{"id":932,"date":"2013-02-14T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T13:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/?p=932"},"modified":"2013-02-14T00:19:38","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T05:19:38","slug":"floss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/thought-about\/floss\/","title":{"rendered":"Floss"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a boy, my dentist would grade my flossing and brushing. After each visit, I would receive a grade just like I did in school. The goal was an A and with that A came a gift certificate to the local mall.<\/p>\n

I think it was $5 to the arcade or the mall in general. It wasn’t a lot to an adult but to a boy, this was a lot of money. But it never worked for me. I wasn’t motivated by money. Even money I could have easily gotten.<\/p>\n

I had no internal motivation for flossing. I would brush fairly well, but no better than C or B- quality. My school grades were much higher but I was chastised every 6 months for my poor oral care grades. <\/p>\n

Each time after his chiding, he would reiterate the gift certificate and tell me exactly what I had to do to earn it and be an A+ caretaker of my teeth.<\/p>\n

But I wasn’t motivated. I didn’t see the point. My teeth were fine. I was a kid. I was stupid. <\/p>\n

Later in life, I’ve struggled to develop a flossing habit. I’m an A+ brusher but I still hover around a C in flossing. <\/p>\n

I’ve tried water picks. I’ve tried picks that are easier to use than floss in my eyes. I’ve tried to motivate myself in a number of ways.<\/p>\n

Nothing has really worked. <\/p>\n

I am trying something new. I downloaded an app for my iPhone called [Lift](http:\/\/lift.do). The idea behind the app is to choose a couple of things I want to make a habit out of. Then I can check them off each day as I do them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I am encouraged to build a streak, and I can interact with other people trying to do the same thing. I am not using it for the social aspect because I want to interact with people. But by making it a social experience I can pretend other people are watching me.<\/p>\n

And judging me when I fail to meet my goals for the day. This idea of being watched and judged is going to keep me motivated. Building a streak to make something like flossing a habit instead of a struggle is the main goal.<\/p>\n

This is only day one of my experience but I am liking Lift so far and it’s very quick and simple to remember. I have a notification set for each of my habits to alert me at different times of the day.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is important because I want to take my multivitamin in the morning then read before bed. I get an alert for both at the times I’ve selected. <\/p>\n

The most important thing for a new system to be successful in my life is it must adapt to my life, not force me to adapt to the app. Lift does this perfectly and I am very happy with it so far.<\/p>\n

Hopefully in a month I will have healthier teeth, walked everyday, read a book and written everyday and taken my vitamins.<\/p>\n

Are you working on habits in your own life? How are you trying to make changes to better yourself?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a boy, my dentist would grade my flossing and brushing. After each visit, I would receive a grade just like I did in school. The goal was an A and with that A came a gift certificate to the local mall. I think it was $5 to the arcade or the mall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New Tech in the Trenches Post: My battle with Floss http:\/\/wp.me\/p1rw6z-f2","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thought-about"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":934,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions\/934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}