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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

Most of these comments are about sleep, but the article really isn't. It's about where to apply willpower to change a habit, slowly but surely.

I found the part about recognizing small changes rather than fixating on the end goal especially helpful. You don't need to go to sleep an hour earlier to be building a habit. Two minutes more effort counts.

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I appreciate that you recognize that. I'm not sure if I'm not writing clearly enough or if HN as an audience is a bit pedantic, but most comments here seem to have missed that.

Well, I really appreciate it. I'm planning to apply it in two ways specifically: Increasing my daily average step count by only 2% per week, and decreasing my daily average calories by only 1% per week. Both numbers are high enough that I think I should be able to round to whole numbers pretty well. Using the rule of 72 for some quick math, I think that means I can double my step count in 36 weeks. (I haven't figured out quite how the math works for the calories if I'm counting down, not up, but I'll get it!)

I have a strong tendency to err on the "either I jump all the way to my goal or I've failed" side and burn myself out, so I'm actually going to try to use my will power to refrain from walking more steps, or eat a couple more calories. I'm hoping it'll help drive home that I succeed in the long run when the short-term change is small.

Thanks for writing it!

many life advices would additionally claim that one should mostly abandon "end goal" thinking and instead focus on how to live a rhythm/pattern of actions that you can celebrate today, and that cumulative could result in the goal you care about (given a reasonable amount of successful dice rolls) .

This is a sort of values based form of living vs target fixation. I go to the gym because I value my health today and therefore eat healthy + go to gym. I don't do it because I want the end state of "abs".

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