New Podcast Episode: The Lifelog

No Snacks, no sweets, no seconds. Except on Days that start with S. Too simple for you? Simple is why it works. Look here for questions, introductions, support, success stories.

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reinhard
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New Podcast Episode: The Lifelog

Post by reinhard » Fri Apr 30, 2021 6:18 pm

Enjoy!

https://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode/55/

"Habit tracking when apps or magic markers won't cut it"

More episodes on the way... (resolved to bang out one a month now)

junkkma
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Re: New Podcast Episode: The Lifelog

Post by junkkma » Mon May 03, 2021 8:28 am

Thanks for a great post! I have actually been looking for something like this and failed trying a couple of phone apps... Actually I would rather limit phone usage to minimum... (in a process of turning phone into a multi-purpose tool to perform a very limited amount of things).

I have one question about the template. Now it does not take exclude the S days from NoS success rate calculation. That leads to variance of success calculation especially on holiday months vs other months. How do you see that aspect of the follow-up based on your experience? It would look a bit dull to see that your compliance has been only 50 % even if you had 100 % success on all N days?

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Re: New Podcast Episode: The Lifelog

Post by reinhard » Mon May 03, 2021 4:46 pm

Good point -- there are many ways to track summary compliance. I went with simplicity and a gently nudge to keep the S-days to a minimum (since for the purpose of this calculation they aren't distinguished from failures.) I also found it interesting that it doesn't take that many N days to make a real different. People sometimes talk about going for an "80% solution" to avoid the trap of perfectionist thinking, but with No S, even a "60% solution" will do. Tracking percent green days like this highlights how low the bar is, how moderate and attainable the requirement.

The beautiful thing about the Lifelong of course is that you are free to swap out with a summary function that emphasizes something different. Say you want success/failure rate to be the most important thing, and ignore S days entirely, because it's so variable when they happen. I have done this in the past at various points as well. Has the advantage that it will give you nice high, "A"-range sounding numbers.

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Re: New Podcast Episode: The Lifelog

Post by junkkma » Sun May 16, 2021 4:53 pm

Now that I tried this approach for measurement in practice - not distinguishing S-days from failures - I actually really like it a lot! As you mentioned, it emphasizes how low the bar is. Well, let's see if I still think this way during the summer months. I I have annual vacation of 8,5 weeks and I can't afford to treat all that as S days anyway!

Reinhard - I am actually really interested in hearing also about your study habit. I have created some kind of study habit myself, but would need a bit more strictness and ideas for scheduling related to that (with 3 children it happens quite often that other things emerge that you need to solve when you would like to study...).

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