Why Guilt After a Missed Day Makes Things Worse
I used to think feeling bad about a missed habit meant I cared enough to keep going. Looking at my own restart pattern over a year told a different story.
Read the logAuthor: Marcus Delacroix
Marcus Delacroix keeps a written log of every habit he starts, keeps, breaks and drops. He is not a doctor and does not give health advice: the pieces here are about the mechanics of repetition on one ordinary person, tested before they are written down.
The One Metric I Actually Check, and the Five I Dropped
I went through every number I was collecting about my habits and asked which ones I actually used. Almost none of them…
Willpower Is Not a Battery: Rethinking the Depletion Idea
The idea that willpower drains like a battery over the course of a day sounds intuitive, but it did not match what…
The Habit I Kept Out of Guilt, Not Benefit
I kept a daily stretching routine going for over a year after it stopped doing anything for me, because quitting felt like…
What I Got Wrong About Motivation and Starting Small
I used to think starting small was a trick to fool myself into eventually doing more. It took years to notice that…
I Tried Calling Myself a Runner Before I Was One. Here Is What Happened
The advice to change your identity first and let the behavior follow sounds tidy, but when I tried saying the words before…
What Actually Happens When You Break a Streak
I tracked a habit streak for months, then missed one day and quit for three weeks. Here is what I found when…
Why I Stopped Trying to Keep My Full Routine on Vacation
I used to pack my routine like it was luggage, trying to bring all of it on every trip. Once I stopped…
The Difference Between Tracking a Habit and Tracking a Result
Logging that you showed up and logging an outcome are not the same thing, and mixing them up made my tracking less…
I Moved Four Things to Four Different Spots and Fixed Four Habits I Had Given Up On
None of these fixes required more discipline. Each one just moved an object closer to an existing habit or further from a…