I tried to explain to someone that our (adhd) brains are literally incapable of forming habits. They tried to remind me of all my bad habits, therefore I was wrong. And that was just too much for me to unpack and explain to them (they didn't know me or my habits, they were just talking about the bad habits that come along with adhd, but thats a whole other story)

But when someone told me habits are something you do without thinking about it. Like, at all.

I've never had a habit in my life. I have to think through every step of every task, no matter how many times I've done them before, nothing just runs of its own volition. And I could have done something literally 10,000 times and I'll still miss a vital step and screw it up.

That fun effect is called, executive dysfunction. Yay!

3 month habit? Those are rookie numbers lol. In one 3-day stint of a hospital stay, I once completely lost a habit I had developed over more than 5 years prior.

It helps is it was a hyperfixation at one point. In my case, timelieness was a problem, around the same time I was learning programming (Ruby/Rails) and needed so odd time functions to handle multi-timezone inputs. I ended up with a minor fixation on UTC, multiple clocks set to it and a scary ability to do timezone offsets in my head. Bonus, im not late for shit anymore.

What's habits precious?

I hate this. You think you’ve got a good streak going and have been doing well for weeks and weeks, then something interrupts the pattern for a day or three…and it’s like trying to start from scratch all over again.

My mom used to say this type of shit to me all the time. She also refused to get me tested or anything so there's that too.

That's what the time machines are for. Gotta go back and make it a habit for your 3 year old self, so that it sticks with you more in your adult life. Basic habits like brushing your teeth before bed, washing your hands before eating, and others commonly taught to young children tend to stick better. I wonder if it's more about the percentage of life with the habit, rather than current habit holding streak that helps keep the habit.

I've had a habit for 10+ years. One day I just forgot, and it was weeks later when I thought "didn't I use to do something at this time?"

I never managed to get that habit back.

Half the problem with autism and adhd both is difficulty with habit formation and maintenance.

You don’t need habits. You need routines with reliable contextual triggers. They’ll fail from time to time and you will just have to be okay with that, and try to figure out exactly what made them fail when they do so maybe you can fix it going forward. But it will still occasionally fail.

You can’t make a sieve not leak without making it not a sieve.

If I don't engage with something basically every day I just forget it exists. Doesn't matter if it's a friend, a TV show I'm watching or working out every morning.

The problem is that it takes someone else to remind you to do the thing often enough and with enough impetus to make it a habit

Which will only last until the first time you're sick and can't, and then that habit is gone