# enacc: a silly system for motivating physical exercise
i'm quite the sucker for temptations and vices. i've managed to avoid the worst ones and fortunately no vice takes up too much time from me on average. but sometimes i have a flareup and then i tend to go overboard with things. i decide to check out a manga, an anime or a game, and then i'm spending 10 hours per day consuming it up to several weeks. i guess i have issues with moderation. during those flareups this can really affect my general productivity. in the past i had all sorts of addictions but i managed to cure myself out of them. i do that by avoiding the triggers and resisting the temptations. but sometimes it takes quite a long time for me to enact countermeasures. here's a random sampling of addictions i have or had in the past:
in moderation they are fine, but when i go overboard, i often regret all the wasted time and energy. i regret not spending the time on stuff i know i wouldn't regret. here's a sampling of stuff after which i feel somewhat good:
if i have a flareup of one of the former activities, these preferred activities get much less attention, which means i don't feel very good about myself. all of these good things require a lot of energy to start them, and if the activation energy is too high, i'm more tempted to procrastinate with the former activities.
i was thinking what options i have to help myself. one common tip against bad habits is to replace them with different habits. that sort of works but it's quite hard. and it doesn't really help with the flareups, where you spend a lot of time in a short burst on an activity. i want something that would force me to moderate myself and works regardless of activity.
my sudden idea is to assign an "energy cost" for those regretful activities. i then have a limited supply of energy and i have to budget it thoughtfully. if i have a lot of energy saved, i can let myself have some fun. if i'm low on energy, i can only allow the simplest things like checking email. this still allows me to do things in bursts (that's my preference), but thanks to the tracking i can now rely on the system that it will prevent me from going overboard.
what should be the source of this energy? well, these days i spend all my days indoors thanks to the covid19 lockdowns. i just sit all day long. i don't get any exercise at all. therefore i decided to gain energy from doing some simple exercises. the goal isn't to get buffed from these exercises, but to have less zero days. zero day means a day where you didn't do anything useful. the goal is to avoid them. so i guess this little gamification could help me avoid them.
i started this system when i was writing this post, and i felt that it already helped me to curb my email checking addiction. i don't want to waste my hard earned energy points on this silly habit. there's no need to check it more than a few times a day. this allows me to focus better and makes it actually possible to write this post. one could say that i'm actually quantifying my opportunity cost and i'm using my loss aversion tendency to battle the bad habits.
to make things harder, i track energy in multiple dimensions. each exercise type i track gets its own dimension. for example i can start with three dimensions:
in this example different exercises convert to different amount of energy. pullups are hard for me, so i'd get more energy from a single pushup. squats are relatively easy, so i'd need to do more from it for a single point.
to use up some energy, i subtract that energy from all dimensions! for example if i have pushup:7 pullup:6 squat:3 energy levels, and checking on email costs 2 energy points, then after that i'd have pushup:5 pullup:4 squat:1 energy remaining. i'd need to do 2 squats again before i could check on my email again. i subtract from all dimensions to ensure my exercises are somewhat balanced. the goal of the system is to stay in the positive range and rack up enough buffer so that i can enjoy some of the bad activities when i feel down.
it's super easy to add and remove exercise dimensions as i see fit. maybe i get some dumbbells and then i can add a dumbbell curls. maybe some day i want to focus on being more outside. then i can add an outside dimension which will result in 2 energy points for every minute spent outside. or if pushups become to easy, i can just change my accounting so that i need 2 pushups for each energy point. or maybe i break a leg bone, then i can remove tracking squat for a while.
the nice thing about using exercises is that after an exercise i feel more motivated to do sensible stuff. exercise somehow wakes up my spirit. so this system not only limits my bad habits, but it also motivates me to spend time on my preferred activities. and getting some exercise out of it is not a bad deal either. i tried going to gym a while ago. i've lasted a couple months but i found it incredibly boring. i felt that there was just no point to it. but this system gives me some goal for the exercises. i understand that these little exercises don't substitute real exercise. however i'm more likely to do it several times per day which is good from a "take a break from the computer" perspective at least. by the way, this style of training is called "grease the groove", although i'm not taking this experiment seriously enough to call it a training.
i also have a lot of flexibility over costs too. for example i can start with this:
the costs are arbitrary and subject to constant tweaking based on how i feel about my habits. in order for me to binge watch a long anime, i have to buffer up a lot of energy. which is good, because at least my body got something out of it. and since i couldn't watch said anime until i buffered up enough energy, i probably spent a lot of time on doing nice stuff in the meantime.
i don't plan to use this as an excuse to restart my old bad habits. i'd still heavily avoid hackernews for example. one visit to that site and my day is ruined. it's more for protection against accidental visits or accidental new habits. if i notice i started doing something that i regret afterwards, i can quickly assign some cost to it and thus limit myself.
i also put an upper limit of 1000 points on the values in the dimensions. for example that's about 16.5 hours of anime watching. this way i can be certain that i won't burn more than 2 days in a row just on a single anime. the other function of the upper limit, is to signal that an exercise is maybe too easy. if i can easily reach 1000 in a dimension, maybe i should make it harder. e.g. if i could easily make 1000 pushups in a few days (i wish), i could change the accounting to have 2 pushups only mean 1 point. or maybe i could pushups with a weighted vest.
although the system allows the energy levels to go below 0, but i wouldn't allow that to happen (hopefully).
it's relatively easy to track this on pen and paper. all you need is a table. each row should have a timestamp (mmdd hhmm format to save space), and the latest energy levels for each dimension. suppose it's july 17 and you start with 10 energy points in each dimension, check on the email, then do another 2 pushups, then watch a cat video next day. your table would look like this:
timestamp | pushup | pullup | squat | comment
----------+--------+--------+-------+--------
0717 0800 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
0817 | 8 | 8 | 8 | email
0820 | 10 | | |
0718 0703 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4min cat video
the comment column is optional, i think i would leave it empty most of the time. and if the level is the same as in the previous row, i can leave that empty too. timestamp is also optional to track. if you do it, you can then graph your energy levels over time. even if you do that, tracking hour and minute might be overkill, maybe just note the day and track only that.
in my case i spend almost all my time in front of the computer, so obviously i made a script for myself to do this tracking. i made a little "enacc" tool and it logs all my changes into the ~/.enacc file. enacc stands for energy accounting tool. i can write "enacc 2" and it subtracts 2 from all dimensions. then it prints the current stats. i can write "enacc pushup 10" and it logs that i gained 10 pushup points. i can just write "enacc" and it displays usage and the comments from ~/.enacc. i keep my current dimensions and costs in the comments in that file, so this way i can easily remind myself of my commitments. here's an example run:
$ enacc enacc - energy accounter. usage 1: enacc [dim val]... usage 2: enacc [val] dim is either 'sub' or one of the energy dimensions. dim 'sub' subtracts val from each energy dimension. otherwise val is added to the specific dimension. val on its own is the same as 'sub val'. ~/.enacc file comments and energy levels: # dimensions: # - push: 1 ordinary pushup. # - pull: 1 inverted row with the help of a desk. # - jump: 2 jumping jumps for each energy point. # costs: # - checking email or running the todo script: 2 # - for each minute of video entertainment: 1 # - for each minute of gaming: 1 # - checking on memes or aggregators: 10 # - eating junk food: 10 # - fapping: 20 push:24 pull:14 jump:14
that output was generated from this file:
$ cat ~/.enacc # dimensions: # - push: 1 ordinary pushup. # - pull: 1 inverted pushup with the help of a desk. # - jump: 2 jumping jumps for each energy point. # costs: # - checking email or running the todo script: 2 # - for each minute of video entertainment: 1 # - for each minute of gaming: 1 # - checking on memes or aggregators: 10 # - eating junk food: 10 # - fapping: 20 2020-07-17 17:00 limit 1000 2020-07-17 17:00 push 0 2020-07-17 17:00 pull 0 2020-07-17 17:00 jump 0 2020-07-17 17:00 push 25 2020-07-17 17:00 pull 25 2020-07-17 17:00 jump 25 2020-07-17 18:12 sub 2 2020-07-17 20:53 push 15 2020-07-17 20:56 jump 10 2020-07-17 22:03 pull 10 2020-07-18 09:21 push 12 2020-07-18 09:21 jump 7 2020-07-18 09:21 pull 7 2020-07-18 09:31 sub 24 2020-07-18 10:06 sub 2
i track a full timestamp here because for computers that's not a problem. i keep this script in my utilities repo here: https://github.com/ypsu/cfg/blob/ca855598/utils/enacc.c
it's a linux commandline utility though. there are probably gazillion more mature apps doing the same. maybe they can make the tracking even simpler. i don't know, i haven't researched this area online, i might have missed some nice improvements. i came up with this on my own after being frustrated with watching too much anime recently. maybe try the paper tracking first before investing too much time in a complicated tool though.
i also don't track on what i wasted my energy points on. it would just add more toil tracking this and i'd be more likely to give up. i want the process to be as easy as possible, so i only care about the numbers. to be fair, i wouldn't even care about using a log format in my tool, and just have like 3 numbers in a text file representing the actual levels. the only reason i use the log format because then i can easily append to it. i don't like rewriting files because it's brittle from coding perspective. but appending to files is usually a very safe and easy operation to implement. just think about tracking this on paper: appending is the only sensible way to do it.
i don't actually know if i'll be able to commit myself to this system long term. but uncertainty should stop me from trying random stuff. it's definitely worth a try and see how it goes.
# update from 2023:
i didn't do this for long. but since then i learned there are more serious attempts at gamifying tasks and life in general such as habitica, taskhero, magictask, habit hunter, etc. if i ever dabble with this again, maybe i'd try one of them. but nah, all this is just a hassle for me. the method in @/habits works well enough for me. most of these also have multiplayer which could be worth trying with others, hmm.
published on 2020-07-18, last modified on 2023-10-22
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