The problem with practice is remembering to practice. This is especially true if you are trying to practice as a way to break a bad habit.
It's been a bad weekend for me. I forgot to practice touch-typing. And while I keep starting with tests for my Project Euler problems, I keep slipping to implementing large parts of the algorithm without further testing.
At least according to Thomas Limoncelli, "[P]sychologists tell us that it takes 21 days of doing a new behavior to develop it into a habit." Twenty-one days doesn't seem that long, does it? It's only three weeks, right?
Let's face it: It's hard.
It's not just three weeks of doing it. It's three weeks of making yourself do it. It's three weeks of making sure you don't miss a single day for whatever reason.
This is a common thing for people who decide to start exercise regimens. They start and keep going for a week and then stop. Something comes up and they put it off. And then they put it off again. And... I haven't found a statistic about the number of gym memberships that go unused but it apparently ranks as one of the top ten money drains.
It's easy to say that you need to force yourself to do things day after day, force yourself to think about doing them until you're doing them without thinking about them. It's easy to say this because talk is cheap. Action is not.
Add new comment