Habit Chess Newsletter

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There’s a system most people forget to build.

It’s the system for when the system breaks.

A lot of us spend time building habits and structures assuming we’ll just… keep going. That the system will keep functioning. That we’ll keep functioning.

But the part that actually determines whether something survives is what happens after you stop following it.

I’ve run into this so many times in my own life.

I’ll download an app to keep me accountable. Meal prepping, exercising, whatever it is. I’ll use it for a bit. Then I stop logging. And then I stop opening it.

And there’s no obvious way back in.

The question I don’t think we ask enough is:

What do I do when I stop following the system?

You can decide this stuff ahead of time.

What do you do if you miss one day? What about a week? What about two weeks?

Even entertaining that question puts you ahead of most people.

The reason this is hard is because of shame.

The human mind will go very far to avoid feeling it. And building a system for when you fail means admitting you will fail.

I noticed this recently with the Streaks app.

After I missed a habit for a few days, it basically stopped sending notifications. It didn’t try harder—it just faded away.

Phones do this too. If you don’t use an app, it disappears to free up space.

Habits work the same way.

One rule I’ve found is that the system for when the system breaks has to be really easy to recall.

When you’re not following your system, you’re probably not in a great place. You don’t have the same energy or time you had when you built it.

So whatever brings you back has to be very doable.

I think of it like a red button.

All you need to do is get to the red button. If you can do that, everything else tends to sort itself out.

If you don’t have a red button, the game is basically over.

For me, this lives in something I call my Daily Doc—just a running note in my phone. It’s where I keep things I don’t want to have to think through again.

One of those things is an if–then rule.

If I haven’t followed my system for more than two weeks, this is what I do.

No debating or redesigning. Just that.

This is part of the feedback loop people miss.

Otherwise you end up waiting months or years before realizing the system didn’t hold.

And systems already don’t feel immediately rewarding. They take time. They’re boring. And designing them around failure doesn’t feel good.

January is a perfect example for me.

I’m looking at what I thought I’d be doing by the end of December, and I’ve probably kept up with about half of it.

February is a pivot point.

If you don’t have this part of the system, this is usually where everything quietly disappears.

So you may not need all the shiny new systems.

You need just one way back in.

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In your corner,

Misbah Haque
Founder of Pod Mahal & Habit Chess​

P.S. If you enjoyed this, hit reply and let me know!

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