Habit vs. Memory

I remember hearing at some point that it takes 3 weeks to establish a new habit, but only one week to break it.

So why is it that, several months into my exercise of daily blogging, I still inevitably forget that I need to write a new blog post until it is time for me to go to bed? Is the act of forgetting a habit in itself? Is it my habitual (and time-worn) procrastination trumping my relatively new habit of blogging? If so, how does one break an old habit about a new habit?

And, for that matter, how do you force a habit to the foreground of your consciousness? This week, despite my best intentions and my now month-or-so-old habit of going to the gym at least once a week, usually on Monday or Wednesday, I have not gone a single time. Circumstances and laziness trumped habit. How do you force that relationship to reverse itself?

And why is it that all of my easy/more enjoyable habits, coffee drinking, for instance, are never hard to remember? It is not convenient to make coffee every day; it is less convenient to drink it in the limited time I allow myself to get ready in every morning. Yet that habit has become a compulsion such that I would never voluntarily skip it.

Apparently, contrary to popular belief, habits are not all that powerful after all, unless they have either an ulterior motive attached to them or are not truly habits, but compulsions. So much for popular science.

And so much for my daily blog post--for, though I have fulfilled my habit of writing something, the compulsion to write something worthwhile has evidently either not yet emerged or has died the painful death of lost memory.