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I'm just wondering what alternative frameworks exist out there other than habits

because what I'm realizing is that I/we (system) have a carrying capacity for Good Habits. there's not only so many times we can do something every single day, but only so many things we can do every single day before we implode. if we try to pick up one too many Good Habits, we just collapse and drop all of them. we can brush our teeth, wear our nightguard, eat on time, etc, etc, but we can't do all of these things every day together forever and quite frankly the thought of doing so makes me in particular want to vomit and die

(like, theoretically, habits are supposed to take less and less effort the longer you do them. that's only true for a temporary period for us. then they become agonizing. some of us have greater tolerance for habits than others, but none of us add up to A Functional Neurotypical(tm))

(idk it's just not great when you periodically sleep 12+ hours a day and still feel tired and ostensibly I have to force myself through 8 hours of work, and you're telling me I have to use the 4- remaining hours for the same. tasks. over and over and over)

and if anything, I think the way habits are presented... actually makes things worse for us? like there's always this feeling that It Should Be Easy, Just Don't Break The Streak, Just Keep Doing It, and then we inevitably feel like shit when it isn't that simple and stop bothering to track anything. or stop bothering with things at all. it should be an accomplishment when we manage to do thing at all, but under Habits(tm) it feels like it doesn't count because we aren't doing it Consistently

like surely someone out there has to have figured out something that doesn't suck


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in reply to @bazelgeuse-apologist's post:

Feel free to ignore this if it doesn't help since I'm the neurospicy type who does do habits, but the things I think are not obvious about the habit-building process are:

A. habits take for-fucking-ever to set up. A tiny trivial task is a 3-7 month project!
B. the effort cost while a habit is being built is HIGHER than normal.

Now, if you have external shit doing a bunch of the lifting for you, these costs get defrayed somewhat. Stuff like, the habit of eating lunch every day... when your job involves being surrounded by coworkers you like who are gonna nicely peer-pressure you at 12:30 to come hang in the cafeteria? That's going to be on the easier side, because other things (social motivation, externally-applied repetition, etc) will change the effort equation.

But homeostasis activities in a vacuum with no external scaffold, no other humans involved, just you and "willpower" versus some task you don't wanna fuckin' do? That shit sucks so bad because it's really easy to underestimate. I know in my case I've had to get very careful about not pejorative-"just"ing myself and thinking "this is a small easy task other people do without conscious effort, surely it will be easy!" Every fucking time: nooooope, if it was easy for me I would have already been doing it. So. Practical tips:

  1. You will rarely get opportunities to rearrange the scaffold of your life to support the habits you want. Be conscious of that both so you're aware when you're doing this on Hard Mode and also so you can pounce opportunities if they become available.
  2. Seriously, if it was "that easy" you'd have done it without trying years ago. If you're trying to build a habit on purpose, acknowledge that it IS a challenge!
  3. Budget accordingly. Building a new habit is high-effort and will take a long time, so DON'T try to work on lots of them at once (unless there's life-scaffolding to support them all!) and DON'T beat yourself up when it takes longer than you want it to. My reasonable estimate is 2-3 new habits per year if it's a good year and they're all lower on your personal effort scale; if you're trying to unfuck a known problem, one is a lot.