Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
You can't trust your memory to measure change. I add and remove habits regularly. Three weeks later I can't remember how I felt before the change. The water temperature adjusted and I adjusted with it. My solution: forced review checkpoints.
Show Notes
You can't trust your memory to measure change. I add and remove habits regularly. Three weeks later I can't remember how I felt before the change. The water temperature adjusted and I adjusted with it. My solution: forced review checkpoints.
Brought to you by:
Trends.vc: Discover new markets and opportunities.
HeadsUp: Know when your competitors move. Before your customers do.
Multi: Turn any content into a YouTube video.
Where to find Dru:
I write an essay daily. Get them free
Follow me on X
Watch my video essays on YouTube
Follow Dru's Notes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Subscribe to Dru's Notes for a new episode every day.
Creators and Guests
What is Dru's Notes?
One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.
You can't trust your memory to measure change.
I add and remove habits regularly. I run small tests across my life and business. Each one shifts something. The problem is that three weeks later I can't remember how I felt before the change. The water temperature adjusted and I adjusted with it.
This is the boiling frog problem applied to self-improvement. A 1% gain here, a 2% gain there, a 3% improvement somewhere else. Each one compounds. Together they're significant. Individually, they're invisible. And because I only notice extreme differences, I miss the compounding.
The flip side is worse. A habit that's quietly draining me by 1% a week looks fine in the moment. Without a reference point, I can't tell if I'm trending up or down.
My solution is forced review checkpoints. When I start or stop a habit, I set three calendar dates: one week, one month and one quarter out. Each checkpoint, I run the same check. Average tempo since the change versus the average before.
Tempo is the signal I use. I rate my day from -4 to 4, every day. It's subjective, but the trend line tells truth. Because tempo is already in my daily log, the checkpoint costs nothing extra. I just pull the averages. If tempo averaged 3.2 before the change and 3.8 after, that's signal. If it dropped to 2.9, that's signal too.
When I start or stop something, I add a short note in that day's entry.
Tempo is 4. Adding a 10-minute walk after lunch.
That's the baseline. A month later, I have something concrete to compare against instead of a vague memory.
Most people add habits and move on. The habit survives by default. Forced review checkpoints make survival earn its place.
How do you know your current routine is working?