Tweaking Your Habits for Better Results
About 40% of our day is dictated by habits, with some studies showing it to be an even greater percentage. We tend to think of ourselves as rational thinking creatures who always pick the best option, but more often than not we're not thinking that far ahead and we're simply picking what we've done before - if we're even picking at all. Our habits are a collection of actions that we've done so often that they've become automatic. When I go to put on my shoes, it's usually the right one that goes on first - when I brush my teeth, I tend to start with the upper left side of my mouth. Now I didn't consciously choose these habits and I'm sure they are influenced by me being right handed. And of course that is entirely the point here - I formed those habits because it was the path of least resistance.
Most of our default actions were formed simply because we're following the path of least resistance. The way you go to school or work is probably the simplest way to get there. The foods you prepare for breakfast are what you have in your pantry and you have those in your pantry because when you went to the grocery store they were the foods you'd usually buy anyways - it didn't take a lot of thought so that's what you did.
For years I have thought that the key to my success would simply be having more discipline in my life. I thought that if I could simply get my act together and just knuckle down and do what I needed to do I'd be able to do anything I wanted. But the truth is you don't need to live a disciplined life, because discipline is a lie.
When we think of a person living with discipline we imagine them waking up and sitting straight out of bed and driving to the gym at 5:30. We see them opening the fridge and looking between a bag of carrots and a slice of cake - perhaps they make a small nod to themselves and then simply choose the healthy option. But their is no cake. When they open their fridge they've already made that choice. The trick to discipline is that you make the decision to what you want to do well in advance so that it becomes your only option.
The truth is that we don't need discipline, what we need is habits.
When we want to start working on forming our own habits one of the most important things to keep in mind is the habit loop. The habit loop is how a habit is formed and it simply goes - a cue, an action and then a reward. Typically when we think of a habit we are thinking solely of the action part - this is the behavior of the habit. But to understand how to better change our habits we should start by looking at our cues. Habit cues are simply what sets off the events that start you down the path of your habit. If you like eating popcorn at the movies it might be as simply as getting into the concession stand as soon as you get into the theater. The cue is entering the theater. The habit is buying popcorn and then your reward is the popcorn.
One of the most important aspects of forming a habit is the sequencing - which mean the ordering in which we do things matters, a lot. For a cue to work it has to hit you at the right time. For example, let's say we're coming home and we have a normal routine of taking off our shoes and putting away our coat, then we put our bag in it's spot and then we sit down at the couch and watch a little TV. But let's say I get a call from my wife as I'm coming in the door, she's at the grocery store and wants to know if we've got potatoes. I go check that and let her know that in fact we do have potatoes and then go sit at the counter and since my phone is in my hand start checking facebook or something. When my wife gets home I might still be at home, my backpack in the hallway, my shoes still on and my jacket sprawled out somewhere. The interruption to my routine killed the sequencing of all those habits and kept me from getting the cues to do all those little things. I imagine this is one of the reasons transitions are so hard for those of us with ADHD - it's really easy to throw off our sequence of cues when were in transition and then we get lost in what we need to do next.
And let's get back to our example of eating popcorn at the movie theater and one of my new favorites studies. The study, performed by Wendy Wood, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, looked at movie patrons popcorn habits. In the study participants were asked to watch movie trailers and as payment they given boxes of popcorn - now unbeknownst to the participants some of the boxes of popcorn were fresh and some were stale. We might ask ourselves, who would eat stale popcorn? Well, if you were a regular eater of popcorn at the movies you'd have probably eaten about 70% of the boxes your were given regardless of how fresh they were. When they had those boxes in front of them the participants fell back on their habits - it didn't really matter how the popcorn tasted. I'm sure a lot of us can related with eating something even if it didn't taste that great simply because it was in front of us.
But the study went further and looked at how the popcorn habit could be interrupted. For the second part of the study participants were asked to eat with their off hand - so right-hand people eating with their left and lefties eating with their right. By making this small change the participants were forced to think about their actions. Once you start thinking about your actions the habit is interrupted - instead of continuing to eat the stale popcorn in front of them the participants were able to forgo that habit.
And I think that's an incredibly important idea for us to consider. When were trying to change our habits we often think about extreme measures, but the truth is all we need to do is add a little resistance to what we naturally do and we can start changing that pattern.
Let's try and look at the idea of small changes and sequencing together - because if we can find the right place in our sequence then we can figure out how to change our habits without a lot of effort.
Currently I'm working on creating a smoother transition into working when I get to my office. For a while now I've had the bad habit of getting to my office, sitting back in my chair and then scrolling through social media before starting any work. I've got a transition standing desk so I can have a chair when I need it and also stand when I want to (I find recording while standing a lot easier) so my idea is to instead leaving my office with my desk at the sitting position is to have it in the standing position when I arrive in the morning. What I'm doing is adding a little resistance to that old habit of sitting back and scroll social media. Sure, I can stand and scroll fairly easily, but I don't have that habit right now so it's easier for me to just open what I need to work on when I get in rather than wasting half an hour looking at memes.
But to have my desk in the right position when I get into the office I have to work on the habit of setting up my desk correctly before I leave work on the day before. This way I am setting myself up for success when I get into the office in the morning rather relying on my discipline to get my desk into the right position. That means I need to have a cue at the end of the day to help me make sure that I follow through with my intentions.
Fortunately I've already started working with my accountability group (shout out, you guys are the best) to clear my desk at the end of my work day so that I come into work my space is ready for me. This come from the idea of Clear to Neutral - the idea being that you want to have a default position you leave your work space (or any space really, it could be your kitchen, your garage, or your rumpus room) that you clean to at the end of the day. The reason being that when you sit down at your work space you want to be ready to work, you don't want your first task of the day to be clearing off all the papers on your desk from the day before.
Next up is where things get a little tricky, because while I'd like to believe that the next easiest thing would be popping open Evernote and start typing away at whatever that days topic was... but I know that I'm really good at finding alternatives to things - I'm sure that I could find some sneaky way to not do my work.
For a habit to work it has to be easy. I gave the example of putting my right shoe on first as an unconscious habit earlier, but guess what, if my left shoe is in my hand, I'm going to put that one on first - it's just easier. Resistance allows us to change habits by making things harder - and let me emphasize here the word change, because research has shown that we never truly get rid of bad habits. Ask a smoker who hasn't smoked in years and they will tell you that they still have things that trigger a craving for a cigarette. What we want to do instead is make it so that those same cues trigger different habits. For me what I want to do is make it harder for me to just surf for memes when I get into the office - it's funny but that's a hard habit to change because you get a lot of dopamine hits from social media.
By changing my starting position with my desk I've already started changing the sequencing of what I do when I get into the office, which is a good first step, but I don't want to fall into the same patterns while I'm standing. So let's look at some other ways I can work on solving my social media habits. Since I don't want to rely on discipline to get me there, what I'm going to want to do is work on setting up some automated systems that take the choice away from me.
The easiest things I can do first is make sure that when I boot up my computer I have the right programs already open for me. For me that's Evernote - because even if I'm not writing I'm at least referencing what I've written, and then Spotify because I like listening to music while I work - recently I've just been listening to an hour long track of Zelda music with rain over the top.
But that's just the start.
One of the apps I invested in this year is a program called Freedom - and what it does is kind of exactly the opposite of it's name, it locks down my computer. I can use it to block certain website and certain apps from opening on my computer. My problem so far is that I keep forgetting to use it. The classic ADHD problem of getting a new tool and never finding out if it will work because you don't use it - very frustrating. However, all is not lost, we have some work around to make this work.
But here is where we can bring in the automation again - what I can do is schedule reoccurring sessions on Freedom to block distracting websites - so now when I come into the office in the morning I won't even be able to open Reddit or Facebook or Twitter.
What I love most about this solution is that it doesn't take any brain power from myself. If I try and open Reddit all I'm going to get is a page that says reddit.com can't be found - and same for anything else I might use to distract myself. It's important to remember that I'm not going to have a perfect day everyday, but setting up these systems is going to help me remove the temptation that might pull away from what I really want to be doing. It's just like removing tempting food from your pantry before you start a diet - you can't be tempted if it isn't an option. You don't need overwhelming discipline to change your habits, you just want to set up systems that makes it easy to do the things you want and hard to do the things you don't.
Today's Top Tips
Don't rely on discipline, instead use your habits to help you navigate the hard stuff.
Our habits are so ingrained that we don't always realize what were doing while we're doing them.
Our habits follow the path of least resistance - if you want to change a bad habit, add resistance. If you want form a new habit, reduce the resistance to that habit.
You can automate processes in your habit sequences so that you aren't relying on discipline.
Mentioned in this Episode
My Writing Music - Song of Storms
