To live forever, break habits

Interesting article. I liked it.<p>I think you could take his basic premise - "staying out of a routine and breaking habits makes life feel longer and time pass slower" - and expand on it to also achieve more worthwhile pursuits.<p>Instead of changing habits randomly, instead aim to always be at the threshold of your competence.<p>I've spent a few years looking into this, and the best thing I found for myself is aiming to always be at a 70% success rate on my daily, weekly, and monthly goals/targets. If I'm succeeding higher than 70%, I increase the difficulty level or add new challenges. If I'm below 70%, I scale back and pare down until I get to the essentials.<p>It's good, because I'm succeeding more often than not, but I'm always at the threshold of my competence. I think a lot of people set goals too low to get to 100%, or they get discouraged when they fall short of ambitious goals.<p>Me, falling a bit short is part of my life, so I'm always pushing and expanding, failure is part of my life and gets easier over time, and there's always new things. I'm about to add a new set of targets - either I'm going to start doing bodyweight exercises and set some fitness goals, or I'm going to take up drawing and make more art. Or both? I'm doing this to replace "surfing the internet" with either drawing/painting or bodyweight exercises/balance/martial arts as entertainment time. Thus, life stays fresh, new, exciting. And whatever my goals are for strength training or art, I'll be falling a bit short of them - which is to be expected and embraced, always on the edge and threshold of my capability. But still, a 70% success rate, which is encouraging and I'm succeeding more often than not. Wholly recommended if you haven't tried setting goals and targets this way - if anyone has questions on setting something like this up, feel free to drop me an email, I try to make myself pretty freely available to people working on achieving things.

I've always liked §295 of The Gay Science where Nietzsche makes the distinction between "brief" and "enduring" habits:<p>"I love brief habits and consider them an inestimable means for getting to know <i>many</i> things and states, down to the bottom of their sweetness and bitternesses...<p><i>Enduring</i> habits I hate, and I feel as if a tyrant had come near me and as if the air I breathe had thickened when events take such a turn that it appears that they will inevitably give rise to enduring habits...<p>Most intolerable, to be sure, and the terrible par excellence would be for me a life entirely devoid of habits, a life that would demand perpetual improvisation. That would be my exile and my Siberia."<p>(<a href="http://clichereality.blogspot.com/2009/07/philosopher-as-traveler-nietzsche.html" rel="nofollow">http://clichereality.blogspot.com/2009/07/philosopher-as-tra...</a>)

I would boil it down to this, keep learning new things all the time, whether it is a new language, taking pottery classes, learning a musical instrument, a piece of technology, gardening etc while keeping what is working intact. This is important. You need a solid base and comfort from where you can enjoy the learning.<p>The author went overboard with his cigarette and marriage suggestions.

Sorry for being patronizing, but I went through a phase like this too: figured out that human life is dominated by habits, decided this was "the" problem, and resolved to live anti-habitually. It didn't work. I think the reason is human nature: we're creatures of habit. Not to have them would be not to be human.<p>Habits <i>can</i> supplant other habits, but even that is not subject to direct conscious control. There's an entire self-help literature around it, some of which is good, but it's easy to take it the wrong way and go down a superficial path.

My personal hypothesis is time is perceived to move more quickly the older you get because an hour, a day, a minute become smaller fractions of the time you've been alive.<p>EX: When you're 10, a year is 1/10th of your life, but when you're 60 it's only 1/60th. The magnitude of an additional year of life at 60 does not feel as great as it does when you're 10.

Perhaps it was tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not sure the "leave your marriage" advice has any backing whatsoever; in fact, it would appear to be quite the opposite effect on one's lifespan:<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4779267.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4779267.stm</a><p>"Those who had been widowed were almost 40% more likely to die, and those who had been divorced or separated were 27% more likely to die. "<p>Overall, the article felt light on facts - even the title is even fairly linkbaity (live forever!). For an article on increased lifespan (with citations instead of hand-waving), this article is much better:<p><a href="http://wiki.masterlifefaster.com/Home/long-life" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.masterlifefaster.com/Home/long-life</a>

Inspiring, but reality often doesn't play out this way. Eventually, trying new things wears you out and you stop appreciating them. Meanwhile there's a risk of increased stress from the neglecting activities that habits used to make easy, like managing your budget, brushing your teeth, and preparing cheap, tasty meals.

Has no one here read Catch 22? One of the little commentaries in the book is one character who already figured this out- he insists on hating every second of life, because when you are miserable time goes by slowly.

Joseph Heller embodied this idea in Dunbar. When your life is in imminent danger, you can extend it a great deal by remaining exceptionally bored.

&#62; Have you ever noticed that you can remember perfectly well what someone said to you, but you don’t remember exactly what words she used? Or perhaps you can recall what was said but not in what language it was said.<p>Whatever else the article may have gotten right, this is false for me. I can, essentially, play back an audio recording of what a person just said. It doesn't work as well on languages I don't understand, but the recording is still there, it just ends up corrupted quickly because it takes a lot more to remember full audio than a few words. Also, I don't think I've ever forgotten which language something was said in, even though I can understand both French and Japanese.<p>That said, I have certainly noticed that other people never seem to get the words right, even when repeating things someone just said and it always bugged me that they'd change the words to things I just said a second ago.

Just smoke some cannabis if you want time to stop (interferes with your ability to filter perceptual information in a linear fashion--<i>nevertheless one's own personal freedom to choose to do such a thing</i>); the rest of us have jobs that require routines. Btw, don't pass the human species off as habitual, we are anything but in respect with the animal kingdom in its entirety (lack of a definite homeostasis in nature). With all that talk about measures, was there a mention of how spontaneity is to be measured? Breaking a habit just to find a new one seems frivolous. It seems to me one would have to be put in a truly unpredictable environment (such as the wilderness) to become less routine.

Is the goal of life is to make it feel as though it will never end? 'Ever hear a shop clerk say, 'I feel like this shift will never end'? They're not excited about it.<p>Have you ever known someone who can't seem to stick with a job, an interest, or a group of friends? Do you think they are happy?<p>I don't think anyone is yearning for a life that feels like it will never end. What we want is to have a quality life, and one means toward that is to invest in others over time. Oh yeah, and marriage is _not_ a comfortable safe habit. It is challenge worth fighting for.

Sounds like he is making a habit of breaking habits

I have similar thoughts on cannabis. When high, I have the feeling that habitual actions are much more difficult and you become more self-aware when you fix something to drink for example.<p>The effect seems to vanish for people who consume cannabis every day however, the brain seems to adjust to the new state.

Whilst I was reading this article, I couldn't stop thinking of this:<p>"My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be." - George Costanza

"We live in a world of meanings, not words or sounds. We live in a world of arcs, not points."<p>This is fundamental; line signifies the points; or the line is the meaning of the points; as when you fit a line to points of observations.<p>This fact is built into our perception and into science as well because all observations are points and meaning is the line that passes through all points; and therefore all meaning is interpretation.<p>The title is unfortunate ("To live forever"?) but the article makes good points.

great, we can start by never returning to Hacker News again! See you never guys!