Building Habits — Are you taking it seriously enough?

“Habits” is a topic that’s been repeated to death across all self-help literature.

Maybe justifiably so. It’s an important topic.

But when something is talked about frequently — our minds get desensitized to its significance (for instance, coronavirus).

Ironically, we’ve become so habituated to hearing about habits that we now just tune it out. At least that’s what happened to me.

“Yeah one should have good habits whatever” — this was me whenever I heard someone talking about habits.

It’s only recently that I understood what makes habits are so important. Bit of an embarrassing epiphany, I know.

Let’s dive deeper.

How Habits change your brain

For practical purposes, your brain can be divided into two parts — the conscious and the subconscious. Or we could also use the distinction of the neocortex and the reptilian brain.

Relevant plug: How Your Reptilian Brain Controls You

Your conscious brain is what allows you to think long term, resist temptations, and do rational thinking. It’s slow and deliberate.

On the other hand, your subconscious brain is instinctual and impulsive. It does not really care about your “higher-level” goals.

The problem is that your conscious brain, your neocortex, is an energy hog and “tires” easily. And your brain loves efficiency. It does not like to waste energy.

So the subconscious — which is fast and automatic — wins over the conscious more often than not. And we give in to our cravings and temptations. Especially in situations where we’re stressed.

A large portion of our life is controlled by the subconscious.

The only way to “win” is to teach the subconscious brain to like what the conscious brain wants.

Unless you do that, bringing about any kind of substantial change will always be an uphill battle. You’ll keep starting and stopping, relying on random bursts of motivation and getting nowhere.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”

This is where habits come in. When you repeat a behavior over time, it becomes part of your subconscious. Your brain learns to automate the process to conserve energy. (Think driving or learning an instrument)

Building habits literally changes your brain:

When you perform an action, your brain sends electric signals through a specific neuronal network.

And if you keep repeating this action, your brain coats the axons in this neural network with a fatty substance called myelin. This process called myelination creates a preset insulated channel for your brain signals to flow through quickly and easily.

Apparently, heavily myelinated neural pathways are up to 300 times faster. This is how your brain optimizes for speed and efficiency.

So when we talk about “rewiring” the brain, habits is how you do it.

The more automated processes you build up, the more mental energy you free up. Which you can then use to stack more changes in your life. And it all compounds over the years.

When they say you are the sum of your habits, it’s quite literally true.

So, apart from the stuff that you’re obligated to do, what habits are you actively trying to build? What’s your strategy? Are you keeping a track of your habits?

The answers to these questions will tell you how serious you actually are about building habits.

“If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line.”

— James Clear

Takeaway: If you’re trying to achieve anything, your #1 focus should be on figuring out what repetitive actions will help you get there. And then turning those actions into habits. Everything else is noise.

You probably know this already. But it’s important to reiterate because we all have this “habit” of chasing shiny new tactics instead of focusing on the boring fundamentals.

Moving on.

Building Habits

When we don’t progress, we’re quick to blame ourselves but slow to blame our strategies. If you find it difficult to build habits, your strategy does not work. Or you don’t have one.

So that’s what your priority should be — finding a reliable strategy that works for you. (Atomic Habits by James Clear is a good place to start.)

I’ll talk about the most simple and ridiculous habit-building strategy I’ve come across. And some other ideas that have worked for me. Maybe you’ll find something useful.

Before that, let’s understand how our brain works when it comes to doing things. When it comes to taking action, we have two “strategies” at our disposal — Motivation and Willpower.

The problem with motivation is that it’s based on how you feel. Our feelings are fluid and unpredictable. There are so many things that can influence how you feel — diet, hormones, beliefs, sickness, events, etc.

Also, there’s an initial burst of motivation when you start something, which declines quickly. You can see this in how people give up on their new year resolutions after a few weeks. Because trying to form a habit is — by its very nature — a repetitive and boring process.

But no rule says your feelings and actions always have to match. The idea that motivation precedes action can put you into a laziness spiral.

You always have the ability to resist temptations and make a conscious choice. This ability is called willpower.

You can use willpower to go through with a scheduled activity whether you’re motivated or not. In that sense, willpower is more reliable than motivation and it can be strengthened.

Relevant plug: The Physiology of Willpower

The problem here is that we tend to avoid things that require efforts. There’s an inverse relationship between your motivation level and the “willpower cost” of an action.

You don’t need to force yourself to do something you already really want to do. For instance, if you’re heading out for a vacation, you won’t need much willpower to wake up for an early morning flight. When motivation is at its peak, willpower cost is negligible.

But when you’re not motivated to do something, the “willpower cost” skyrockets. And when willpower cost is high, it’s difficult to sustain a behavior over time and build it into a habit.

Now, this is where the strategy of “Mini Habits” comes in.

The Strategy of Mini Habits

A mini habit is a stupidly small positive behavior that you force yourself to do every day; for example:

• Do 1 push-up
• Meditate for 1 minute
• Read 1 page

It NEEDS to be embarrassingly easy. Make it such that it’s impossible to fail. Even if you think you can do more.

If you feel like doing more after you’ve started, go ahead. But anything extra is a bonus. You can do just one push-up, stop and celebrate that as a win.

We often fail to build habits because we set unrealistic targets for ourselves, inevitably fail, and then give up.

The most important thing with mini habits is that you build a streak and don’t miss a single day. What would your excuse be for not doing 1 push-up?

Idea is to build the habit first and optimize it later.

Here’s how this strategy helped me build an exercise habit during the coronavirus lockdown.

I decided that every evening I’m going to take my yoga mat to the terrace and lay it out. No matter what. After that, I can decide whether I want to work out or not. On some days, I came back within 2 minutes. But on most days, I ended up working out. Because once you start, it’s easy to keep going.

Trust the process.

If the idea still sounds ridiculous, I’d recommend picking up the book — Mini Habits. It’s a very short read and the author does a much better job of explaining the logic behind the idea.

Other than that, here are some general ideas that have helped me:

• There are certain “keystone” habits — like exercise, meditation, reading, journaling — that have a domino effect in every area of life. They make it easier for you to build other habits.
• It’s one thing to have a vague sense of why certain habits are important or good for you. But it’s a completely different thing to understand how exactly these habits change your mind and body.Our behavior is heavily driven by incentives. When you have a clear picture of how doing something will help you get what you want, you’ll be much more motivated to do it.
• Tracking your habits is another one of those keystone habits that makes a big difference in habit building. There are a lot of cool apps for this and it only takes like 30 seconds a day.
  
  
• Habit stacking — associate a new habit with one of your preexisting habits. For example, decide that you’ll do 1 push-up after brushing your teeth.
• A lot of our habits are motivated by fear. Take brushing your teeth for example. We do it every day without fail because we worry about foul-smelling breath and cavities. If you similarly fear living a limited life, you’ll automatically start taking positive habits more seriously.
• We are social creatures. Shame and honour are big motivators for us. So find an accountability group/partner. It will go a long way in helping you stay consistent.
• Be kind to yourself. If you slip up, simply get back on the track without making a big deal of it. Most of us have a habit of beating ourselves up and looking harshly at our failures. This only leads to stress, guilt, and frustration. Which further sabotages your progress.

That’s pretty much it. Pick a mini habit and stick to it, you’ll surprise yourself with the results.

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