Victories:
I posted almost four months ago that I’d stopped biting my nails. I haven’t bitten my nails since then. (Except two times in an emergency situation, where the nail was ripped and could have ripped off painfully unless I took care of it in a more controlled way.) This is probably the longest my nails have ever been. I am still working on getting myself to stop scraping them on my teeth (yes, it’s a weird habit), but I’m not biting them anymore.
One big victory is that I did go rockclimbing once a week, every week, until the climbing wall closed. We even got some of the meetup group to come once or twice, which was also fun.
More ambiguous events:
I’ve been reflecting on my original plan for this semester and how it worked out overall. I did very well for the first half or so; I used Beeminder to track my study time and rock climbing habits, and how often I did a ‘weekly review’ of planning my tasks for the week and taking care of bureaucratic annoyances. This worked well; I got 9 hours of sleep per night, I did my work in advance, I took care of bureaucratic annoyances, and I stayed on a reasonable schedule. But after I broke my streak once, I basically gave up and didn’t get enough sleep or go to bed at a reasonable hour or do my homework in advance for several weeks in a row. So next time, I clearly need to plan how I will deal with such setbacks whille I make the plan.
The thing about Beeminder was that I’m a poor college student, and having broken my streak on Beeminder, more than anything else, motivated me to stop using it. It seemed like a waste of money to do, when I could just be tracking things on my own. This might not actually be true. I’m unsure about it, which makes me very hesitant to spend money on it; I don’t actually have that much to spare.
I stopped using Fitocracy partway through the semester, which didn’t seem to affect me much.
After my several weeks of not-enough-sleep streak, I decided I’d had enough and started making myself get 9 hours, strictly, every night. To this end, I tried stopping all work / computer usage at 11pm; that didn’t work out so well because I still had a bit of a homework backlog that required me to stay up late, but I still got enough sleep because I have very late classes. That was a nice thing that I won’t be able to take advantage of next semester.
Insights:
I also noticed that I’ve been telling myself things like “I shouldn’t do too many things, I’ll get burned out” a lot. Then I thought about the last time I was doing a whole lot of things, like last fall, and realized I was quite possibly happier then. So, I’m making an effort to ramp up the number of social commitments and projects I take on, because I think I may not have enough right now.
My experience with Beeminder matches yours in that after breaking the streak, I basically gave up. Nonetheless it seems to have added value compared to alternatives solely based on the streak effect. I have an opposite but equally annoying problem with Beeminder. Being financially supported by my parents, the prospect of losing money isn’t as daunting as I’d like it to be.
Have you considered making an enormous pledge (if Beeminder allows it) in hopes of never relapsing again?
Hmm, Don’t Break the Chain might actually be worth giving a try.
I don’t think my goal is to never relapse, and I think it’s likely enough that I don’t want to screw myself over completely if I do. I would be very sad in the event that that happened, and it would probably result in all sorts of self-hating feelings that in my experience are very anti-productive.
I tried melatonin once and had extremely disturbing dreams. I don’t think it would help me much, because my chief problem isn’t getting to sleep or even precommitting to go to sleep half an hour in advance; rather, it’s that I have work I need to get done for the next day. The half-hour precommitment might be useful in a few cases, but not that many.
I found myself forgetting (or avoiding) the DBTC website so a paper calendar may work best, provided you can prevent an ugh field from developing around it. I think there is more satisfaction in physically drawing a cross in permanent ink.
I see how the pressure of a massive pledge can be self-defeating. Perhaps it could work for short-term goals, but testing it is risky.
I’ve been having very odd dreams which may in fact be linked to my recent melatonin use. I’m surprised that I hadn’t noticed the possible connection until you pointed it out. This sounds like a good candidate for a self-blind experiment.
If you do an experiment, please do report back. I’m interested in the results, though not enough to do it myself.
Mostly I regard very high-pressure pledges as a kind of personal “nuclear option”. I occasionally will do this for a short period—like last semester, when I had to catch up on schoolwork after a very long illness, and needed very strict rules to keep myself on track - but it seems like a bad idea to do if you think the probability of breaking it is at all high. If you do break it, you lose a big part of your ability to trust important precommitments; I don’t use such promises all the time because I want to be able to use them if I have to.
Also, I don’t really want to lose that much money.
I’ve found it helpful to have a plan for what to do when I get off track, and a small allowance for random interference in my tracking.. Perfection is an unreasonable standard for the majority of my activities.
Learning how to start again is more valuable than keeping to perfection. And, it’s a skill I use more often.
My semester in review
Victories: I posted almost four months ago that I’d stopped biting my nails. I haven’t bitten my nails since then. (Except two times in an emergency situation, where the nail was ripped and could have ripped off painfully unless I took care of it in a more controlled way.) This is probably the longest my nails have ever been. I am still working on getting myself to stop scraping them on my teeth (yes, it’s a weird habit), but I’m not biting them anymore.
One big victory is that I did go rockclimbing once a week, every week, until the climbing wall closed. We even got some of the meetup group to come once or twice, which was also fun.
More ambiguous events: I’ve been reflecting on my original plan for this semester and how it worked out overall. I did very well for the first half or so; I used Beeminder to track my study time and rock climbing habits, and how often I did a ‘weekly review’ of planning my tasks for the week and taking care of bureaucratic annoyances. This worked well; I got 9 hours of sleep per night, I did my work in advance, I took care of bureaucratic annoyances, and I stayed on a reasonable schedule. But after I broke my streak once, I basically gave up and didn’t get enough sleep or go to bed at a reasonable hour or do my homework in advance for several weeks in a row. So next time, I clearly need to plan how I will deal with such setbacks whille I make the plan.
The thing about Beeminder was that I’m a poor college student, and having broken my streak on Beeminder, more than anything else, motivated me to stop using it. It seemed like a waste of money to do, when I could just be tracking things on my own. This might not actually be true. I’m unsure about it, which makes me very hesitant to spend money on it; I don’t actually have that much to spare.
I stopped using Fitocracy partway through the semester, which didn’t seem to affect me much.
After my several weeks of not-enough-sleep streak, I decided I’d had enough and started making myself get 9 hours, strictly, every night. To this end, I tried stopping all work / computer usage at 11pm; that didn’t work out so well because I still had a bit of a homework backlog that required me to stay up late, but I still got enough sleep because I have very late classes. That was a nice thing that I won’t be able to take advantage of next semester.
Insights: I also noticed that I’ve been telling myself things like “I shouldn’t do too many things, I’ll get burned out” a lot. Then I thought about the last time I was doing a whole lot of things, like last fall, and realized I was quite possibly happier then. So, I’m making an effort to ramp up the number of social commitments and projects I take on, because I think I may not have enough right now.
My experience with Beeminder matches yours in that after breaking the streak, I basically gave up. Nonetheless it seems to have added value compared to alternatives solely based on the streak effect. I have an opposite but equally annoying problem with Beeminder. Being financially supported by my parents, the prospect of losing money isn’t as daunting as I’d like it to be.
Have you considered making an enormous pledge (if Beeminder allows it) in hopes of never relapsing again?
Regarding sleep, have you given melatonin a try?
Hmm, Don’t Break the Chain might actually be worth giving a try.
I don’t think my goal is to never relapse, and I think it’s likely enough that I don’t want to screw myself over completely if I do. I would be very sad in the event that that happened, and it would probably result in all sorts of self-hating feelings that in my experience are very anti-productive.
I tried melatonin once and had extremely disturbing dreams. I don’t think it would help me much, because my chief problem isn’t getting to sleep or even precommitting to go to sleep half an hour in advance; rather, it’s that I have work I need to get done for the next day. The half-hour precommitment might be useful in a few cases, but not that many.
I found myself forgetting (or avoiding) the DBTC website so a paper calendar may work best, provided you can prevent an ugh field from developing around it. I think there is more satisfaction in physically drawing a cross in permanent ink.
I see how the pressure of a massive pledge can be self-defeating. Perhaps it could work for short-term goals, but testing it is risky.
I’ve been having very odd dreams which may in fact be linked to my recent melatonin use. I’m surprised that I hadn’t noticed the possible connection until you pointed it out. This sounds like a good candidate for a self-blind experiment.
If you do an experiment, please do report back. I’m interested in the results, though not enough to do it myself.
Mostly I regard very high-pressure pledges as a kind of personal “nuclear option”. I occasionally will do this for a short period—like last semester, when I had to catch up on schoolwork after a very long illness, and needed very strict rules to keep myself on track - but it seems like a bad idea to do if you think the probability of breaking it is at all high. If you do break it, you lose a big part of your ability to trust important precommitments; I don’t use such promises all the time because I want to be able to use them if I have to.
Also, I don’t really want to lose that much money.
I’ve found it helpful to have a plan for what to do when I get off track, and a small allowance for random interference in my tracking.. Perfection is an unreasonable standard for the majority of my activities.
Learning how to start again is more valuable than keeping to perfection. And, it’s a skill I use more often.