by Roberto Zoia
Some time ago I compiled some notes about habits in the form of a mindmap. The sources were, among others:
You can download the PDF file by clicking on the image below.
The next time you feel screwed that you haven’t gotten your big break, or watch as some potential life-changing opportunity to level up escapes your grasp, ask yourself if that’s really the case. Is it really bad luck? Or has Fortune done you a kindness?
— The Most Successful People Are The Ones You’ve Never Heard Of (And Why They Want It That Way), by Ryan Holiday
Entrepreneurship’s fundamental aspect is the ability and desire to take ownership of existing resources and innovate with them to create more wealth, to move them from an area of lower productivity and yield to a higher one. Entrepreneurship is a skill set, a practice that anyone can start to invest in and acquire.
— Asset Thinking: How Do You Invest In Entrepreneurship?, by Taylor Pearson
Why are habits important, and why should you try to acquire habits?
It’s easy to get seduced by articles offering shortcuts for success. “The 5 things successful (whatever success means) millionaires do every day”, if you are into money. Or how to [put your favorite aspiration here] without [put the thing you find more difficult here, usually involving long-term effort]… If we continue to see these kind of articles popping up on our Facebook timelines as “sponsored articles” is for one reason: they work. I mean, they work as a click-bait. We find it difficult to resist the urge to click and discover and effortless way to achieve something that, clearly and cold-headed, we know takes time and effort to accomplish.
We like to believe that we are rational beings. Maybe for important decisions, when we have the luxury to take out a piece of paper and lay out the motives for the different action courses in front of us, and dig into our real motivations before making a decision, our decisions rank high in the rational scale. Let’s concede that in those privileged moments we are not biassed by our emotions and make mostly rational decisions.
For the rest of situations, research shows that for our day-to-day behavior and actions, what we actually end doing is strongly influenced by the environment and by our habits.
When I first read in Marshall Goldsmith’s book Triggers about how the environment influences our behavior, my first reaction was one of denial. Something inside myself –probably my ego– rebelled against the notion that something outside of me, and mostly without myself being aware of it, could condition my behavior.
The argument is inescapable. Why is that we can be highly productive in some environments, and fail miserably in others? Why is that the presence of some people affect our mood, for good or worst? How do you react to traffic? (See the photo below, which I took one morning on my way to work.)
An important part of what we do every day is a consequence of our habits (or the lack of them) rather than of conscious decision making. Charles Duhigg, in his book The Power of Habit, mentions a research from Duke University that finds that at least 40% of what people do every day happens because of their habits.
We are not our habits, but in some sense, because of their strong influence on what we actually do, we are our habits. In his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Curry has documented the habits of more than hundred writers, artists, or otherwise notable creators. It’s amazing how, regardless of their brilliancy, these people stick to their routines and it’s in their routines that they find the power to create.
Habits make us free.
People that arrive always on time –they have acquired the habit of punctuality– don’t need to put a special effort to be on time. They just are on time, always, or at least most of the time. On the other hand, trying to arrive on time to a meeting for someone who doesn’t have the habit not only requires an explicit effort, but probably won’t work.
You cannot avoid acquiring habits. If you usually arrive on time, then every time you arrive on time the habit gets reinforced. But if you are usually late, then every time you are late, you are reinforcing the habit of being late1. You are always reinforcing your habits.
The classics, Aristotle among them, distinguished between positive habits —they called them virtues— and negative habits —they called them vices.
How does this relate to freedom? Here is the naked truth few people talk about: we only have the freedom to choose the things that we are actually capable of doing. If I’m always late, I can’t simply decide that from tomorrow on, I’ll be always on time. That is, in theory, I can decide that I won’t be never late again… but there is a high probability that it won’t work, because I have the habit of being late deeply ingrained2.
No wonder most New Year Resolutions don’t last more than a few weeks.
You are probably thinking now a lot of counter examples to the above paragraphs. Don’t waste your time. Aristotle wrote about this, and he lived 300 BC… In a different arena like sports, acquiring habits is called training3.
Habits make us free because once we have acquired an habit, we can forget about it. Putting the habit into action becomes almost automatic, with little effort required. We can focus on more important things. But there is more: habits makes us free because they enable us to do things that otherwise would be very hard or impossible to do.
We talk about habits, virtues, or vices. We should not forget, however, that in the end they are rationalizations that help us better understand how we human beings work. Saying things like “look, there is the habit of punctuallity at work” is a simplification of what is actually happening. Even when wesay, for example, that someone is just in her judgement —justice is a virtue— we are simplifying. There is a lot more going on inside that person than we can probably understand.
It’s difficult to know where one habit ends and where another starts. It’s always the person as a whole who decides and acts. This has an important consequence: habits, positive or negative, do not exists isolated inside us. When we put the effort to acquire an habit, we also get better in other habits, in other aspects of our life.
Suppose I decide to never be late to a meeting again, and take the necessary steps to acquire the habit. (detail the example). Not only will I become better at punctuality, but also at other things. Like resilience. Or being more empathic to people that arrive late, or valuing more other people’s time. Stress levels will go down a little bit. Acquiring one positive habit “pulls” the whole virtue system up.4
It’s not enough to rationally understand why doing something can be good for us. We need the ability to do it, otherwise it’s just wishful thinking. The good news is that we are all able to acquire habits.
Featured image photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash.
Excellent article by Ryan Holiday about succesful people and their mentors, manipulation, and power. How to Be a Professional Son (or Daughter).
Seth Godin on fear of failure and fear of actual risk:
It’s essential that we differentiate between things that remind us of fear and those that are actually risky. In our adult world, the most valuable activities are actually inconvenient, fraught with the fear of failure and apparently un-do-able.
— Seth Godin
We like to believe that things will go as planned. We should know better.
One of the keys to accomplishing a goal is to focus everyday not on the goal itself, but on the routines and systems needed to reach the goal. Define a routine, and stick to it. Identify a cue and associate it with the routine. With time, an habit is established. The routine no longer implies effort, you just do it without much thinking every time the cue is present. If you are mindful, you enjoy the process1.
Now and then, something happens that throws you off balance. The usual cues –the signals that trigger your brain to effortlessly start your routines– may not be there anymore. Charles Duhigg, in his book The Power of Habit, divides what he calls The Habit Loop in three components: Cue, Routine, and Reward. When something disrupts your balance, what is happening is that one of the elements of the habit loop is collapsing. Your routine is broken, and now your goals are at risk.
For example, a trip changes our environment, therefore the usual clues that helped you starting your routine are not there anymore. Maybe you lost motivation. Or, you have a new boss and need to adapt to her managing style.
Some things that can help you get back into the race:
If you had been working for some time and your routines stuck, then it will require you less effort. Your attention should be focused on protecting your cue. Were you just beginning to implement your routines? It will take some effort on your part, because you have not acquired the habits. Again, start small.
Don’t be naive, something happens eventually. Therefore, as important as the skill of building habits is the skill to recover fast when you go off track.
Some people associate learning with formal education. They unconsciously regard other ways of learning as less serious or not worth. Of course, attending a good college or university can be an exceptional learning experience. Formal education has its place and value1. But it’s not enough. To quote Kevin Kelly, “all of us—every one of us—will be endless newbies in the future simply trying to keep up.”2
We need to be continuously learning. Every day.
Thanks to the Internet, information is abundant. Most times it’s free or cheap. But access to information does not guarantee that you’ll convert it into knowledge. Of course, you need the motivation. “Learning is not done to you. Learning is something you choose to do”3. You need some plan. But most important, you need to learn how to learn. Learning is a Superpower, as meta-learning expert Jim Kwik says. Knowledge may no longer be reserved to elites, but the ability to learn by ourselves, and to learn efficiently is more necessary than ever.
There has been no better time to be self-learned.
Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash.