The February Challenge Review Poll

For about the fourth month in a row, I started off strong and then almost completely gave up. I've tried progressively easier and easier goals, but nothing sticks anymore. Maybe I need to rethink this whole habits thing, or else put it off until I move out and have more control over my life.

Have you been able to figure out if you have a trigger for giving up? Have similar things happened each month that caused you lose focus, such as experiencing a particular feeling, or having to cope with something particular in your environment? If you could identify a trigger, whether it is a feeling or an exterior cause, maybe you could plan in advance some ways to counter it or to get yourself back on track even if it derailed you for a few days.

This month's goal of working out 2x to 3x a week was bumpy. I will definitely continue it into next month. I've found that it takes an average of six weeks to make something stick anyways, so doing a carryover works best for me. I will also continue to check in with January's goal of daily meditation. For March, I plan to add a professional goal (but haven't quite fleshed it out yet).

The decision to commit to focusing on the present was powerful. It brought to light a life that my mind was having without my awareness. I plan to tweak my goal and take up a March challenge

HW, the causes all seem to stem either indirectly from the mental problems I'm going through by living in this suffocating place, or directly by the inconveniences that also come up. Therefore, I think I'm going to hold off making any new habits until after I move out (since I worry that if I establish any good ones now, their triggers will get all bolluxed up by moving to a new place).

Fekket,

Off-topic, but wow, three cheers on your article about writing fiction over on the Write to Done blog! It's really well done (like the humor!).

(PS: Regarding habits, even if you move, you could always develop a new trigger for a habit that you wanted to keep. But then, I'm the eternal optimist.)

Yeah, it's been pretty fun. I even got my parents to read it. My dad didn't even realize it was mine until he saw the byline at the bottom. It was freaking hilarious.

I think that a lot of triggers are very context-dependent. Times of great turbulence and change (such as moving out on your own for the first time) either completely alters or temporary removes the context.

I hope everybody does well on their March Challenge, but I'll be sitting this one out.

So I pretty much dropped the challenge after a couple weeks... the getting up just stopped happening. I've always been really bad at mornings, so maybe I set the bar too high. Also, part of the problem was in the goal to get up "as soon as the alarm rings". As soon as I hit snooze, I had already failed. Then all I wanted to do was stay in bed, partly because I was ashamed at myself for not doing my challenge.

It's ok, though. I'm going to keep working on getting up on time, but I have a better idea for next month's challenge. Still not giving up on being a better person! :D

The February Challenge was extremely useful for me. I'm working on a very difficult writing project, and I've been finding that there were days that I was so stuck that I couldn't get started at all. Knowing I had to report my progress every day made a big difference, since I didn't want to have to confess that I had failed. Approximately one quarter of the days, I wasted time until the last possible minute that I could start working and still complete my promised one hour before noon. The rest of the days my productivity varied, but once I got started on those days I always put in more than the minimum time. I saw substantial progress on my book, and felt a lot better about myself just because I was getting at least some work done each day. When I have externally-imposed deadlines, I don't have trouble completing writing projects, but this one, being without an external deadline and extremely complex to boot, has been a real trial.

I wasn't sure how to report my result on the poll. I did comply 100% with my challenge, but I grumpily checked the box for 21-28 days because it was a Monday through Friday goal and so did not have 29 days.

Thanks to others who reported their progress, too. I got a lot of good ideas from other participants over the course of the month, some of which I have been integrating into my life, although without making them formal challenges. On to the March challenge!

I couldn't stick to the habit for more than 10 days, but it will get better if I just remember to really POST everyday!

I feel I did extremely well this month. I dropped the ball on most weekends, but have decided to keep this as a weekday habit anyway. I firmly believe that my morning Tai Chi is now a habit, and a large part of that success has been tying it to my alarm going off at 6:15. Congrats to those that had a successful month, to those that didn't-good luck for next month :)

I failed after 9 days and never really recovered. The first day I failed was after being robbe,d where I was up all night long, and the following days I had little sleep too. And I just never got back to it after that. I was also without the net for about four days so couldn;t report.

Ah well. See how we go this time.