Habits
Willpower is important, but believe it or not, it's not the most important aspect of fitness. This is because while optimizing willpower is worthwhile, willpower is always limited.
You can't be motivated all the time, it's literally impossible. What will carry you through adversity is developing habits. Habits don't require motivation, they have become part of you.
You don't need motivation to brush your teeth. Brushing your teeth is a habit that you have developed, and you simply do it. There is no thinking involved, no "inner battle".
Building habits
The problem is that creating habits is hard. Really, really hard. But also, people are bad how they go about creating those habits. Most people barely have any plan at all.
You want to start meditating, so you download an app, and you have your first session. Your plan is now to meditate every day. You meditate today, and tomorrow, you feel great. But the day after you're stressed out, and you have little time. You could meditate, but you can't bring yourself to do it. You miss your first meditation session. You feel bad, and you feel like a failure.
Some people quit at this stage, while some will try again. But even for those who continue, failure will eventually creep in again, the feeling of failure will once again bubble up, and almost everyone quits eventually. Successfully creating a new habit is extremely difficult because you are trying to change who you are. You are your habits.
But in the example above, what was the plan? There was no plan. The plan was simply to try to meditate each day. And when you fail, you try again. This can be vastly improved.
Creating systems
Having a good system is the most important thing to building good habits. People tend to think that habits should be brute-forced. While effort and will are indeed required, the amount required can be vastly different depending on the systems that you have in place. Let's explore how to build a good system.
Goal size
Be reasonable with your goals. We often want to take massive action because that makes us closer to where we want to be. But of course, that makes it that much harder to stick with. In our meditation example, a way to implement this is by having very short meditation sessions, perhaps 5 minutes long.
This makes it that much easier to accomplish day in and day out. It's hard to justify to yourself to skip a 5 minute task rather than a 30 minute one.
Being specific
You need to be aware of your current habits and make the intention of the implementation incredibly specific. Set out the specific behaviour, time and location in advance. "I need to meditate" is too vague. Rather, have it as specific as you can, for example:
I will meditate with this technique (eg, focusing on the physical sensation of the breath)
I will meditate each morning before breakfast
I will meditate in my room, because that is the most silent place of the house
Stacking habits
Stacking habits are useful and should be taken advantage of. Instead of having them dispersed throughout the day, create chains of habits. For instance, if you want to meditate and you also want to start running in the morning, you can do one after the other. This links them together and increases the chances that you will do the second one once you start.
If possible, put the easiest task first so that the chain has the highest likelihood of getting started.
However, be mindful that the tasks need to be relatively easy. If you chain too much, then you may experience ego depletion, as we have discussed. Hence the importance of starting small.
Make it obvious
Design your environment so that the cues for the habits are as obvious and visible as possible.
Attractiveness
We tend to do what's easier, which is generally not what we need to do. Pair the behaviour you're trying to achieve with a behaviour that is enjoyable. This will create a motivation for the needed behaviour by taking advantage of what's paired with. For example, by having a really good breakfast after your meditation and run, the whole chain gets a positive association and becomes more attractive due to the reward at the end.
Lower the difficulty
This is different from the goal size. If we're lazy and take the easier route, then the desired behaviour better be as easy as possible.
Prime the environment for that action, for example have the clothing for running ready to go. You want your environment to remind you and push for a given task.
Decrease the number of steps needed as much as possible. Make it so that the task is as easy as humanly possible.
Tracking your habits
By viewing the progress you have made, it's much easier to feel good about what you have accomplished. And likewise, seeing where you have missed keeps you accountable.
It's especially important to have a visual representation of your habits. You can do this yourself on a notebook or an Excel sheet, although now many habit apps exist, and many do a great visual representation. The Stride app is great if you want a specific recommendation.
Quitting bad habits
You can apply the inverted systems above in order to quit bad habits instead of creating old ones.
Create a negative association with the habit. E.g. by forcing yourself to do something unpleasant.
Make the action as invisible as possible. E.g. make it as far of reach as possible.
Increase the difficulty. E.g. make it so that it requires many steps to achieve.
Last updated