I think a lot about frequency. I think about the frequency I clean my house, or the frequency I maintain my yard. There were a lot of jokey TikToks about how frequently men change their bed sheets or how frequently they wash their bathroom towels.
Habit seems to be a quick way to say "an activity repeated with some frequency over a long period of time". I think about learning an instrument and how playing X minutes a day is often a recommendation. I think about American Thanksgiving and how it gives a yearly frequency for large family gatherings.
It is interesting for me to consider the activities that I do on different frequencies: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. One major change I have considered is to reframe importance away from "how much time do I spend on this" into "how frequently do I do this".
Articles about "goal setting" like this one often seem to fall flat for me. I've set all the goals, many times. What I've found many times over is that once I establish the rhythm of life around the activities, I realize that my lived experience doesn't match my expectations.
I guess what I'm saying is, goals aren't enough. You have to understand the frequency of activity you are signing up for when you take on the goal. And if you cannot stomach the frequency of the activities that are required to achieve your goals then no amount of planning will help you. Striking that balance, between goals and the frequency of effort towards them, is the real difficult task.
I believe that is partly responsible for some spiritual ideas around freeing oneself from desire for particular outcomes. There is some value in focusing solely on the activities you engage in frequently without focusing on your attachment to the outcomes.
This connects with the fact that we don't have infinite time in a day, month, year to do things. We must sacrifice 99% of all possible activities all the time.
Most of our daily activities are also non-unique and don't feel grand. Eating, sleeping, relaxing, cleaning, meeting with friends. These are all things we all need to do and are less of the goal and more of a basis for a solid foundation to achieve other goals.
I often wonder how successful people manage their foundational activities. And by successful, I don't mean popularly successful. But people really content with their lives and happy.
I'll use your comment, which I agree with, to spring board into deeper thoughts I have about frequency since I love to think about this kind of stuff.
There are frequencies within frequencies. For example, yes you eat every day, but how often do you eat healthy? How frequently are your meals junk? How frequently do you eat fish or red meat? How frequently do you eat foods high in fiber? How frequently do you eat sugar? I think it is useful to consider the fractal nature of frequency in this way. Repeated activities "break down" into smaller frequencies and "add up" into larger frequencies. (Consider how this relates to cheat days in diet plans).
There are also coincidences, and I mean that in the sense that some frequencies overlap. Consider eating, you can combine that with meeting friends. It's like a two-for-one activity - you satisfy both habits simultaneously. How often do you eat, how often do you meet friends, how often do you eat with friends?
The above ideas mean that even simple foundational activities are rich with possibility.
In behavioral psych terms what you've identified would technically be referred to as "rate of responding." Its identification as the primary focus of observation in the clinical setting (
and in fact a variable even worth examining!) might be Skinner's greatest contribution to the field.
Habit seems to be a quick way to say "an activity repeated with some frequency over a long period of time". I think about learning an instrument and how playing X minutes a day is often a recommendation. I think about American Thanksgiving and how it gives a yearly frequency for large family gatherings.
It is interesting for me to consider the activities that I do on different frequencies: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. One major change I have considered is to reframe importance away from "how much time do I spend on this" into "how frequently do I do this".
Articles about "goal setting" like this one often seem to fall flat for me. I've set all the goals, many times. What I've found many times over is that once I establish the rhythm of life around the activities, I realize that my lived experience doesn't match my expectations.
I guess what I'm saying is, goals aren't enough. You have to understand the frequency of activity you are signing up for when you take on the goal. And if you cannot stomach the frequency of the activities that are required to achieve your goals then no amount of planning will help you. Striking that balance, between goals and the frequency of effort towards them, is the real difficult task.
I believe that is partly responsible for some spiritual ideas around freeing oneself from desire for particular outcomes. There is some value in focusing solely on the activities you engage in frequently without focusing on your attachment to the outcomes.