Experiments

Habit difficulty checkerWill this survive February?
Probably not, and here is why.

The reason most new habits fail is that they were too big on the day they were designed, and the day they were designed was a good day. Enthusiasm inflates what feels reasonable, and the commitment is made by a version of you with more time, more energy and fewer problems than the version who has to keep it.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

Name the habit.

Everything is worked out in this page and saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.

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✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Score the habit you are actually planning

Not the ideal version. The ideal version is the problem.

2
Watch the frequency factor

Daily is easier than three times a week, because there is nothing to decide. Weekly is hardest of all.

3
Take the smaller version

It is not a compromise. It is the one with a real chance of still running in March.

This scores the six factors that actually predict survival: size, frequency, how much it depends on circumstances, how immediate the reward is, how much friction is in the way, and whether it is one habit or several wearing a coat.

It ends with the smaller version. Not as a consolation — the smaller version is usually the one that produces the result, because a habit at 80 per cent consistency for a year beats a better one abandoned in three weeks by an enormous margin.

✦ The limit

An answer is not a record.

This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

Questions

Habit difficulty checker, answered.

Because there is nothing to decide. A daily habit is automatic by definition; "three times a week" requires a judgement every morning about whether today counts, and provides no rhythm to carry you. It is the hardest shape there is.
It is if it is the one you keep. Five minutes a day for a year is thirty hours of accumulated practice; thirty minutes a day for three weeks is ten hours and then nothing. The comparison is not close.
It is usually five habits bundled together, and a bundle fails when any one of them does — so its odds are the product of theirs, which gets small very fast. Build one, then add the second once the first is automatic.
Because behaviour that feels good immediately reinforces itself, and behaviour whose payoff is months away is running on intention alone for the whole formation period. Attaching something pleasant to it is not cheating; it is the mechanism.
Bother with the smaller version. Almost every habit can be moved two bands by cutting the size, removing a dependency or unbundling it, and that redesign costs nothing today.

Keep the answer.
And the record of doing it.

Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

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