Partial success mindset and HabitCal use

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Cornucopian
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Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 8:10 pm

Partial success mindset and HabitCal use

Post by Cornucopian » Tue Aug 24, 2010 2:36 pm

I started Shovelgloving last week. For the past 6 months, I've been doing Baduanjin once or twice a day. To help me remember the order of the moves, I created an internal story of useful movements. I'm realy enjoying the imaginary useful movements of Shovelglove. I like Baduanjin to be silent, but Shovelglove needs epic movie trailer music

HabitCal is great for tracking Shovelglove and Nosdiet compliance. It will really help establish the habits.

With Baduanjin, I should perform the movements 3 times a day at least. Right before Shovelglove is the first time. Then before or after lunch (depends on the day). And once more after work or in the evening if I'm rushed.

HabitCal has sucsess, failure, or exempt. Initially, I thought I could form the habit "Badjuanjin 3 times a day." But, this habit is hard to track. Most days, I do the habit once or twice. 2 times a day is not failure, but it is missing the mark. But I tried to use the same rational with the Nosdiet. I said last Friday was exempt because it was a celebration for a family member and I was cooking the meal. Just yesterday, we had family coming in from town and I had seconds and dessert. Yesterday I counted as a failure even though I was decidedly following the plan before dinner. It wasn't a complete failure, but I know I failed. I mindset of success or failure helps delineate and track. So for the Nosdiet, HabitCal works great. Thanks for the systems and tools.

But for Baduanjin, I had to improve the habit definition. I'm going to overload the Shovelglove habit with a Baduanjin warmup. I'm going to add "Midday Baduanjin" and "Evening Baduanjin" to HabitCal for tracking. I will know what I'm doing and how I need to change.

Thanks for the great systems and tracker. I've realized that a habit formation system needs to eliminate partial success reasoning. I look forward to using HabitCal and forming new habits.

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:31 pm

Thanks for this thoughtful post, Cornucopian, and sorry I've taken such a long time to respond to it.

I agree that thinking in terms of partial success, even though it may seem more "accurate" (and kinder to oneself) can be counterproductive in terms of habit formation if it compromises clarity. That's why there's no orange in the habitcal. :-)

Working on that movie trailer music (seriously -- my brother's methodically plugging away on a shovelglove dvd based on some footage we shot this summer).

Reinhard

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