I took a month-long sabbatical last Fall to learn a new skill (machine learning). I had a project goal to keep me focused on making progress and staying practical: making an ios app that will use ML to "recognize" the letters on a Boggle game grid and "solve" it, printing out all the words on that grid. I made large strides during the month but the project wasn't quite working at the end. After the sabbatical it was back to work at my dayjob and I had a lot of motivation but little time, so I kept telling myself, "No time to work on it today, but I'll try tomorrow."
After a few weeks thinking this and not doing any work, I despaired that my project would end up as vaporware, blowing away in the smoke of my good intentions. So I started a new habit: Committing to work on it, every day, for just 15 minutes.
I use a pomodoro timer (Vitamin-R) and note-taking app (EverNote) to do my daily 15 minutes. Each time I start, I write down my goal for that session, and keep a running list of things I think of to do but don't get to in that particular session. Every day I successfully put in 15 minutes I mark off that day on a 365-day hanging wall calendar that is on the back of my apartment door.
Results:
* I have worked on the app for 90% of the days this year.
* I absolutely got it to a "working" state (I am now facing a diminishing returns problem where I'm putting in too much time fiddling with UX and UI polish, but that's a problem I'm happy to have).
* On over 50% of the days I end up working more than 15 minutes.
* On days when I feel like going longer, and have the time, I'll still occasionally hard-stop at 15 minutes. This gives me something I'm eager to come back to tomorrow, and also (I think) helps to engrain the habit. I want my subconscious to always think: yes, the cost of starting my session today really is only 15 minutes, I will do this even if I don't feel like I have a lot of willpower today.
I think the last bullet point you listed must be really helpful. I don't remember where I read it, but I recently heard Hemingway used to do something similar where he would write to a point that he really wants to continue, then stop for the day, so tomorrow morning he excitedly picks back up and finishes what he was so excited to write the day before. I feel like that's probably an incredibly effective habit for keeping a streak going
After a few weeks thinking this and not doing any work, I despaired that my project would end up as vaporware, blowing away in the smoke of my good intentions. So I started a new habit: Committing to work on it, every day, for just 15 minutes.
I use a pomodoro timer (Vitamin-R) and note-taking app (EverNote) to do my daily 15 minutes. Each time I start, I write down my goal for that session, and keep a running list of things I think of to do but don't get to in that particular session. Every day I successfully put in 15 minutes I mark off that day on a 365-day hanging wall calendar that is on the back of my apartment door.
Results:
* I have worked on the app for 90% of the days this year.
* I absolutely got it to a "working" state (I am now facing a diminishing returns problem where I'm putting in too much time fiddling with UX and UI polish, but that's a problem I'm happy to have).
* On over 50% of the days I end up working more than 15 minutes.
* On days when I feel like going longer, and have the time, I'll still occasionally hard-stop at 15 minutes. This gives me something I'm eager to come back to tomorrow, and also (I think) helps to engrain the habit. I want my subconscious to always think: yes, the cost of starting my session today really is only 15 minutes, I will do this even if I don't feel like I have a lot of willpower today.