How to use Bearable to help you to form new habits.

Created OnMay 31, 2023

Last Updated OnNovember 3, 2023

byJesse

Many members of the Bearable community who live with health conditions are interested in exploring the impact of new habits or self-management techniques on their health and well-being. Bearable has a number of tools that can help you to take the guesswork out of identifying the habits that actually help.

✅ What you should track.

1. Most importantly, you’ll want to begin by identifying the main aspect(s) of your health that you’d like to improve. This could be a specific symptom, your mood, sleep, or energy levels, it could also be a custom rating (e.g. productivity, purpose, fulfilment, etc.) or health measurement (HRV, heart rate, blood pressure, etc.).
  
  Note. We recommend focusing on just the most important aspects of your health to begin with, rather than attempting to track every aspect of your health.
2. To track these aspects of your health as metrics in Bearable, use the add/edit button in the menu in the top right hand corner of the relevant sections on your homepage to create – or add an existing – health metric.
3. Next, you’ll want to identify the new habit, treatment, or lifestyle change that you’d like to understand the impact of. This could be a new medication, a new exercise routine, a change in nutrition, or a daily practice like journaling or meditation.
4. Once you’ve identified your new habit, visit the experiments page, scroll down to custom experiment, and follow the instructions to create your experiment.
5. As part of this setup process, you’ll be able to set reminders and select the duration of the experiment (between 7 and 30 days). We recommend that your experiment should last for a minimum of 14 days so that you can collect enough data to see some significant results.
6. You’ll also have the option to invite a friend to partake in the experiment with you and this is a technique proven to help with forming new habits.
7. Once your experiment is set up, try to commit to the new habit on as many days as possible and at the end of the experiment we’ll show you how your new habit correlates with changes in your chosen health metrics.
  
  Note. If you haven’t previously logged any health data in Bearable before beginning an experiment, we’d recommend either logging at least 3 days of health data before beginning OR logging 3 days of data during the experiment where you don’t complete the habit. This will allow Bearable to compare days without the habit to days with the habit and will give you better results.

💡 How to use the data you collect.

1. During your experiment, after 3 to 6 days, you’ll begin to see the correlation between the habit you’re experimenting with and the health outcomes that you selected. To view these insights visit the experiments page and it will take you directly to the results page for your current experiment.
2. Once you’ve finished your experiment, you can view the results of past experiments by visiting the experiments page and clicking see all.
3. You can also view insights into your experiments using the reports on your Insights page.
4. If the experiment was successful you can add it as a goal at the top of your homepage (this feature isn’t available for all users yet). By turning your successful experiments into goals, you’ll be able to set up reminders on a schedule of your choosing and will be able to see the ongoing impact of the new habits on your health metrics.
  
  Note. When viewing the results of experiments, please be aware that they can be affected by ‘noise’ factors that you haven’t tracked that might have impacted your results. One way to obtain less ‘noisy’ results is to test your experiment over a longer period of time. It can also be helpful to reflect on why the experiment may or may not have worked and use this as a way to consider what to experiment with next.

👋 Still need some help

- Read the Bearable Starter Pack.
- View our video tutorial on Youtube.
- Visit our support blog.
- Get in touch with our support team.