Why do my plans die in week two?

On the tenth of June 2019 I sat down and wrote out a plan. Ninety days. I would celebrate my twenty-sixth birthday with it.

Two weeks had already passed. On some evenings I closed my eyes and stood still between one room and the next, waiting for the blood to reach my head. I wrote that my longest streak had been twenty-five days. I wrote that I knew the trick: catch yourself going round, and stop the wheel.

Then I wrote down what I would not do. Then I wrote that I had written this sentence many times.

On the first of August I began again. I called the page Another New Start.

I read the June page now and I see what it lacked. It was a list of refusals. Nothing in it said when, or after what. A refusal has nothing to hold on to, so it waits for the evening that is harder than the others.

The question I asked in those years was how to get more willpower. I asked it in different clothes: which app, which routine, which book, which teacher. Every answer lasted about nine days.

Each failed attempt taught me something false. It taught me that I was a man who doesn't follow through. After enough rounds I stopped making plans at all, because a plan felt like volunteering for the next disappointment.

The plan had a goal and no cue.

Patanjali says practice becomes firmly grounded when it is attended to for a long time, without break, and with earnestness (Yoga Sutra 1.14: dirgha-kala, nairantarya, satkara). Those are three conditions: length, continuity and care. Look at which one most plans skip. We plan the length ("30 days") and we bring the care, and then we miss Tuesday, and the ground goes soft.

The middle condition is the one we skip.

Studies show the gap between deciding and doing is a measured thing. Plans written as "when X happens, I will do Y" had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals across 94 studies (d = 0.65) [1]. The plan that dies in week two is almost always a plan with a goal and no cue.

I finished forty-one days with holes in it.

In 2024 I did the last three days of Inner Engineering online, from my sister's flat in Mumbai. Six or seven hours a day. On the last day came the initiation into Shambhavi Mahamudra: a few postures, rapid breathing, then meditation. I already did all that. I felt let down and amazed at once.

What I had paid for was the commitment. Forty-one days, twice a day, no gaps.

I missed sessions. Some mornings, some evenings. The rule was no gaps and there were gaps. I noticed what I did next. I did not hold a trial. I sat down at the next one. On the forty-first day I had finished something I had never finished before, with holes in it.

The best streak I ever kept ran twenty-five days. When it broke, it took almost a year to settle. A streak ends the day it breaks. A practice that goes on after the gap is another thing.

That is the whole lesson of this week, and I'll take it apart day by day. Tomorrow: what the Gita says about the self that keeps letting you down.

The version I run now begins with one line on a page: which part of my day have I left unsupervised? When I have an honest answer to that, I write a cue next to it. That is the only planning I do on a Sunday night.

If you'd like to write yours down, here is the one-page sheet from Sunday's post, Where am I starting from? Fill in the three lines tonight.

Your plans don't die because you are weak. They die because nothing in the day reminds you of them.

Sources

1. Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006), meta-analysis of 94 studies, d = 0.65; summary at goalsandprogress.com/implementation-intentions-research/

Back: Sunday, Why can’t I count on myself? Tomorrow, Day 19, Is my self my friend or my enemy?

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