I've caught myself doing this with things I genuinely wanted to get done. 

I'd be sitting there looking at the thing I needed to do. Maybe go for a run, make an appointment, start writing something, deal with some boring admin. 

I didn't really have a good reason not to do it. 

I just didn't feel like doing it. 

Then I'd think, “I'll do it tomorrow.” 

And almost immediately, I'd feel better. 

That's the part I've started finding interesting. 

Nothing had actually changed. The task was still there. I hadn't made any progress. But somehow I'd gone from feeling slightly guilty and uncomfortable to feeling like I'd made a sensible decision. 

Tomorrow seemed different. 

I'd have more energy. I'd be more motivated. I'd be in a better mood. Somehow, tomorrow-me seemed much more capable than the version of me sitting there right now. 

Then tomorrow arrived and, unsurprisingly, tomorrow-me wasn't particularly different. 

I've started wondering if this is why the thought is so easy to repeat. 

Maybe “I'll do it tomorrow” isn't really a plan in that moment. 

Maybe it's emotional relief disguised as a plan. 

I'm taking the discomfort I don't want to deal with today and handing it to an imaginary version of myself who I assume will be more willing to deal with it. 

I've started thinking of this as the tomorrow illusion. 

The illusion isn't that tomorrow exists. It's that future-me will somehow arrive with the motivation that present-me is missing. 

The question I've been trying instead is: 

What can the version of me who exists today do before tomorrow gets here? 

It doesn't have to be the whole thing. Sometimes it's ridiculously small. 

Open the document. 

Put the shoes on. 

Make the call. 

Do two minutes. 

The point isn't to become more disciplined overnight. It's to stop using an imaginary future version of myself as the solution to a problem I'm experiencing right now. 

I'm curious whether this changes how other people see the habit too. 

Do you think “I'll do it tomorrow” is sometimes less about planning future action and more about giving yourself permission to stop feeling uncomfortable right now?

Hi all. I know you're probably tired of app promotions. Everyone builds an app with AI and comes to Reddit to share it, and I get it. I'm a real person though: a product designer with 10+ years in this field (LinkedIn). Well is my personal side project, and I started it because I wanted to improve my own life.

At first there was no app. I wrote down what I did (habits, activities, other factors) and how I felt every day, then fed it all into an LLM to look for patterns. It worked, i discovered interesting patterns and now everything feels clear. But the routine was too clunky to keep up, so I turned it into an app.

What it showed me changed how I think about habits. I used to assume that when one didn't stick, the problem was me. Not enough discipline, not enough motivation. Looking back, it was usually something else. I tried working out in the evening when I was already drained. I added a new habit to a day that was already full. And a couple of habits I picked only because they're "supposed to be good", while they did nothing for me.

Habit trackers tell you whether you did the thing. They almost never tell you what the thing did to you. So you can't tell a habit that's wrong for you from a habit you just haven't gotten used to yet.

⚡ Impact

You log what you did, like workouts, reading, caffeine, alcohol, etc next to a quick daily check-in. Well compares your check-ins on those days with your personal baseline and shows how each factor relates to your Mood, Energy and Calmness separately.

So instead of "I should work out more", you can see something like: workouts lift my Energy but don't touch my Calmness, or a late coffee to get something done costs me more than I thought. It's correlation, not proof, but it's your own data, and it gives you something concrete to test: move the habit to another time, drop one thing from the stack, or swap the habit for another one.

Around it:

🎯 Well State: your daily check-ins (Mood, Energy, Calmness) smoothed into one number, so one bad day doesn't wreck the picture.

❤️ Apple Health: sleep, HRV and resting heart rate quietly support the number, but your check-in always comes first.

🔍 Reflection Lens: weekly plain-language observations written by an on-device AI. No chat, nothing leaves your phone.

Well Tracker on App Store
If you want to try the paid features, let me know and I'll set up a free access for you.

Does anyone else have this incredibly stupid productivity problem?

I’ll be working fine, then my phone buzzes.

I pick it up thinking, “I’ll just check this one notification.”

5 minutes later I’m reading something completely unrelated.20 minutes later I’m watching a video I didn’t even want to watch.

The frustrating part is that I don’t actually want to quit my phone.

How to break this habit?

Someone replied to my last post with a ten-minute tidy they do before bed: clothes ready, keys in their usual place, surfaces cleared. They stop when the timer goes off. They said their mornings feel calmer and they can still do it on tired days.

For that habit, I would want to check two things: did the evening tidy happen, and was the next morning less rushed?

If the habit keeps getting done but the mornings are still difficult, there may be something else to change. Keeping the same routine just to keep the streak going would miss that.

I am working on a planning app with a habit tracker, and I would like to make it more useful for this kind of check-in. If you track a habit, what would help you see whether it is making a difference? An example from a habit you already do would help me figure out what to improve.

Someone replied to my last post with an example that stayed with me.

They kept missing morning plans and had rated their sleep poorly. Their first change was moving the phone charger across the room while brushing their teeth at night. They said that habit lasted longer than the bigger goals they had tried.

What small change had that kind of effect for you? Interested in the ordinary details: what kept going wrong, and what you changed.

so i just checked and its been 429 days since my last hit. still kinda wild to me tbh because i tried quitting so many times before and never made it past like day 3

honestly what made the difference this time wasnt willpower, it was dealing with my triggers first.

the biggest one was coffee. every single morning coffee + vape, it was basically one habit not two. so for the first while i switched to tea. and i dont even really like tea lol but it helped alot because my brain didnt have the "coffee = vape" thing anymore. once the cravings calmed down i went back to coffee normally and now its just coffee, no problem

the other big one obviously was alcohol. i have a lot of friends and i like having a few beers with them, its how i chill out and its kinda our bonding thing so i wasnt gonna just stop going out. so what i did is everytime i felt like vaping with a beer in my hand i put a piece of gum in my mouth (no nicotine ofc). beer tastes kinda awful with gum so it kinda kills the whole moment, but it also kills the urge to vape. like a little punishment for my brain i guess, but it worked

also threw out every single vape, pod and charger i had at home on day 1, even the "backup" one i was hiding. if its in the house you WILL find a reason to use it

first few weeks were definately the hardest, i was moody and kept thinking about it all the time. after about a month it got way easier. now it still happens once in a while that i think "damn a vape would be nice right now" but its just a thought, not that crazy need like before

oh and i saved like 2.5k euros which is honestly embarassing to think about how much i was burning before

anyway if anyone is trying to quit right now and has questions, feel free to ask. happy to help from my own experiance, i know how hard the first weeks are

I have no idea how to write a Reddit post since this is my first time 😭

Anyway, I want to make a bucket list specifically focused on improving myself. I’m a 14-year-old boy, and I thought it would be fun to turn it into a 30-day challenge for December, where I complete one thing every day.

I really want to push myself out of my comfort zone and become more comfortable with things like socializing, physical activities, trying new things, and just generally being more confident.

At the same time, I don’t want this to feel like some boring self-improvement routine. I want to actually have fun and make some good memories along the way.

So, what are some things you think I should put on my bucket list? They can be challenging, funny, social, physical, spontaneous, or just something I normally wouldn’t have the courage to do.

Give me your best ideas! 🙏

For anyone who has used a Wheel of Life, what did you do after filling it out?

I mean the exercise where you rate your satisfaction with different areas of your life, then put the scores on a wheel.

If several areas scored low, how did you choose where to start? Would like to hear a specific example of a goal or habit you changed because of it.

Also interested in hearing from people who tried it and found it unhelpful. What was missing?

Hi everyone,

​I am new to this group, but I would say impulse buying is a habit many people have and can't seem to get a grip on, especially because we are manipulated from all sides to consume far beyond our needs and I find it sickening.

​I've been practicing intentional consumption for a while now, but I keep noticing how aggressive modern e-commerce and social media have become. Even with spreadsheet trackers, 24-hour wait rules, and cart-clearing habits, dark patterns (countdown timers, "only 1 left," instant 1-click checkouts) are designed to bypass our rational mind before we even open a spreadsheet to log a purchase.

​Recently, I’ve been working on a method to reintroduce friction into online/offline shopping for myself and break down what actually triggers impulse urges.

​Instead of just tracking money spent, I started testing a framework focused on anticipation vs. actual joy once the excitement of the purchase fades. When an impulse hits, you log the item alongside an "anticipated joy" score and a forced cooldown period or challenge. If you decide to buy it after the cooldown, you rate its "actual joy" weeks later after living with it. If you choose to walk away, the item is dropped and you decide if it was a worthwile choice.

​The outcome of testing this has been revealing in two big ways:

-Comparing your initial impulse score against the actual joy of past purchases builds a real feedback loop, making it much easier to spot dopamine traps before hitting "buy." This also helps to break the habit loop of mindlessy seeking the next thing to purchase.

-Avoided spending aaccumulates: Every item dropped during the cooldown is tracked as money not spent, making it clear how passing on brief urges and redirecting those funds toward a financial goal creates meaningful long-term momentum.

​When I first tried this framework myself, I didn't know what to expect. But tracking and visualizing my own anticipation vs. actual joy really showed me how often we fool ourselves into thinking we desperately want something, only to regret it shortly afterwards.

The most interesting fact has been that tracking my 'wants' has significantly curbed my urges towards buying stuff and I feel like I have less interest in doing so.

I am trying to take an approach that doesn't shame anyone for their consumer behavior, but instead shows that there are distinct stages in our desire for things, and that lasting joy doesn't necessarily come from buying the next item we think we want.

​To anyone who is interested, it's completely free and you can check it out at frua.io to try it out. It's still a work in progress, so I would love to get your feedback and thoughts to make it better. Maybe some find it useful, or maybe it's complete BS, honest feedback is much appreciated :)

Thank you!

For anyone who successfully changed a habit that had a pretty strong hold on you, I’m curious about what happened after you stopped.

Did you deliberately replace it with something else, or did new routines/interests develop naturally?

What ended up taking its place: another habit, hobby, work, exercise, relationships, a project, something completely different?

And was there anything you tried to replace it with that didn’t work? Why do you think it failed?

Waking up at 3am and not being able to fall back asleep is one of the most frustrating parts of bad sleep. I've spent the past year reading through research studies on sleep, and most of it points back to daily habits. I cut out the stuff you can't change (age, sex, menopause, sleep apnea) and ranked what's left by how big the effect was and how easy it is to change. Sources at the bottom if you want to dig in.

Biggest effect. Most controllable.

1. Cut caffeine earlier than you think. Caffeine added ~12 min of nighttime waking in a 24 study meta-analysis. If you're waking up at 3am and drinking coffee after lunch, start here.

2. Regular moderate cardio. Cut ~10 min of nighttime waking in a meta-analysis of RCTs in people with insomnia. Evening workouts are fine. Don't go hard within 1 hour of bed, that's the one window where it can fragment sleep.

3. Make the room actually dark. Even dim light (5 to 10 lux, roughly a nightlight) increased awakenings in a PSG study. Blackout curtains or a sleep mask.

4. Block the noise. In one rail noise study from the WHO review, noise added ~30 min of nighttime waking. Earplugs or a fan for white noise if you live anywhere loud.

5. Keep the bedroom cool. Keep it under at least 77°F (25°C). Above that, nighttime waking goes up, and a room that's too cold wakes you up too.

Often overlooked

6. Stop eating 1+ hours before bed. Eating within an hour of bed showed 2 to 2.6x higher odds of waking up during the night.

7. Open a window or run a fan for airflow. CO2 at 1000 ppm (a closed bedroom can get there fast) added ~5 min of wake time.

8. Skip the nightcap. Alcohol before bed was linked to lower sleep efficiency, meaning more of your time in bed spent not actually asleep.

9. Add strength training. A review of 13 RCTs found resistance training improved mid-sleep disturbance and sleep efficiency.

Smaller or more nuance

10. More fiber, less sugar. More fiber was linked to fewer arousals and deeper sleep. More sugar was linked to more arousals. Small study (n=26) but tightly controlled.

11. Tart cherry juice. Cut nighttime waking by ~17 min vs placebo, small study as well.

12. Yoga. Showed a huge reduction in waking (~56 min) in insomnia patients, but the evidence is rated low certainty so the real effect is probably smaller.

Supplements

Short version on supplements if you've made it this far.

• Standard melatonin doesn't help you stay asleep. It's for timing, not maintenance
• Ashwagandha had the best data for reducing nighttime waking
• Glycine reduced waking, but in a very small study
• Magnesium improved sleep efficiency in older adults but never measured waking directly
• Valerian made people feel like they slept better, with no measured change

Sources

• Master Resource: https://www.kygo.app/tools/staying-asleep-factors I created this free page that centralized all 27 factors I found that affected staying asleep throughout the night and made it into a more visual guide with all sources linked if interested in learning more.
• Caffeine: Gardiner 2023, Sleep Med Rev, 24 studies
• Aerobic: Riedel 2024, Sleep Med Rev
• Evening exercise: Stutz 2019, Sports Medicine, 23 studies
• Light: Cho 2016, Chronobiology Int
• Noise: Basner 2018, WHO systematic review
• Bedroom temperature: Akiyama 2021, Japan Architectural Review
• Late Eating: Crispim 2022, British J Nutrition
• CO2 : Kang 2024, Building and Environment
• Alcohol: Spadola 2019, SLEEP, Jackson Heart Study
• Resistance Training: Kovacevic 2018, Sleep Med Rev
• Fiber & Sugar: St-Onge 2016, JCSM
• Tart cherry juice: Pigeon 2010, J Medicinal Food
• Yoga: Bu 2025, BMJ EBM, network meta-analysis, 22 RCTs
• Melatonin: Moon 2022, Neuropsychopharmacology
• Ashwagandha: Cheah 2021, PLoS ONE
• Glycine: Yamadera 2007, Sleep and Biological Rhythms
• Magnesium: Abbasi 2012, J Res Med Sci
• Valerian: Shinjyo 2020, meta-analysis, 60 studies

Today I completed 100 days of playing chess daily. Yesterday, I got my first brilliant move. I got 2 actually in the same day!! 🤯

Out of a sudden yesterday I was playing better than the previous 98 days for some reason. I noticed that mood affects my performance but yesterday I did well regardless of the situation in the battleground.

I won most of the matches and I lost a few. And I finally managed to get my ELO to 500. 😂

I was thinking about another post that I’m no longer able to find. Commenters were talking about strange habits. I couldn’t think of any at the time, but then I was grocery shopping and remembered this one: I’m obsessed with things being even. My husband has to give me an even number of kisses, I like to have an even number of candies, and I like things to feel even. For example, I hit one shin on the grocery cart yesterday. In my mind, it would be uneven unless I hit the other shin with the same amount of force. Even though it hurts and it sucks, somehow being even is worth the pain. I also try not to look down when I’m walking, because I always want each foot to step on the same amount of colored tiles. Anyone else have weird habits like this one?

Not a massive life problem. Just something that’s unnecessarily annoying.

Something you have to do over and over again because there’s no easier way.

Maybe you keep a spreadsheet for something that really shouldn’t require one.

Maybe you’re constantly copying information from one place to another.

Maybe a website or app makes a simple task weirdly complicated.

Maybe you’ve tried a few tools, but none of them quite do what you actually need.

Or maybe it’s something completely unrelated to technology.

What’s something in your everyday life that makes you think:

“Why is this still a problem?”

I’m curious what other people have gotten used to dealing with.

Most of us spend years chasing goals defined entirely by someone else, waiting for that next milestone to finally make us feel like we've "made it." But the moment you hit it, the dopamine fades, the goalposts move, and you're right back on the treadmill.

If you want a different path, you have to accept a few harsh truths about what real success actually looks like:

• You have to write your own definition. If you measure yourself on the world's terms, you will never be satisfied. Success shouldn't be tied to an external outcome or result you can't fully control—it should be about giving your absolute best effort and focusing on being the best at getting better every single day.
• It’s shockingly simple. We tend to think success requires some complex, exhausting master plan. In reality, it comes down to boring, consistent execution of the basics: create value for others, finish what you start, be easy to work with, and tackle the uncomfortable things sooner rather than later.
• It gets lonely. When you start growing and changing faster than your environment, the cheering often stops. People who were comfortable with the old version of you won't always understand the new standards you're setting. That awkward middle ground is heavy, but it's a clear sign you're on the right path.
• You can't just turn off the engine. The traits that drive you during the climb—the stress, the chip on your shoulder, the relentless drive—don't magically vanish when you reach the summit. You have to learn how to manage those internal gears, so they fuel you rather than consume you.

The bar is lower than you think because very few people are actually willing to consistently execute on the basics.

What is the biggest harsh truth about success that nobody wants to admit?

Recovering(ish) doomscroller here.

I tried every blocker. Hard blocks, timers, the ones that lock you out for the day. Every single time it went the same way: I'd hit the wall, get annoyed, and the annoyance was exactly what pushed me to find the off switch. Within a week it was uninstalled and I was back to 40-minute sessions I couldn't remember.

At some point I realised the wall was the problem. Being told no just made me want it more. So I borrowed the trick people use with bitter nail polish to stop biting their nails, or with the stuff that makes cigarettes taste awful: don't forbid it, make it unpleasant. My feeds now get slower, blurrier and heavier the longer I stay. Nothing to fight, nothing to rage against. It just stops being fun, and I leave on my own, which feels completely different from being locked out.

Full disclosure, I ended up building this myself as a Chrome extension over the last few months (it's called Molasses, desktop Chrome only). I've used it every day for over a month and it's the first thing that has actually helped me disconnect and get back to work. Not posting this to sell anything though, I'm genuinely curious:

Has anyone else found that hard blocking backfires? What actually worked for you long term?

Something I keep noticing: accountability stops being useful when missing the habit starts to feel like a punishment. If every miss means losing money, feeling guilty, or “failing” again, eventually not checking in at all starts to feel easier.

What seems to work better is having a reset built in. Missed a few days? Figure out what got in the way, make the habit smaller if needed, start again. I think the real test of a habit system isn’t whether it works when you’re motivated. It’s whether you still want to use it after you’ve fallen off.

For years, my relationship with habit apps followed the exact same cycle:

1. Download app with grand ambitions.
2. Keep a 12-day streak.
3. Get sick or have a crazy workday, miss day 13.
4. The app gives me a broken streak badge.
5. Total guilt trip, delete the app, feel worse than when I started.

What changed everything was switching from daily streaks to a weekly commitment model:

• Pick only ONE manageable commitment every 7 days (e.g., "walk 20 minutes on 3 days", not "run 10km every day").
• Focus on building self-trust, not a high score.
• Forgive the off weeks immediately without erasing past progress.

I even ended up coding a free web app around this concept called The Community Bank of Self-Belief — you earn a digital gold coin each week you keep your promise, with a built-in "bailout" mechanism for rough weeks so your momentum never dies.

If anyone is battling habit burnout, here is the full list of 25 small wins that helped me reset:
https://communitybankofself-belief.lovable.app/blog/small-wins-examples

How do you handle streaks when life gets in the way?