Why Do I Keep Counting?

A wise man once said,

“Excel­lence is an art won by train­ing and habit­u­a­tion. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excel­lence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeat­edly do. Excel­lence, then, is not an act but a habit.“
 – Aris­to­tle.

But how do you form these habits of excel­lence? When my fam­ily was try­ing to encour­age my father to quit smok­ing, I read that any action per­formed for two months straight will become habit and auto­matic. It’s just get­ting there that’s the hard part, whether you need to make time for a new activ­ity or fill the time taken by a habit you want to break. (We never got my dad to go cold turkey for two months.)

Another wise man more recently came up with a sim­ple answer. Pick a goal. Mark off the days on which you work toward that goal.

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like see­ing that chain, espe­cially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.

“Don’t break the chain!“
 – Jerry Sein­feld.

Easy, right?

I’ve been doing some­thing sim­i­lar already with the Hacker’s Diet. Weigh­ing myself every day keeps me focused on the goal. Now I’m using this web­site to help me with other goals, too. So far, I’ve got three dif­fer­ent chains going — blog (I’ve got a 14 day chain), exer­cise (I’ve got a 1 day chain), and lose weight (I’ve got a 4 day chain).

I’m think­ing about adding some other chains to help me out with my res­o­lu­tions. Some, like law school are hard to quan­tify daily, but I could and should do some­thing about read­ing, which I have really let slide. Any sug­ges­tions on other chains I should make?

If you sign up, let me know what chains you make, too.

Tags: Dinhternet, Exercise, Family, Jerry S, Law, Work