Habits

I can’t trust myself. What I want now doesn’t help me achieve my goals in life, but my short-term wants are so, so powerful.

I don’t want to work out and cook, I just want to binge TV and junk food.
I don’t want to organize a meetup, I just want to play video games.
I don’t want to meditate, I just want to scroll through Reddit and Instagram.

So I do the “bad” things sometimes, then I do them some more.
Until the “bad” things become routine and the “good” things? A dream…

Habits are guide rails. They take over in the moment, leading me down a well-worn path. They could be “good” paths or “bad” paths - it’s all relative to my goals. Once I figure out my goals, the desired habits materialize. And with effort, I can shape my habits to lead me to where I want to be.

80% of habits

To establish a habit, I have to repeat its trigger > craving > routine > reward.

If my goal is to become more mindful, a bad habit is consuming social media.

I always want to be working on my habits, good or bad. There’s never been a week where I thought, “every decision I made this week was perfect.” Practically, I invest in shaping routines and don’t bother with the trigger, craving, or reward. I adjust in-the-moment costs and benefits - shepherding that neural net computation activated by feelings, context, and willpower inputs.

I make sure the easiest, default choices are good ones.

Example stories: Routine

A good diet (click to expand) I make convenient food the "correct" choice. I have a list of meals that take 5-15min of preparation and have consistent calories and protein. I make sure to always have ingredients available for them. The meal list and ingredient measurements are on one page fastened to my kitchen stove. It would take a lot of upfront effort to eat an off-diet meal.

I put effort into buying food at the right time. I schedule buying food far in advance, making sure never to run out and need fast alternatives. I buy food when I have willpower - when I'm not tired or hungry. Under these conditions, I pick good food and avoid bad food. I eat the food I have, and all the food I have is good.

I invested time and effort to put myself in this position.

Full post
Restricting media consumption Sometimes I put extraordinary effort into sabotaging bad choices. I restrict media consumption because it doesn't bring me enough value for the time I spend on it:

I enable parental controls on my tablet and phone to blocklist websites, I change my computer's /etc/hosts file to blocklist domains, I log into my router to blocklist IPs. I get other people to choose the passwords I need to unlock all these things. On YouTube, I unfollow channels and block content creators that I deem unproductive. On Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram, I unfollow friends and contacts until all newsfeed content is benign.

I still binge sometimes, taking down barriers. When I feel regret, I rebuild the walls. Then I erect stronger ones.
My workout routine Working out is part of my day by default. I also treat it as the time to clear my head. I have regularly scheduled meetings on my calendar every day to work out. I make the inertia to working out as low as possible. In my last two offices, my gym was within five minutes of my desk. I also have a squat rack and weights in my bedroom as a backup.
Less addictive gaming I could spend all my waking hours gaming. A big problem for me is that I find it especially hard to stop without completing something. Whether it's an hour-long multiplayer game or one act of many in a single-player game, it pains me to stop part-way through. That makes gaming take far more time, with far less flexibility. As silly as it sounds, I replaced playing video games with watching others play them on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. I got half the enjoyment but I lost the need to finish. I experienced a fraction of the addiction too.

I even found watching too addictive and time-consuming, but it was an important stepping stone to my gaming abstinence.
Higher highs or higher lows A few months ago, I focused on maximizing peak productivity. My writing was 2x as productive for two weeks. Then I hit a low point and I didn't write at all for a three-month stretch. What's worth investing more in: 2x-ing peak productivity or maintaining a baseline when times get tough?


Committing my identity

Three ways to change your habits:

  • Option A: Have an epiphany
  • Option B: Change your environment
  • Option C: Take baby steps

Creating an epiphany is difficult. So rule out Option A unless you have magical powers…

-Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg

I disagree.

The habits I care about started big and the first step was never a baby one. It was a change like, “Starting from today, my life is different. I’m a weightlifter.”

Here is how I commit my identity:

I see a lifestyle and I want it.

If I covet the rewards, it will inspire me.

If I find inspiration, I will research it.

If I see an opportunity, I will try it.

If I fail, I will know what to change.

If I iterate, it will grow into part of me.

If I identify with the habit, I will evangelize it.

This is my life now. I am an ___.

I research possibilities and empathize with people who have shared their experiences. I brainstorm changes to how I live and visualize results. It’s a passive mental activity - background processing for days or weeks. I may block out an hour to contemplate, thinking about it when I walk, shower, daydream…

At some point, it clicks. I know what to do. I choose the right time to begin - when I have high willpower and my life has few unknowns - and I commit to it. I try it, find out what doesn’t work, fix that. Try again. Iterate. Persevere.

Week after week, I put time and effort into this habit, so it’s on my mind. It creeps into conversation. I test the waters, a discussion flows into a debate with a friend who will suffer me. The debate brings me back to this planet, teaches me how others think about the costs and rewards of the habit. I take the side I’m invested in. And by now I’m oh-so invested - I’ve committed time, money, and social capital.

A few debates later, somewhere along my escalation of commitment, I begin to identify with the habit. I truly identify with the habit when I evangelize it. With the experience I’ve gathered debating the habit, I can make it sound appealing. I can’t help but evangelize.

Examples

A good diet (click to expand) "A diet habit will make me look better, feel better, look better, spend less time on food, look better..."

I contemplated the possibilities and implications until I found a path to commitment. I saw a dietician, followed their advice, and kept what worked. My diet became part of my identity. When someone talks about food, my perspective is, as someone on a strict diet.

Why doesn't everyone eat "correctly"? They probably don't have the awareness or tools, just like pre-diet me.
Video game abstinence "Not consuming video games will give me more productivity. More time for the things I wish I spent my time on."

I thought and thought until I found the path to commitment (or in this case, wall of commitment). Each time I over-indulged, I put barriers in front of the platform I binged on. I deleted games, hid devices, threw away passwords. I became a former gamer. Gaming is part of my identity and so is its abstinence. In conversations about video games, I get excited. When the conversation drifts to present gaming, I apologize for not being up-to-date but empathize with the passion. I'm a former gamer.

Although I enjoyed video games, they weren't bringing me long-term rewards. Are they the best time investment? What goals do they help you achieve? Surely you can find a form of entertainment that makes you better every day.

Conclusion

Each time I put in the effort to build a habit, I get recurring rewards. They guide my decisions that would otherwise give in to short-term cravings. I improve my habits by making the default choices “good” and committing myself.

My commitment to habit-building brings me compounding rewards.

Goals | Habits

Appendix

Example stories: Trigger

Peer pressure (click to expand) I have a friend who always tempts me with indulgent food. I shared my diet goals with them and the importance of these goals to me. I explained that I don't always have the willpower to resist, but resisting is always the right choice. I asked them to help me achieve my goals and not actively work against them.
Restricting media consumption I got into a bad habit of watching TV or scrolling through social media while eating. A very hard habit to break and a huge timesink. I tried mindful eating, with no distractions, but that never stuck. I bought print subscriptions to The Economist and Harvard Business Review. I leave the magazines where I eat. Now I consume a less addictive, less time-consuming media source while I eat.
Habit tracking I have a habit/gratitude/goal-tracking book, and I used to leave it beside my bed, but I often forgot. I moved it to my kitchen table where I eat in the morning and at night. I record after I eat breakfast and dinner.

Deeper resources

Atomic habits Book summary. This was my favourite book on habits. It closely aligned with my beliefs and motivations.

Choice quotes

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

“One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.”

“People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than resist it.”

“Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you.”

“One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.”

Tiny habits / Mini Habits Tiny Habits book summary. Mini habits book summary. These books are similar. Their advice didn't suit me (explored in "Committing my identity").

Choice quotes

The essence of Tiny Habits is to take a behavior you want, make it tiny, find where it fits naturally in your life, and nurture its growth.

"The foundation of the Mini Habits system is in ‘stupid small’ steps."

"You can disrupt a behavior you don’t want by removing the prompt. This isn’t always easy, but removing the prompt is your best first move to stop a behavior from happening."

“We’re quick to blame ourselves for lack of progress, but slow to blame our strategies."
7 Habits of Highly Effective People Wikipedia summary. Book summary. Half the ideas in this book seem passé - like they're already ingrained into modern corporate culture. It has a 90s feel, packed with clichés (one of the habits is "Synergize"). It originated many of them.

Choice quotes

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things"

"If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control - myself."

"Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny."

"The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."

Thank you Armin, Chiara, Katie for reading drafts of this.

15 Feb 2020