I decided to address a habit that isn’t very flashy, but definitely impacts how I feel about my discipline and health significantly: skipping the 8:00am lift sessions with the club frisbee team.
For this observational study, I defined “skipping morning lift” as any Monday or Thursday when I intended, at least the night before, to attend the team lift session at 8:00am the next morning but ended up not going due to a mix of avoidance, tiredness, or low motivation, rather than a concrete external barrier such as being sick, having a conflict, or injury hindrance. In other words, the skip counts when it’s mostly an internal decision.
This habit feels very natural and reflexive in the morning. I never wake up each Monday or Thursday and weigh the pros and cons of going. It’s more like I wake up half-asleep and barely functioning, feel the warmth of my bed, think about the outside cold or the little amount of sleep I got, and then the “just one time” rationale clouds my thinking. It’s especially difficult because skipping offers immediate comfort, while the cost (guilt, missed progress, and the feeling that I let my team down) doesn’t hit until much later.
For the record, I really enjoy lifting when I’m there and fully away. The hardest portion of this habit is the transition phase from bed to outside biking to the gym, especially so early in the morning. This makes it the perfect hard to break habit where the barrier isn’t the activity itself, rather the activation energy to get to the activity.
I observed myself across two lift days (Monday and Thursday). I kept a brief log on my phone notes app: what time I went to bed, what time I woke up, and what I felt physically in the morning. I also jotted down how cold the room was and what I told myself in the moment. I tried to write things down immediately after I made the decision, because the “story” I tell myself later in the day is usually cleaner and more revised than what actually happens at 7:45am in the morning.
1/8 (Thursday)
11:58 PM: Stopped the PSet, and told myself sleep would make tomorrow easier
12:36 AM: Still awake but drifting asleep
7:10 AM: Alarm went off, went back to bed
7:40 AM: Stood up, put on sweats because it was cold
7:54 AM: Left room; outside felt freezing but decision momentum helped
8:02 AM: Arrived basically on time. Felt proud
1/12 (Monday)
12:48 AM: Still awake; kept scrolling on Phone
1:32 AM: Finally in bed; set alarm for 7:10, 7:20, 7:30
7:10 AM: Alarm; immediate thought: I’m exhausted, did not get enough sleep. Went back to Bed
7:20 AM: Woke again. Room too cold, went back to bed
7:30 AM: Decided to sleep just 5 more minutes
7:56 AM: Skipping felt locked in and decision felt made
9:18 AM: Fully awake. Rationalizing about going next time
It was hard to be objective while logging this because paying attention to the decision-making process changes it. Writing down that I was skipping made the choice feel more conscious. My main learning from observing the behavior itself is that skipping is most likely because of low sleep where waking up feels physically painful, and the cost of effort feels inflated.
Feedback loop
Trigger: late night, fatigue, cold morning, early start time
Behavior: snooze, go back to sleep, think its too late to go
Short-term reward: immediate comfort, warmth, more sleep, relief from pressure
Long-term result: guilt and feeling physically behind my peers
Next time, I would design the morning so that the decision happens the night before, not in the half-awake state where I’m guaranteed to choose comfort. Concretely, I’d set out my full lift clothes and shoes and pre-pack my bag. This would make the pain of getting ready a lot less relative to staying in bed. I’d also set a hard bedtime boundary on Sunday/Wednesday nights, because sleep debt showed up as the most consistent upstream trigger. Reducing it would make the morning feel less like a physical battle.
