We, humans, are basically habit machines. We form habits. We run on those habits all day long. Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. How you spend your days is how you spend your life. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
Habits can be great because they help us get tasks done efficiently without having to spend willpower (a limited resource) on them all the time. The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it (ego depletion). Having an habit collapses hundreds of future decisions into one, and gives you focus. Habits will keep the frontal cortex free to solve other problems. Make a deliberate choice about what needs consistency and what doesn't.
Make part of your identity to be an agent that does things. E.g: noticing the small problems, and fixing them. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. Focus on [[The Four Laws of Behavior Change]].
They can also cause addictions and be harmful for us. It's important to be aware of your habits and know how to break habits and know how to make habits. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Make small habits that push you forward, little by little, and make them compound. Remember, there are no hacks in life!
Change is hard. Understanding it better, makes it easier. The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Helpful steps for building habits:
- Build a [[routine]]. Set a specific, repeating time when you will do the thing in your calendar. Keep that slot clear, always. Never let something interrupt this task. Shape the environment to support your routine and habits. Make it easy to start and make it hard or impossible to not do it. If you don't have [[systems]], your environment determines your actions. Replace self-control with [[Planning]] and proper environment (uninstalling a game makes removes a future decision to play it). You can also stack habits. Connect the habit that doesn't appear that much to you to what you strongly like. Then you'll be doing it for what you like.
If you want to change a river's path, you don't place a sign with the direction in which you want water to go, you dig holes so water flows into them.
- Learn to say no. If someone wants you to do something else during this time slot, say no, and tell them why.
- Never break the routine. Breaking it once makes it much easier to break the next scheduled time. Instead think about the smallest thing you can perform and make it your goal for the day. If you do break it, feel bad about it and get back on the horse as fast as you can. Use forcing functions to your advantage. A forcing function is any task, activity or event that forces you to take action and produce a result. Have a bias toward taking action. No lazy deferring. When it's habit time, it should require more willpower to break the habit than to keep going. Become a mindless robot and don't think twice.
- Make the decision in advance. E.g. the two-minute rule. Where you decide that for anything that takes less than two minutes, you do it. No thinking, no arguing, just swift action. Another method is planning out your days in advance. Then when the time comes, you can mindlessly follow the schedule you have made for yourself.
- Be proactively lazy by organizing a space for its intended purpose. That way you are priming it to make the next action easy.
- Use the power of accountability to reinforce the routine. If you can find someone who will hold you accountable, do it. Someone who does the routine with you, or a coach who will call you out if you make excuses. Whatever you value, hang around people that are better at it than you are.
- One thing at a time. Don't build a big routine of 15 tasks at once. Ease into it one habit at a time. Changing one at a time routine allows you to isolate the benefits. Remove related bad habits at the same time.
- Don't overload yourself. Leave [[time]] in your schedule for play. If it gets to be too much, decide which one you will drop permanently to make rooms for the rest.
Cognitive inertia is the reason that changing our habits can be difficult. The default is always the path of least resistance, which is easy to accept and harder to question. The important thing about inertia is that it is only the initial push that is difficult. After that, progress tends to be smoother. A good life is a series of good days!
One of the biggest influence on your personality is your peer group. Choose your peers wisely!