Starting the Habit of Outputting Again, and What Happened in the First Week
—A Story About Designing Without Blaming Your 'Inconsistent Self'—
I'm Mate, a Habituation Coach®.
Using the habituation of emotional journaling as an entry point,
I provide support to organize both your thinking habits and behavioral habits.
Now, I want to make outputting a habit.
Even while thinking that, I've...
I have no ideas
I have no time
I can't decide on a direction
I've kept piling up excuses like those and procrastinating.
Whenever I saw 'people who can output every day,'
I felt a distance, thinking they must be different from me.
That version of myself, about a year after failing at note,
started an experiment to leave output logs on X, which is the start of this.
Why I decided 'not to do it properly from the start'
A year ago, I decided to start note!
But even though I decided to do it, it didn't last long.
Looking back,
Posting twice a week → Stopped halfway
Posting every day → Became impossible
I always started with the ideal, and reality couldn't keep up.
So this time, I decided this from the beginning.
Just a log is okay.
Even one line is okay.
Even if you have nothing to write, post that you have nothing.
It's a design that prioritizes 'staying involved for even one minute'
rather than the 'quality' of the output.
What I did in the first week was very plain
Honestly, what I was doing in the first week was quite plain.
Just opening X or writing a log is fine
Write about the feeling of not being able to post today
Write about the emotions at that time
As for the content,
it was all stuff where I thought, "Is this useful to anyone?"
That said, being able to post every day was a big deal.
The emotion that came up most in the first week
This was the emotion that came up again and again in the first week.
Is this okay?
Does this have any meaning?
It feels like no one is watching
In particular, the fact that there was "no reaction"
hit me harder than I imagined.
Even so,
when I thought "I want to quit," I told myself this.
This time, I'm not looking for "validation"
I'm just testing how to keep going first
It's okay to accept that, and focus on what I've accomplished.
The feeling of building something up was what pushed me to write the logs.
What I learned after continuing for a week
After continuing for a week, there is one thing I know for sure.
That is,
The reason I continued was not motivation
that.
It wasn't that my motivation was high
It wasn't that I had a strong will.
I simply
designed it so that I couldn't fail.
This was the biggest factor.
This first week was neither a success nor growth.
To be honest,
nothing changed dramatically in this one week.
The fact that I "didn't quit" remained.
This was
a feeling I had never experienced before.
To those who are struggling in the same way
If,
you want to produce output but can't keep it up
you start a habit but immediately fall into self-loathing
you get stuck thinking "I have to do it properly"
If there is anyone like that,
it is okay not to try to do it perfectly right away.
For the first week,
a period to confirm if you can stay involved was enough.
Next is the second week.
Little by little, other emotions will emerge.
Comparison, anxiety, and hesitation.
I intend to record
how I dealt with those as well.