The best way to create new habits — Keep it simple
As you can see from the text message thread, last month my friend Lyndon somehow convinced me to do my first Triathlon. I haven’t survived…
As you can see from the text message thread, last month my friend Lyndon somehow convinced me to do my first Triathlon. I haven’t survived next Monday’s race yet (Fuck that, I’m going to crush it), but I’ve have had an amazing few months training for the race. Having a big goal to work towards was a great excuse to start building some better habits this summer.
These were my top personal habit goals for July, and why:
Exercise every day: There are hundreds of positives to exercising daily. For me especially I’m 3x happier and more productive after exercising. Exercising daily would also make it easy to cut back on drinking (Another July goal).
Meditate every day: I’m very curious about my mind and how it works. I want to figure out how to spend more of my life in “flow” states where I’m calm, focused, and happy. I’m also not a spiritual person and want to develop this part of my life.
Write in Journal Every Day: Even 1 sentence a day can give you insight into your happiness. What do you need to do to be happy? Who do you need to be with? What do you think about most of the time? These are important questions to answer and look back on.
No more than 2 drinks max during week. 5 max weekend: This shouldn’t have been hard to beat. Even though it’s summer, I HATE being hungover and wasting time. I do like going out with friends and having a good time. I figured this was a decent compromise, but will be cutting back more on booze in the future.
No TV Alone: I hate the habit of coming home and switching on the TV. It’s a mind numbing waste of time. The “Alone” caveat was for dates/sports etc., but I plan to cut it out entirely. Watching TV is a pretty lame date night anyways…
Get 7 Hours of sleep every night: This is easier when you’re on a schedule, but hard when training every day. I did not succeed, and still need to find my optimal sleep level.
Minimal sugar. Minimal junk food: Eat healthier. Kale. Spinach. Quinoa. I failed at this for a few reasons. One of which is this is a pretty half-assed goal. What does minimal mean?
I’ve failed at creating habits in the past, and wanted to try something completely new, unique, and outrageous.
So I bought a whiteboard.
Actually to be honest, whiteboards are expensive so I bought the President’s Choice version of a whiteboard (which is a sticker that somehow still cost $35).
I had read somewhere about Jerry Seinfeld’s “Don’t break the chain” method, and it made sense.
He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.
As a funny aside, Jerry really has nothing to do with his productivity method.
The whiteboard gave me a nice way to visually see what my week was looking like, and was in my face right when I woke up and went to bed. It was really effective at forcing me to do things when I didn’t feel like it, especially when I got home burned out and tired.
Here are my results from July:
Exercise was split into biking, swimming, running, tennis, gym, and volleyball. I marked a letter and a time/distance whenever I did something.
Meditation was a 15 or 10 (for minutes)
Journal was a J.
If I did all 3 things in a day, I got to circle it (IN BLUE!). Here are the final stats:
21 Bike rides (500km total)
11 runs
4 swims
3 Volleyball
6 Tennis games
8 hours of meditation
28 Journal Entries
Overall, I accomplished my 3 major goals 28/31 days.
How about those other goals? Not so great.
Minimal Drinking: Failed twice, but overall cut back big time.
7 hours of sleep: Did not succeed. Mostly because of evening events that threw off the schedule.
No TV alone: Failed five times, but overall cut down substantially.
Minimal sugar, minimal junk food: Failed a few times.
Personal Takeaways:
When I’m frustrated with work, I focus on more trivial things. This creates a downward loop where I’m less productive and more stressed. I started to figure out how to break the cycle, but it’s still something I need to work on.
You can improve your mood easily with exercise, music, and talking to friends.
Usually being tired is a side effect of being unfocused or bored.
I still need to find more Flow states at work and at home, but overall meditation has been excellent for increasing my focus.
Exercise and hanging out with friends is a much better ego booster than junk food and TV.
Practice positive procrastination (which I’m doing right now).
The most interesting learning (from my journal) is that after a long or frustrated day at work my body craved to sit on the couch, watch Modern Family, and eat Hawkins Cheesies. The best cure for this ego-depletion was exercising or hanging out with friends which added a few more hours to the workday afterwards, but the easiest thing to do was buy junk food and sit on the couch. It was also a poorly set goal. If I really wanted to cut these things the goal would be “No sugar, no junk food, no TV.”
Takeaways:
Buy a whiteboard (or a variation thereof)
Set real goals (or better yet, make decisions). Anything that leaves room for interpretation with no real feedback loop will result in failure.
Learn your triggers for breaking these habits (The journal is a good start).
Tools:
Whiteboard: For circling things. I’m 100% on board the whiteboard train.
Evernote for note taking. This app is amazing.
Headspace for guided meditation. There’s no way I could meditate without it.
Strava for tracking rides. I’m way too competitive on it.
Overall I feel great. It’s obvious that exercise and meditation will have some positive effect on your life, but the process of sticking to a schedule and learning discipline has been another very positive side effect. It’s given me momentum to set some bigger goals for the next few months which I’m very stoked about. Would love to hear what you think about goal setting, personal productivity, and what has worked for you.
Originally published at jamesclift.ca on August 26, 2014.