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.
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.
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for The New York Times. In The Power of Habit, the author proposes a framework for understanding the importance of habits and how habits work. Throughout the book, Duhigg uses stories —real stories— to exemplify his points, and he does a great job telling them. The stories are based, in part, on Duhigg’s interviews and journalistic research.
Perhaps the most important concept in the book is the Habit Loop, the loop that governs any habit. It is composed by three elements: cue, routine, and reward.
Over time, this loop —cue, routine, reward— becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become interwined until a powerful sense of anticiaption and craving emerges. Eventually (…), a habit is born.
In presence of the cue, says Duhigg, the habit emerges. Our brain stops making decisions, and the pattern folds automattically.
[Habits] can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. (…) They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize —they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.
It is by learning to observe cues and rewards that we can change our habits or cultivate new ones.
Part One of the book is the best part of this book. Based on numerous researchs, the author explains how new habits are formed, and how old ones can be replaced for new behaviours.
Part Two of the book —habits of successful organizations— and Part Three —the habits of societies— are interesting, but in my opinion, the author relies too much in stories to sustain his points. Some of these stories are used to make unjustified generalizations in some cases, and oversimplifications in others.
Procrastination es una de esas palabras en inglés difíciles de traducir. Una definición de procrastinate es dejar las cosas para más adelante. Es el verbo de los vencidos1.
Cuando me siento delante del teclado para escribir, un millón de potenciales distracciones acechan a la puerta. Hay días en los que preferiría ceder ante una de esas distracciones que escribir. Pero escojo no ceder. Escribo cuando estoy cansado. Escribo cuando no estoy inspirado. Escribo cuando el clima afuera está precioso. Escribo cuando ni siquiera estoy seguro sobre qué escribir.
Hace un tiempo, Shawn Blanc lanzó un boletín semanal sobre creatividad, foco, y riesgo titulado The Fight Spot. Shawn ha recogido los artículos del boletín relacionados con procrastination en un documento en inglés titulado The Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. Puedes obtener una copia gratis suscribiéndote a The Fight Spot.
(…) Hay muchos modos de superar el dejar las cosas para más tarde. Pero si tuviera que reducirlos a un solo consejo, a un primer paso para vencer la tendencia a perder el tiempo y haciendo cualquier otra cosa en vez de crear, sería este:
Aparece todos los días.
Arráncale 30-60 minutos a tu día. Todos los días. Agenda una reunión contigo mismo. Ya sea para escribir, tocar un instrumento, pintar, dibujar, tomar fotos, o lo que sea que estás tratando de hacer para el mundo.
Agenda esa reunión y mantenla. Y cuando llegue el momento, pon tu teléfono en “No Molestar”. Ponte audífonos. Ándate a un lugar donde no te distraigan. Haz lo que haga falta, con tal de que puedas pasar todo ese tiempo haciendo lo que tienes que hacer.
Procrastination is one of those words that is difficult to translate to other languages. The English definition for the verb to procrastinate is to delay or postpone action; put off doing something. It is the verb of the defeated1.
When I come to the keyboard to begin writing, a million potential distractions stand at my doorstep. There are many days when I’d rather give in to one of the distractions instead of doing my writing. But I choose not to. I write when I’m tired. I write when I’m uninspired. I write when the weather outside is beautiful. I write when I’m not even sure what to write about.
A few weeks ago, Shawn Blanc started an email newsletter about creativity, focus, and risk called The Fight Spot. Shawn has put all the procrastination-centric content published in his newsletter in a document called The Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. You can get it for free by subscribing to The Fight Spot newsletter.
(…) there are many ways to beat procrastination. But if I had to boil it all down to just one piece of advice — the first step toward beating procrastination in terms of doing something else instead of making and creating — I would say this:
Show up every day.
As in, carve out 30–60 minutes in your day. Every day. Make an appointment with yourself for when you’re going to create. Be it writing, playing music, painting, drawing, photography, or whatever it is you’re trying to create for the world.
Make that appointment and keep it. And when you’re there, put your phone on Do Not Disturb mode. Get earplugs or headphones. Go somewhere you won’t be distracted. Whatever it takes so you can spend the whole of your time making.