Yesterday I wrote about picking a unit of measure to increment by one every week, with the goal to reach 52 by the end of the year.
So why not increment by one every day? Isn’t 3661 better than 52?
Challenges for time-based units
Well, it depends on your unit of measure. If my goal is to produce a habit of watching X minutes of courses on Udemy, I would end up starting with one, but finishing with having to watch over six hours. I technically have enough time for that, if I sleep less and forsake my family. Plus, I probably won’t accomplish much since I’ll just be learning more but not applying.
Same issue with any time based unit of measure, is that it will end with an unrealistic amount of time.
Same with miles on a bike. Sure, I’ll be fine the first few weeks of January, but I’m never going to ride the entire distance from my house to Southern Oregon in a day.
What about pushups? Maybe. Maybe I could do 365 pushups in a day. But if I get to 52 a day by the end of the year, I’ll be happy. So a weekly increment works better.
Next time, I share why I’m starting at such an insanely small number to increment from.
- 2024 is a leap year. ↩︎