8 Things I’ve Learned About Habits
I’ve been on a habit research kick lately, reading/listening to books, articles, podcasts, etc. Here are the top 8 useful things that I’ve learned.
- “The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.”
- Focus
- Start small
- Don’t break the chain-but if you do, don’t make that a chain
- Habit pairing is awesome
- Do what works for you
- Actions compound, just like interest
- Maximum reward
1. “The process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.”
-James Clear, Atomic Habits
There’s a game I love called Terraria; it’s a video game kind of like Minecraft, where you can build whole worlds. There’s a lot you can do, but one of them includes building a house or houses. You figure out what you want to build, what kind of materials you want to use, and what you want it to look like. A lot of it depends on what you’ll be using your building for.
Habit building is like Terraria for your soul. You choose the building materials and construct what you want, one habit at a time. Right now, I frequently start building, get partway through and give up. Sometimes I even destroy what I started in frustration (ie: binge eating chocolate after a week of eating healthy). I have to actually decide on a blueprint and the necessary materials and systems I’ll need to build my dream self, and then get to work.
2. Focus
Don’t get distracted from your goals, or try to do too many things at once. In Atomic Habits, James Clear states that people don’t become amazing at something just because of passion. Sure, a great pianist wants to be good at the piano and they enjoy playing, but more importantly, they have consistent dedication. People learn to love what they’re doing even when it’s monotonous. They push through.
This gives me hope, because I’ve always wished I was passionate about something so I’d be willing to dedicate time to it. Now I realize I had it backward-I need to dedicate time to something in order to develop passion.
3. Start small
I always have lofty goals, which usually leads me to try and start ridiculous habits that are not sustainable. Like going from no exercise to going to the gym every day, or not writing at all to writing a novel. It doesn’t work and then I feel like a failure. Starting small is smart, because you can actually maintain it. And, little actions add up over time.
4. Don’t break the chain-but if you do, don’t make that a chain
If you read much about habits, you’ll inevitably come across Jerry Seinfeld’s advice to use a calendar to start making a chain of X’s or checks to visually show when you’ve kept a habit. Your goal? Don’t break the chain.
Beyond that, sometimes the chain gets broken. Don’t let that become your new chain. Instead, try to beat your old record.
5. Habit pairing is awesome
Different authors call this different things, whether it’s habit stacking, habit pairing, or something else, but basically you link habits together. This works best when you link new habits to old habits.
Examples:
When I brush my teeth, I will tidy the bathroom as I brush.
When I get up, I will put a load of laundry in the washer; when I get my kids up, we will put them in the dryer; after breakfast, we’ll fold and put them away.
When I clean, I will listen to an audiobook.
6. Do what works for you
For me, that’s a habit tracking app. I get a weird satisfaction over checking items off, and I love seeing my statistics. Without my habit tracker, I wouldn’t remember how long I’ve been doing something, or I might forget to do it entirely. I’ve tried a ton of habit trackers over the years; the only one that has ever worked for me is the one I’m currently using, HabitBull. I used it daily for several months before breaking down and upgrading to the paid version (it was less than $5). Definitely worth it, for me.
7. Actions compound, just like interest
Jeff Olson talks about this in his book, The Slight Edge, but it’s rather long and repetitive, so I’m just going to summarize it. Exercising once won’t make you healthy. Eating a whole pie once won’t make you unhealthy. But once something becomes a regular occurrence, things start snowballing, for good or bad.
Case in point: I have a weakness for free food and for pastries and Costco muffins (among other things). My work frequently put free muffins and pastries out in the main area, so I frequently and dutifully ate them. Three months later, despite improving my health in other areas, my wedding ring was getting tight. Lesson: Eat one muffin, you’re fine. Make a habit of eating muffins, you will become a muffin.
On a more positive note: I started doing 100 glute/hip exercises every day about 6 months ago (it sounds more impressive than it is); then I added in 100 ab exercises. Honestly, I couldn’t really tell a difference. But I told myself that I wasn’t doing it to look different physically, but to feel better physically. Even there, I couldn’t really tell a difference, but I figured it was there.
Last week, we took a trip and wandered around the city for 45 minutes or so. Normally, I would have been tired, gasping for air going up some of the steeper inclines, and sore afterwards. This time? I felt fine. That’s when I realized that even though my exercise habit didn’t seem like much and didn’t seem like it was doing much, it obviously was.
8. Maximum reward
In Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin, she talks about how people often work really hard to establish habits that don’t really help them that much. For example, you want to get a better job, but the habit you’re focusing on is drinking more water. Why waste time and effort on something without a big payoff?
Thinking about this helped me to come up with two of my ten commandments: free stuff is not mine, and sugar is not a snack. I realized that saying I wanted to be healthier wasn’t helping, and even though eating more fruits and vegetables was good, it wasn’t keeping me from eating tons of sugar. Coming up with those two personal commandments has been sustainable and actually made a difference in how I feel and think.
Originally published at http://crystalfairstephens.wordpress.com on March 4, 2019.
