day by getting to remind myself that I was successful at stuff yesterday.
I also have an (admittedly ill-defined and therefore poorly adhered-to) goal of minimizing screen use after I get home for the night. But at least HRPG is one tab I don’t feel compelled to open.
A few different things:
I have had a fairly solid Anki habit for the past three months or so.
I have ankified a few self-improvement concepts (Lukeprog’s posts on procrastination, some of Kaj Sotala’s stuff on habits, random other tidbits), and I believe the constant exposure to those ideas has started having an effect, in that I seem to have started doing a lot of the advice in there (not all though). I may report on it later on.
But more dramatically effective, I recently started using HabitRPG, and have used it to get a few new daily habits:
Always get up before the alarm (previously I’d loaf around in bed for up to half an hour)
Always go to bed before midnight
Update my Gratitude Journal every day (I had been doing that semi-regularly for a few weeks before though)
Do some exercise every morning
It’s also a good motivator for just getting things done in general. My choice of habits have been somewhat influenced by KajSotala’s article on The Power of Habit, and by talking to some LWers who read that book and talked about Keystone Habits around exercise and sleeping. Also, I was influenced by Lukeprog’s talking about success spirals to start by focusing on somewhat easier-to-achieve things (and also, Swimmer’s discussion of goals versus systems.
How do you manage a habit of this? How do you manage to do it intentionally at all? It seems to me that the entire purpose of a morning alarm clock is to counteract the fact that we pretty much can’t control when we wake up.
I loathe alarms, but I still need one for working days, or I would be two hours late every day.
I used to need an alarm every day to wake up; I no longer bother to set one at all unless I need to wake up at an unusual hour to catch a plane or something.
I managed it by spending about six months going to sleep whenever I was tired and sleeping until I woke up. (This was triggered by major physiological trauma I was recovering from.)
At first that meant I was sleeping 14+ hours a day. (Typically in two shifts, so that I had a few hours of wakefulness in the morning and a few hours in the evening.)
By the time I recovered enough that my body only wanted 8 hours or so, my habit was to go to sleep around 10pm and wake up around 6am. I managed this because my recovery was my #1 priority… more important than socializing or staying up late doing other things.
When I started living a more balanced life, I started staying up later, and found my balance-point was going to sleep around midnight and waking up around 8am.
That’s still where I am. When I indulge myself and stay up late, I still wake up around 8, though I sometimes choose to nap for another hour or two and come to work late. (Admittedly, when I’ve gotten enough sleep I sometimes choose to not-nap for an hour or two and come to work late anyway.)
Unless I’m really tired, I’m usually vaguely semi-awake between 7 and 7:30 (where my Alarm rings), at which point instead of going back to sleep I now decide to get up and do stuff.
The going to bed before midnight helps make sure I don’t get too tired.
If you can’t wake up in time without an alarm, you’re probably sleeping too little. I need the alarm about 1⁄10 of the time, so it’s still useful to have it set.
If you want to hate alarms less, use one that starts gradually. You’ll learn to wake up even to the slightest of sounds.
(The problem with that is that sometimes you might wake up to sounds other than the alarm.)
Could be a real problem, but this didn’t happen to me. My brain recognizes only the specific alarm sound as important. Just make sure you don’t use a sound that resembles anything else in the environment.
Yes, when that happened to me I was using a record of birds singing or something like that as the alarm.
How exactly do you put this in HabitRPG? Do you use HabitRPG from your bed, or can you somehow enter your daily task the next day?
I imagine you could make a daily goal of “I went to bed before midnight yesterday”, but that feels a bit inellegant.
I have Habit RPG for Android, so yep I can use it from bed (it’s also convenient for entering todos that I forgot without having to get up).
(I also set the “end of day” to 2 AM so that I can still enter dailies like that after midnight)
This is what I do.
Me also. It’s gratifying to start the day by getting to remind myself that I was successful at stuff yesterday.
I also have an (admittedly ill-defined and therefore poorly adhered-to) goal of minimizing screen use after I get home for the night. But at least HRPG is one tab I don’t feel compelled to open.