I am Marcus Delacroix, and this site is the written log of every habit I have started, kept, broken and dropped since I began keeping one.
It started because I could not answer a simple question. I had been told, as everyone has, that it takes twenty one days to build a habit. I had repeated it to other people. When I finally went looking for where the number came from, it turned out to be a surgeon’s offhand observation about how long patients took to stop noticing a changed face in the mirror, which is not the same claim at all. That bothered me enough to start writing things down properly.
What the log actually is
A dated record. When I start something, I write down the date, what the smallest version of it is, and what I expect to happen. Then I write down what happens, including the weeks where nothing happens and the weeks I forget to write anything at all. The gaps are part of the record and I do not fill them in afterwards from memory, because memory is exactly the thing that makes people believe the habit went better than it did.
Why so much of it is about failure
Because most of it failed. I have started far more habits than I have kept, and the ones that died are more instructive than the ones that lived. A habit that works tells you almost nothing, since you cannot see which part of it was load bearing. A habit that collapses in week three tells you exactly where the weight was.
The eight threads
Starting Small, for the versions so small they are embarrassing to admit to. What Actually Sticks, which is the year end accounting. Habit Myths, where the received wisdom gets tested against an actual log. When You Miss a Day. Tracking and Numbers, on what is worth counting and what counting does to you. Environment Over Willpower, which is most of what has ever worked for me. Habits That Travel, on what survives a hotel room. And Dropping a Habit, because deciding to stop is a skill too.
What this site is not
It is not medical advice and it is not a health site. I am not a doctor, a physiologist, a therapist or a coach, and I have no training in any of those. Nothing here is a diagnosis or a treatment plan. I write about the mechanics of repetition on one ordinary person, which is a much smaller subject than health, and anything touching your body, your sleep, your eating or your mind belongs with a qualified clinician rather than with me.
It is also not a review site. There are no star ratings here, no scores, no best of anything, and no invented product tables. Where a notebook or a timer comes up it comes up because it was on the desk, not because it was chosen for a list.
Evidence, and how much weight it carries
One person’s log is one person’s log. It is enough to say this did not work for me and here is what the record shows. It is not enough to say this does not work, and I try hard not to let the first sentence quietly turn into the second. Where I am repeating a study rather than something I measured, I say so, and I say what the study actually measured, because a lot of habit advice is one paper wearing a costume.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell me. The page gets fixed with a note saying what changed, rather than being quietly rewritten. Write to hello@healthyhabitseveryday.org.