Day 4: Dropping Habits

This is the fourth day of Habitspark Diet Foundations. Fabulous work!

Dropping Habits

Today we’ll discuss when to drop a habit.  You’ve probably heard the saying “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.”  If you AREN’T keeping a habit, it is important to be willing to drop it and re-evaluate  your plan.  Basically, if it’s not working, stop doing it.  Having habits on your list that you aren’t keeping means you are actually strengthening not doing the habit.  Because of this, rule #2 of habitspark is you must drop any habit that you miss three days within the last seven days.  So when you miss, count backward for the six previous days.  If you also missed two times during the six previous days, it is time to drop the habit.

In this example, the habit has been missed two times in the past six days:

So if it is missed today, it will make three days in the past seven days and count as a “drop”:

However, in the next example, although three days were missed, one of them falls outside of the 7 day window so it is not a “drop”:

When counting backwards, you skip any “passes.” Can you see why this would be a drop?:

When you drop a habit, do not replace it with a new one.  So if you were working on four habits, you would continue only working on three.  In this example, you were working on four habits:

But then need to drop the first habit.  You continue with three habits:

If you are tracking by hand, cross out the dropped habit and draw a straight line from the point at which it  is dropped.

Drop it like it’s hot!  You should apply this to Habitspark Diet Foundations as well.  If you end up dropping one of the habits, please post on the forums so we can figure out why you were struggling and help figure out what would be a better fit for you.

Very good work. Come back tomorrow for Day 5.