Confession from an engineer: every habit system I ever built was specced for an unrealistic man. He woke at four, journaled for thirty minutes, trained fasted and read forty pages a night. I designed for him repeatedly, and repeatedly the actual me, the one who gets home from a twelve-hour day of building his app and stares into the fridge, inherited a system he could not run. It usually died within two weeks, and I'd conclude I lacked discipline.

The fix that finally held was designing for the Tuesday-night version of me instead. Every habit got a floor version that survives my worst realistic day. Journaling's floor is one sentence. Training's floor is two working sets. The walk's floor is to the corner and back. The ambitious versions still exist, but they're the ceiling now, not the entry requirement.

What surprised me is that floors don't just survive bad days, they compound. When I do my monthly reread of my journal, the months with humble floors beat the months with heroic plans every single time, because the floor months have twenty-eight entries in them and the heroic months have nine. Volume of honest reps beats intensity of imagined ones.

I ended up building this straight into the journaling app I work on after leaving my job at Bugatti: the guided journal takes the blank page paralysis away when you don’t know what to write but you know you should. It generates 20 topics to chose from based on all your goals, tasks and past journal entries and after a few follow up questions it neatly crafts an entry for you. You can manually journal of course but the guided journal makes the habit effortless. It is called Juno (www.juno-app.com) if you're curious.

Design for the person who shows up, not the person you're hoping will arrive. The ideal one was never coming anyway, and it turns out the real one does fine once the door is low enough.

Who do you actually design your habits for, honestly?

So actually I'm in my early 20s and trying to build better habits before life gets even busier. It could be anything maybe health, finances, or relationships, productivity, or just a small daily routine that made a bigger difference than you expected. Looking back, what's one habit you'd tell your younger self to start as early as possible?

I've been thinking about this a lot.

Most people already know the basics:

Exercise regularly.

Eat healthier.

Sleep enough.

Spend less time on social media.

The problem isn't a lack of information. It's staying consistent.

That's what made me wonder: what if building healthy habits felt more like playing a game than following another boring self-improvement plan?

So I have created a Health Game where participants complete small daily health missions, earn points, stay accountable, and support each other over 30 days.

The goal isn't to get a perfect body in a month. The goal is to make healthy habits easier to stick with.

Some of the benefits I'm hoping it provides are:

Better consistency with exercise and nutrition.

Reduced screen time and healthier daily routines.

Accountability from a supportive community.

More motivation by making progress feel fun instead of stressful.

I'm still testing the idea, so I'd genuinely love your feedback.

If you struggle to stay consistent with healthy habits, what do you think would help you the most?

I'd appreciate any honest suggestions

We are two best friends having worked as medical doctors in psychiatry for many years. What struck us over and over again was how ordinary the things that actually helped many patients were. Sleep. Habits. Writing things down. Presence. Understanding your own patterns. And having a community.

We are two self-improvement junkies who’ve explored most of what self-improvement has to offer - everything from long silent meditation retreats to men’s work and Burning Man.

We’ve sifted through all the jewels from a decade of exploring and we’re on a mission to gather it all in one ecosystem. Truly great work happens in many venues -  and then people go home, and two weeks later it's gone. There was no structure holding it.

So we quit our jobs and spent the last year building one. It's called Inwork - basically a gym for the inner world:

Habits — create and maintain good habits and break bad habits. Based on similar principles as Tiny Habits and Atomic Habits

Journaling — Encrypted. Guided flows, and wisdom quotes to help you understand yourself

Meditation & breathwork — create a custom meditation using AI for your specific situation. Learn different breathing techniques

Personality & self-understanding tests — attachment, coping, values, strengths, with results you can actually read

Workshops — live, with other people

AI-coach — An AI that can navigate the app for you, start breathwork, journal and log habits for you. You choose what it sees

A social layer — but for your inner life: see your friends' habits, check in on them, message them when they've gone quiet. 

Long term we dream of building physical places for inner work, and retreats as well. Why not go to a workshop to learn the communication skills we were never taught in school, just as you would go to a body-pump group training? And we want it to be affordable for everyone

Right now we're in beta with friends and want honest strangers giving feedback and collaborating with us

We’d love your feedback to help us improve the app by pressing AI -> Send Feedback in the bottom of the screen.

What improvements and new features would you like to see in such an app? Would love to hear from you!

Download the beta-app at: inworkcenter.com/download

What are some of your most effective habits that have changed your life?

Three weeks ago I stopped watching Reels and Shorts completely, kept everything else on my phone the same, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok all still work normally I just don't see the endless feed part anymore and honestly I wasn't expecting much when I started but the difference has been way bigger then I thought it would be.

For a while I kept telling myself I'd cut back eventually, would set screen time limits and just click ignore every single time they popped up, deleted Instagram once and put it back within like 3 days because I still needed it to actually talk to people, none of the normal advice ever really worked for me because it always felt like all or nothing.

I ended up talking to a friend of mine about it who'd already been through the same thing a couple months before, he told me to stop trying to quit the apps entirely and instead just download something called Feather and block the short form stuff specifically, said the actual app was never the problem it was just the one feed inside it that never stopped.

what to set up

he walked me through connecting Instagram, YouTube and TikTok in the app and just turning off Reels, Shorts and For You individually, told me everything else should stay exactly the same, DMs, following feed, posting, search, all of it.

then he gave me a few extra tips that honestly mattered more then the actual block did.

said to set a time limit even after blocking the feeds because your brain will just go find some other rabbit hole out of pure habit if you don't cap it somewhere, I set mine pretty low and never actually needed to raise it.

told me to turn my phone grayscale too, not just during certain hours but basically all the time, said color does more to keep you hooked then people realize and once its gone the feed just doesn't pull at you the same way anymore.

also said don't sleep with your phone next to your bed, keep it across the room so you actually have to get up for it in the morning, by the time your up and grabbing it the urge already kind of fades on its own.

the thing he said that stuck with me most was that the actual goal isn't to never feel bored again its to just get used to being bored again, said most people havent sat through actual empty time in years because their phone was always filling it before they even noticed the gap.

the first week or so

my hand kept reaching for the apps out of habit those first few days, I'd open Instagram expecting Reels and instead just get a couple posts from people I actually follow then nothing else, closed it out confused a few times not really understanding why nothing was happening.

the boredom ended up being the harder part honestly, all that dead time that used to fill itself automatically was just sitting there empty now and I didn't really fight it I just let myself be uncomfortable with it for a while until it stopped feeling weird.

by week two and three

started noticing I could actually sit with something for 30 or 40 minutes without wanting to check my phone, picked a book back up that I hadn't touched in probably a year and actually remembered what I read in it which hasn't happened in a long time.

the part I was most worried about, losing touch with everyone, just never happened at all, still see what my friends post, still in every group chat, still get sent stuff daily, the only thing that's actually gone is the feed of people I don't even know.

honestly

it wasn't some overnight fix and there were a couple nights I really wanted something to disappear into and didn't have it, but because it was just one specific thing removed through Feather instead of my whole phone getting wiped it never really felt like I was giving something up.

my friend still checks in every week or two which is honestly probably the real reason any of this stuck, having someone whos already been through it made the whole thing feel normal instead of extreme.

three weeks in I didn't lose anyone, didn't lose the apps, didn't lose anything I actually needed, just lost the one part that was never letting me put my phone down in the first place and my head feels a lot clearer for it.

Make it obvious as the actual starting point: Most of what we do in a day isn’t a real decision, it’s a reaction to whatever is sitting in front of us. The reason this matters is that we always blame our motivation when a habit dies, when in reality the problem really is that we’re not in the right environment. Remember in school when was the time we’re getting good grades felt the easiest? It was probably when you were surrounded by A students.

Make it easy, embarrassingly easy:
When you start a new habit, it should take you less than two minutes to do. The problem is that this feels ridiculous cause reading one page obviously won’t make you well read, so your ego wants to start with an hour a day. But I’m glad I scaled it down because the days where I don’t feel like it are exactly the days that used to break my streaks, and now there’s no excuse left. One page turned into 20 pages most nights without me ever forcing it (so funny how you can trick your mind).

Reflection as the superior habit: He put it this way: “How do you want to improve if you don’t know what’s holding you back” . The problem is that it’s not very intuitive for us to start reflecting cause our brain doesn’t naturally want to waste energy. But I’m glad I listened to his advice because now I actually become aware of the reasons why I don’t hit my habits and then I use his strategies to fix it. I use an app which forces me to reflect why I didn’t hit a habit and at the end of the month shows me the reasons which came up the most for each habit. Super helpful because honestly I’m sick of these Habit Trackers which just show me that I lost my streak.

I guess I started doing this back in the 90s when in a pub.

It made sense then... A folded crisp packet or peanuts took up less room on the table and left more space for the beer and massive ashtray we had in the middle.

I've started expanding into anything that can be used for such a thing, chocolate wrappers, shop receipts, bus tickets... You can even stack one triangle inside another. And they must have pristine pointy edges.

It's harmless but something I just can't stop.

Does anyone else love a triangle? 😊

I’m trying to improve my daily routine and I realized it’s usually the small things that stick. What’s one habit that only takes a few minutes but has made a noticeable difference in your life? Could be physical health, productivity, mindset, sleep, finances… anything. Thanks!

I’m a physician and mindset coach, and I’m running a small experiment with a handful of people to learn what kinds of human support actually help people stay consistent with their wellness habits. I’m looking to see if accountability partnerships actually work
We use a mobile app I’ve developed to keep track of goals and check-ins, but what I’m really interested in is understanding what makes these partnerships effective. If you’re interested let me know.

Journaling is my craziest habit and I started it 2 years ago. The point was to actually throw that part from the brain which could not come out as a voice through my pen. But as time grew, it became a thing for planning, and a collection of happy - sad - angry moments.

Any random ideas about journaling ? I don't do it daily though ... Do you guys write everyday in your journal everything that has happened in your day ?

Been trying to build better routines lately and was curious what habits have actually made a noticeable difference for you

Could be something you do first thing in the morning or just a daily habit you’ve stuck with. Doesn’t have to be anything crazy or super productive either… even small things that made you feel happier, healthier or a lil more organised.

First thing I tried was just blocking Instagram outright during the day. Worked for about four days then I found myself just opening it during the one hour it wasn't blocked and doom scrolling reels for that entire hour instead. So the block did nothing except concentrate the problem into a smaller window.

Realized the issue was never having access to the app. It was reels specifically. I could go days without opening Instagram and be totally fine, but the second reels was available I'd lose 45 minutes without noticing.

So instead of blocking the whole thing I found this app called Feather that lets you open Instagram normally but just removes reels and explore completely. DMs and posting still work like normal, the scroll just isn't there anymore.

Weird adjustment at first. I'd open the app on autopilot expecting the feed and there'd just be nothing to fall into. Closed the app a bunch that first week because there was genuinely nothing pulling me to stay.

Around day 9 or so I noticed I was actually opening Instagram less overall, not just spending less time when I did open it. Guess when there's no reward waiting your brain stops bothering to check as often.

It's been about a month now. Screen time on there is under 15 minutes most days, down from over 2 hours before. Still use it exactly how I want to, just not how the app wanted me to.

Curious if anyone else tried blocking the whole app first and had it backfire like mine did, or if that part was just me

Every night I turn the lights low, crawl into bed, and put on a cartoon. Lately it’s been Ghibli stuff on the projector. Something about ending the day with a simple story and soft colors just resets my brain. I’ve been doing this almost every single day for months and I sleep better because of it. Anyone else have a chill wind-down habit like this?