Alright, this wrapped up a little while ago and only now have I had the time to sit down and sort through it. Here’s my summary of the experiment.
What did I do?
I attempted to overcome my fear of failure and sense of disappointment around expectation management. It seems to me like the first step to build consistent habit tracking practice.
How did I do it?
Two ways;
- by setting the bar a little too high and tracking more daily habits than I am able to check off and
- by speaking to myself, out loud, from a compassionate and understanding place.
I used Notion as a digital bullet journal for tracking, the template feature and adaptability / agility makes it super convenient as a habit tracker (plus it’s so easy to make a page pretty!).
What did I learn?
Showing compassion to myself is a muscle. It gets stronger the more I use it.
I can frame my victory for a long term success my making personal metrics process based rather than goal based. Focusing on the process feels like it leads to much better qualitative outcomes all round.
There’s a long conversation to have around metrics and how we measure success. I think success framed as a sense of fearless curiousity and nurturing integrity offers a lot more resilience and resourcefulness than say, hitting some number mark or yes no, pass fail grading type system.
Everything is configurable and has significance. For example tables have a natural ordering effect on my processing. I compare columns naturally against each other but not rows. It seems like an obvious thing but the realisation was significant for me.
I can go a day without sleep and function just fine, but I pay for it with the following few days.
Using a timer changes the whole game. It’s so much easier to focus with intention when the timer is counting down.
Conclusion
Overall it was a fantastic success. I set out to do something which was low cost and high reward. I just wanted to build confidence in my process and lay a detailed foundation. I learned a bunch and have work-shopped my habit tracking process into a much cleaner and more automated form, designing it into more of a deeply rooted practice.
I want to continue to run experiments for the indefinite future. I have so many ideas bouncing around. Like the effect of time tracking on productivity, or modifying self talk to see what impact it has on mood, the list goes on!