Why is it that they say not to count days?

Most people just don't want to feel 'the pressure' of tracking their streak; they think that the pressure is causing them to relapse. They also think that setting high streaks will be 'harder' and to just focus on shorter streaks. People also think that tracking their streak causes them to think about porn.

In my opinion this is just all pretty weak.

The pressure is what keeps you going! That feeling of, "I'm on 14 days, I'm in too far right now, I can't relapse". If you don't put pressure on yourself and don't shame yourself for relapsing, you're just going to keep doing it. Trust me; I didn't focus on my streak and ended up in a 3 month porn-binge. Surprise surprise, now that I physically track my score every night before, I haven't relapsed in nearly 15 days. When you stop focusing on your streak, you just forget about your goal, leading to relapse!

People try and set 'shorter' goals like focusing on one day at a time, or 'shooting for 30 days'. No. It's not called SometimesFap, it's called NoFap. Your goal is not 30 days, it's to quit porn and masturbation forever.

Thinking that tracking your streak will cause you to think about porn is also pretty invalid. It makes you think about quitting porn, not actually porn itself. Not tracking your streak is what makes you think about porn, since your eye is not set on the prize.

Many people go against tracking your streak, but personally I think it is one of the biggest motivators for me. (Even if it isn't so high right now) I don't want to lose my streak! It gives me tension; not all negative tension is bad, sometimes it is necessary! It's all about balancing the positive and negative emotions. By physically tracking my streak on a piece of paper every night before bed, it's kept me constantly thinking about my streak, and yes has constantly kept me thinking about 'porn', but not the actual activity; it's kept me constantly thinking about the battle against it and how I will win it!

Try tracking your streak on physical paper every night before bed on a printed spreadsheet/calendar or something; you'll see that you'll probably get a lot farther when you bring this process of tracking your progression into your life!

 

The idea is that you want to make it a life style not a challange that you are doing,so by counting how many days you have done sr you are everyday reminded of the fact that you are doing this forcefully and that is not your natural state.Make it your natural state so u dnt have to count the days.

 

Some ways yes, some ways no. I do not recommend manually tracking your score yourself. If you update your counter every day, week, etc., or even sneak a peek at your counter on here, it often creates (or results from) and attitude of "Cool dude, I've gone [insert big number of days probably divisible by 5] days already! Guess It's OK to go ahead and relapse now."

Instead, I prefer just setting my day counter on here and letting it run on its own. I use my phone so that my badge doesn't show up on screen and I don't actually know how long I've gone. What happens instead is, I simply get a small extra incentive to keep going, from the fact I don't want to have to go and ~shamefully have to update my counter. When the temptation's coming on strong, every extra little bit of motivation helps.

Them's my thoughts,
stay strong brother!

 

Another thing is that some people focus on the 90 days and then with nothing else keeping them motivated they relapse after. All the comments before this help to avoid this.

 

I personally would advise you to count down the days at first , so that you know if you are making any progress. Even if the progress seems little its an improvement . Also in the beginning you should focus to stay one day clean then another. At a point you will know yourself its useful to count week after a week , later a month after month so that counting days wont become consuming. But remember its important to know , or write down the exact date you started. In my case having more 2 years of progress its impossible to still count days . Thats why knowing the date is important to keep track