Dear Stoics,
Starting is the easy part: you download a new app and arrange the home screen, or buy an aesthetically pleasing notebook and collect a whole new kit of pens, stickers, and such. For a week or two, you write every night and don’t miss a single detail of your life. But then, one day, you notice that the notebook has become a coaster for your coffee, or that the last time you opened the app was by mistake, a week ago. If all of this sounds familiar, welcome to the club. The honeymoon phase ends for every new habit, the way it does for every marriage. It’s also why, by March, nobody can remember their New Year’s resolutions.
You may have heard that a habit takes 21 days to form. The number comes from a 1960s plastic surgeon, Dr Maxwell Maltz, who observed that his patients took about three weeks to get used to their new faces after surgery. It has nothing to do with habits at all. The first serious research came much later, in 2009, from University College London, where psychologist Phillippa Lally tracked people adopting one small daily behaviour. The average time for it to become automatic was 66 days (the range ran from 18 days to 254). Simple actions stuck faster, while anything more elaborate took months. So if journaling doesn’t feel natural after three weeks, nothing is wrong with you — statistically, you are right in the middle.
There are two more findings from that study that we found worth mentioning. First, consistency of context beat everything else: the habit formed fastest when it was tied to the same activity each day; for example, after breakfast or after the evening dog walk. Second, and the best of all: missing a day made no measurable difference to how the habit formed. Turns out the streak-based guilt that makes so many people quit stuff is completely unsupported by the evidence.
So, the main question now is how to make returning to the habit a bit easier. We have a few ideas, tested on our eager team:
Lower the bar to the floor. Make one sentence the minimum entry. Leave ambition for the days you have it.
Anchor your habit. Attach journaling to something you already do every day: evening routine, commuting to work, etc.
Never miss twice. One or two missed days are nothing, but more start something new. Make the day after a lapse the easiest and shortest entry of your week.
Change the question. Boredom ends most practices. That’s what our weekly themes are for: to keep the ideas coming.
Reread on empty days. Can’t be bothered to write anything? Read last week’s entries instead. It keeps the habit alive and reminds you why you started.
Count your returns. Losing a streak can be frustrating. So instead, notice the times you came back. That number only goes up. And remember: in Stoic, you can always restore your streak after some days away. Our app is designed to relieve stress, not to add to it.
One last thought: a practice that depends solely on motivation will end when the motivation goes away. Build the habit for the ordinary, everyday version of you, and it will be there whenever you need it.
Yours truly,
The Stoic App Team
P.S. The week ahead in Stoic is about exactly this kind of leaving and returning. Check out our new theme for reflection in the app and in this letter, right below the quote.
Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.
Ovid
We’re often taught that a good life moves steadily onward, but we all know reality rarely looks like that. This week’s theme, On Back and Forth, is a kind look at all the ways we move backwards and forwards. We’ll remember the things we quit and then returned to, the decisions we changed our minds about, and the places and people we keep circling home to.
Each day, we’ll open a new loop. Where in your life are you currently going back and forth? What was different the second time you came back to something? What are your returns trying to tell you? Open your journal and start with the thing you’ve returned to most often.
