Habits 2 Goals: The Habit Factor® Podcast with Martin Grunburg How to Track Negative Habits
"A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit." ~Desiderius Erasmus
The first answer is provided by Desiderius' insightful comment above, rather than tracking a negative habit one should focus on building a new, positive habit in its place.
For instance, if you wanted to stop and/or reduce your beer consumption, you should focus on tracking your water or other beverage consumption. Or, you might even substitute a non-alcoholic beer and track that.
The problem is when you focus your attention on a negative habit by tracking it, you tend to reinforce the thoughts and emotions related to the negative habit. For instance, if you are told not to think about a pink elephant, the very first thing you will do is think of a pink elephant. Your mind and subconscious tends to ignore the concept of negatives.
By focusing on a new, positive habit your attention and energy are set upon building a new positive habit which will replace the negative habit.
The other effective way is to weaken a negative habit's habitstrength. By following PARR Plan, Act, Record & Reassess and instead of using the "minimum success criteria" use a "maximum success criteria".
When trying to lower habitstrength the core idea is to establish a maximum or threshold not to exceed for your target day. Over time, by lowering the "maximum success criteria" the habitstrength weakens. For instance, the first two or four week tracking period you might allow yourself up to 7 cigarettes per target day and the second tracking period you might then lower the threshold to 5 cigarettes per target day.
For each subsequent tracking period the maximum success criteria is lowered for each target day and over time the habitstrength decreases.
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