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Elo comments on Open Thread, Sept 5. - Sept 11. 2016 - Less Wrong
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Exercise
In previous attempts at exercising, I've never lost weight; never gained in strength or dexterity; never even gotten a second wind. I've never met any significant exercise goals. But in the long-term, exercise is still worthwhile. So I'm trying something new: Changing my self-conception to Someone Who Exercises Daily. No expectations of any gains, rewards, or second winds. Just someone who slogs through the painful routine each day, every day.
I've picked a routine that can be done anywhere, with no equipment: Burpees, in descending sets (ie, for 15, do 5, 4, 3, 2, 1; for non-triangular numbers, add at the start, ie for 17, do 7, 6, 3, 2, 1), adding 1 per day. (Supposedly, burpees work all the major parts of the body, etc, etc.) If-and-when I make it to 30-descending, I'll consider changing it up.
Today: Did 5 burpees.
Also today: Set up https://twitter.com/DPR_exercise to semi-publicly keep track. (Or, as an RSS feed, http://twitrss.me/twitter_user_to_rss/?user=dpr_exercise .)
how do you think your first failure at this will come about? before retrying?
Hm... I expect that I'm going to mess up my scheduling, or some family thing will crop up unexpectedly, and I won't wake up in time to run through the exercise routine before having to go out on some errand, on a day with so much going on that it's well past sunset before I have another chance to do some jumping up and down.
sounds similar to my experience. You might want to set up a review process once a week (Sunday night is usually convenient) so that you can check if you are still on track with the goal.
Minor failures or small setbacks will happen, finding a way to ensure they don't become drawn out failures will likely keep you on track.
Oddly enough, part of what set my thoughts in this particular direction was watching the Gene Wilder movie, "The Frisco Kid", about an observant Jew travelling across the Wild West; which made me start thinking about people who perform regular religious observances. For many people, failing to perform a regular ritual on one day doesn't mean they give it up entirely - they may do something corrective about the lapse, but simply resume the regular ritual on its next scheduled time. I'm hoping I can leverage a secular version of that mindset for my own purposes, at such time as it becomes necessary.
I suspect this is one of those critical things that separate losers from winners. Statistically, sooner or later something unexpected is going to mess up your schedule. People who decide in advance "if I fail once, it means I have failed forever, so there is no point in trying anymore" are just giving themselves an excuse to stop.
It makes sense to worry about failing today or tomorrow, but it doesn't make sense to worry about having failed yesterday. If you failed to perform the ritual yesterday, maybe do some penance, and maybe reflect and improve your planning, but don't use it as a cheap excuse for not doing the ritual today. (Not even in the way "I am not doing the ritual anymore until I improve my plans". Nope; do the ritual at the predetermined time, and use some other time to reflect plan.)