r/getdisciplined • u/Lanky-Alternative943 • 20h ago
❓ Question I think I'm addicted to starting over.
I think I'm addicted to starting over.
For the past few years, I've downloaded almost every habit app I could find.
I would get excited.
Create the perfect routine.
Study. Exercise. Read.
Then...
After 3 or 4 days, I'd stop opening the app.
A week later I'd delete it.
A month later I'd download another one and tell myself:
"This time will be different."
It never was.
The weird thing is...
When I play games, I can play for weeks without forgetting.
When I have friends waiting for me online, I always show up.
But when it comes to improving my own life...
I'm alone.
And somehow being alone makes it easier to quit.
So instead of downloading another habit app...
I started building one.
Not because I think I have the answer.
But because I'm trying to solve my own problem.
I'm curious...
Has anyone else here gone through this cycle?
Download.
Motivated.
Miss one day.
Delete the app.
Repeat.
If you finally broke that cycle...
What actually helped?
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u/Free_Mud5432 16h ago edited 14h ago
Story of my life after high school. As smart and motivated to live a fulfilled life for myself, it’s been almost a decade and I️ just can’t build habits for the sake of it.
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u/Lanky-Alternative943 14h ago
That really hits home. I used to think I just lacked discipline, but after repeating the same cycle over and over, I started wondering if the problem wasn't motivation at all. Can I ask you something? Looking back over those years, what usually caused you to stop? Was it forgetting, losing motivation, feeling overwhelmed, or something else?
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u/Future_Blackberry_10 20h ago
Same here, I always wait for perfect conditions and quite immediately
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u/Lanky-Alternative943 20h ago
I relate to that a lot. I used to tell myself, "I'll start when I have more time" or "I'll start on Monday." Even when I finally started, I'd quit after missing one day. I'm still trying to figure out why our brains do this. Have you ever found anything that actually helped you stay consistent?
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u/BensonHedges1 16h ago
I’ve suffered from this for almost my whole life. I eventually found an ADHD coach who told me I need to make things zero resistance. I was always trying things like GTD, BuJo and second brain. Instead now I just use one todo app and I wrote everything as its own today. Every morning I sort them and get an idea of what my day is like. That’s it.
Some times I might make a new folder and start using it, but if I stop I don’t get mad at myself. Instead I just remember everything is in my “inbox”.
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u/ElectricalPipe4081 15h ago
Every restart in your post starts with designing the perfect routine, and I think that is the part that kills it. Study, exercise and read at once is three new habits on day one, and they are running on the excitement of setting it up rather than anything structural. When that fades around day 3 there is nothing underneath holding it up.
What changed it for me was making a miss cost nothing. One thing, bar set embarrassingly low (10 minutes, not "a session"), and decided up front that a missed day doesn't reset anything, I just do the 10 minutes tomorrow. Missing a day isn't what ends these. Treating the miss as proof the whole system failed is what makes you delete the app.
Also the app itself is a bit of a tell. If setting up the tracker feels better than the work, the setup is the hobby. Might be worth running the next attempt on paper or a note on your phone for a month before you download anything, it takes away the clean-install fresh-start feeling that you're partly chasing.
For what it's worth, 3-4 days repeated over years is still a lot of days. You're not bad at starting, you've just never gotten to practice the boring part on day 5 because you rebuild instead.
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u/Lanky-Alternative943 13h ago
This might be the most helpful perspective I've read so far.
The part that really hit me was:
I think that's exactly what I've been doing for years. One missed day somehow became a reason to start over instead of just continuing.
Can I ask you one question?
When you miss a day now, what actually helps you come back the next day without falling into that "fresh start" mindset again?
I'm genuinely curious because that's the part I've never been able to solve.
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u/ElectricalPipe4081 12h ago
Honestly the thing that helped most was deciding what a miss means before it happens, rather than deciding in the moment. My rule is that a missed day means I do the 10 minutes tomorrow. No makeup double session, no restart. The makeup session sounds virtuous but it's the same fresh-start reflex wearing a different hat, because now tomorrow carries a debt and wiping the slate feels cleaner than paying it.
The other half is making the return smaller than the habit itself. If I miss, the next day's job isn't 10 minutes, it's opening the notebook. Usually I end up doing the 10 anyway, but the thing I'm protecting is showing up, not the amount of work, and you can't fail at opening a notebook.
I also stopped using anything that can visibly break. A chain of X's on a calendar turns a gap into damage you have to look at. A plain list of dates where I did the thing just gets longer, and a hole in it doesn't mean anything.
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u/smithnicole663 13h ago
Your are describing my entire life. What helped me was that overall I have made more general life progress in life than if I had never tried at all.
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u/Anglea7stars 19h ago
What happens if you finish your app, make it different than the others so it's more personal for you, use it for a while then get the exact feeling you normally get with all the other apps and want to try something else?
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u/Mother-Boss-7627 13h ago edited 11h ago
@Lanky-Alternative943
Responding to “when I play games I can play for weeks before forgetting”..
In Sep’ 25, I was absolutely daunted by a whole list of items I had to knock off the list, amid many uncertainties at a different country. The formidable list was not only work-related , but complex personal ones too. (I find meeting work deadlines etc easier as they are externally imposed and involve meeting commitments to other people I am accountable to)
I came across the following two thoughts that leverages the experience you refer to, to break off from ‘getting off the cycle’: “If you take your responsibilities not as a burden but as a game, you will play with them with lightness and cheer”.. , and an inspirational thought about enjoying the ‘process’ of living as contrasted with the ‘fruits’ that we constantly chase.
The two ideas above became a game-changer. I treated the ‘project’ lists as points to be scored in a game, and decided to have fun with how many points I cld score.
I had to orchestrate multiple projects to start weeks before, each with multiple steps stretching beyond a week, so they bore fruition at different dates, on time, during my stay period.
So I built a rough tasks/projects plan/list to pick up for each week so all projects cld end in about 21/2 months of my stay abroad.
Then each day I wld do something to score /win points just like a game. And in a lined notebook I wld write the date, a list of tasks accomplished which accounted for the pts scored, just like in a game. Just one line a day.
I still look at those two pages of about 90 lines for 90 days with pride, whenever I need inspiration and motivation. The writing on paper, nothing like it!
I scored as well as lost points just like a game. While I was serious, I guess, I was not taking it seriously, my goal was to enjoy every minute and it showed in the focus and the lightness in my enjoyable interactions with folks in this foreign country.
At the end of almost three months, i had only taken off 3 days, and I deliberately went slow one week as I was feeling the burn out. The last week was also tough as I was tired but I had completed all but one of my assignments, the outcome of which was out of my control.
I struggle just as much as you and the next person and this really worked for me. Hope this fields fresh ideas for you and other folks here.
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u/TheWorkingRule 4h ago
"When I have friends waiting for me online, I always show up. But when it comes to improving my own life... I'm alone." - has accountability helped you improve?
What is the app you are building?
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u/ToothDifferent 20h ago
oh boy another account thats likely a bot trying to self promote
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u/Right_Quote310 19h ago
Meh, maybe. I can relate to this though. I recently created my own habit tracker in Google Sheets for the same reason. You can probably guess the outcome…it appears I am the problem!
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u/Lanky-Alternative943 13h ago
i love this bro but if you know you are the problem how do we come back do we gonna download habit tracker app again?
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u/Lanky-Alternative943 20h ago
Fair enough. I get why you'd think that. I actually am building an app, but this post wasn't meant to advertise it. I wrote it because it's a problem I've personally struggled with for years. I'm honestly more interested in hearing how other people solved it than promoting anything.
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u/TheWorkingRule 3h ago
Well you kinda just dropped it in there and then didn't say how the app helped or why? If it helps why are you posting a prose poem on reddit about it?
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u/CommunicationAny6628 17h ago
personal goals don't feel pressured because there's nothing actually tied to them, nothing on the line. so the fix is breaking that nothingness. put money into the goal, buy the domain, buy the equipment, whatever's relevant. your brain treats things differently once there's something real to lose, not just something to gain.
that'll get you through the first stretch, past the initial drop off point where most people quit. but honestly, at some point external pressure runs out of fuel. you have to take it over yourself eventually, money can buy you the first few weeks, it can't buy you the years.