Perfect Self-Management in 52 Weeks: Bad Habits



Yesterday, I was talking with my son about weak self-management and that we generally get p..... off if anybody mentions it. Yet, we still keep our bad habits.

Most of the time, bad habits are simply a way of dealing with stress and boredom. Everything from biting your nails to overspending on a shopping spree to drinking every weekend to wasting time on the internet can be a simple response to stress or boredom.

Recognizing the causes of your bad habits is crucial to overcoming them. In some way, these behaviors provide a benefit to you, even if they are unhealthy for you in other ways.

For example, opening your email inbox as soon as you turn on your computer might make you feel connected. At the same time, looking at those emails destroys your productivity, diverts your attention from the most important tasks, and overwhelms you with stress. Yes, it prevents you from feeling like you’re “missing out” … and so you do it again. Or it satisfies your curiosity. A very appealing seduction.

Commanding yourself to stop doing it will not work.  You need to replace a bad habit with a new habit that provides a similar benefit.

Most people try to go “cold turkey” or develop complicated plans. Actually, it can be very simple:

·      Implementing a daily exercise plan is easier than exercising 3 times per week.

·      Changing 10 meals will change 90% of your eating habits.

·      Learning a new skill or language can be accomplished with 5 minutes a day

There are a few keys to changing bad habits. Before you start to implement your habit change, create a plan based on these keys, so that you are well prepared and well positioned for success:

1. For each habit, identify your triggers. What situations trigger your (smoking, for instance) habit -- waking in the morning, having coffee, drinking alcohol, stressful meetings, going out with friends, driving, etc.? Identify all of them, for each habit. Stop the habit from becoming mindless; force yourself to have to think about the habit.  Make note of the date, time of day, your mood, where you were, what you were thinking. 

One thing that psychologists have begun to understand is that a lot of our everyday behavior is caused by circumstances in the world. Reflect on these common habits (that are usually good behaviors):

When your phone rings, you naturally go to answer it.

When you approach a red traffic light, you brake your car. 

When you go to the store to buy laundry soap, you usually buy the same product every time.

Your bad habits are often related to specific situations as well:

•                You might eat well at home, but order a large burger and fries at a restaurant.

•                You might drink too much when you spend time with particular friends. 

•                You might find that you smoke a cigarette whenever you get home in the evening.

•                You might bite your nails when you sit at your desk at work.

•                You might empty a bag of chips while watching TV.

Block habits by disrupting the specific actions that make up the habit.

2. For every single trigger, identify a positive habit you’re going to do instead.

What can you do when you can't avoid the situations where you often carry out your bad habits? 

There are two key things you can do to help yourself when you cannot change the environment. First, the reason why habits are hard to break is that the environment is suggesting a particular behavior you should carry out. Often, when you try to break a habit, you try to replace a behavior (say, biting your nails) with no behavior (not biting your nails). It is hard to learn to do nothing. 


If you chew your nails or eat while in bed, give yourself a manicure, type a blog with your notebook. Keep your hands busy. When you first wake in the morning, instead of smoking, what will you do? What about when you get stressed? When you go out with friends? Some positive habits could include: exercise, meditation, deep breathing, organizing, writing a blog, decluttering, etc.

3. For at least one month, focus entirely on being as consistent with your triggers as possible. That means, every single time those triggers come up, do the positive habit you identified instead of the negative one. The more consistent you are, the better the habit will form. If you sometimes do the new habit when the trigger occurs, and sometimes don’t, a strong new habit won’t form. Try to follow through each and every time. If, for some reason, you fail, extend the one-month period and try to be very consistent from that point onward.

4. Avoid some situations where you normally engage in your bad habit (drinking, smoking, snacking) to make it a bit easier on yourself.

Your habit learning system is trying to find things that you do all the time and learn to do them automatically so that you don't have to think about them. That means that your habit system will suggest a behavior whenever the right situation happens. The right situation is the one where that behavior has been done in the past. Your habit learning system doesn't know which behaviors you think are good ones and which ones you think are bad ones. It only knows that in a particular situation, you usually perform the same action, and so when you get into that situation again, it suggests that action again. 



An obvious way to help yourself break a bad habit, then, is to avoid the situations in which you usually do your bad habit. If you normally drink when you go out with friends, consider not going out for a little while. If you normally go outside your office with co-workers to smoke, avoid going out with them. This applies to any bad habit — whether it be eating junk food or doing drugs, there are some situations you can avoid that are especially difficult for someone trying to change a bad habit. Be aware that, when you go back to those situations, you will still get the old urges, and when that happens you should be prepared. Learn to recognize the urge before it gets too strong. At that point, you will probably be successful counteracting.

It is nearly impossible for an alcoholic to avoid drinking when they are in a situation where they used to drink. The habit learning system gives too strong a suggestion to drink for the person to overcome. 

Avoid both the people and the places where you carry out a bad habit. People are an important part of our environment, and they have a huge influence on our behavior.

Recently, there was research showing that if your friends are overweight, then chances are you will be overweight as well. Why does that happen? Partly, it happens, because our habit-learning system may associate certain people with certain kinds of eating habits. In addition, we support the behaviors of our friends and family in different ways.

5. Realize that your urges will be strong, but they will go away after a few minutes. They come in waves, but just ride out the wave. Find strategies for getting through the urges — deep breathing, self massage, eating frozen grapes, walking around, exercising, calling a friend who will support you.

6. Ask for help. Get your family and friends and co-workers to support you.

7. Staying affirmative is key! You will have unconstructive thoughts — the important thing is to realize when you’re having them, and push them out of your head. Squash them like a bug! Then replace them with a positive thought. “I can do this!“

With the right conditioning, you could automatically do what you normally need willpower for.

NEVER GIVE UP!

Day 1: Awareness will show you how to actually make a change.

1.    When does your bad habit actually happen?

2.    How many times do you do it each day?

3.    Where are you?

4.    Who are you with?

5.    What triggers the behavior and causes it to start?

Simply tracking these issues will make you more aware of the behavior and give you lots of ideas for stopping it.

Today, write down one bad habit you really want to change. Answer the above questions. Keep a “habit diary” this week.

Day 2: Yesterday, you wrote down the triggers that set off the undesired behavior. Today, for every single trigger you wrote, identify a positive habit you’re going to do instead. It should be something you enjoy almost as well, not a “punishment”!

Day 3: In most cases, people are after results – they want to lose weight, get a promotion, or master a skill. They don’t really consider behavior change or self-conditioning as such.

But forming a habit is different than just getting results. Some of the tactics are useless for getting results, but perfect for quickly conditioning a habit.

Getting results is much easier once you already have the habit. Being fit gets easy if you show up to the gym every day. Being a skilled writer is easier if you’re already writing each day. Good habits precede success.

Focusing on a daily habit, instead of 3 times a week, is better because the conditioning is stronger, you don’t have to decide “Do it today, yes or no”, and the habit becomes automatic faster. Since you exercise every day, it quickly becomes an automatic part of your routine.

Our brain loves routine even if we think we aren’t so crazy about it! The top 10 meals of the average person constitute 90% of what they end up eating. If variety were so important, why do people always eat the same meals? If you’re giving something up, focus on replacing the most common 80-90% of that habit. For the habit of eating well, plan 10 meals/snacks that appeal to you. Stick to just those for the next 30 days.

Today, you will pick a new, desired and success-promoting behavior to do all day today and every day this week. If you are using the behavior „prepare and eat a healthy meal“, do this behavior every time you eat. (You might have to take prepared meals with you.)  If you decide on being a non-smoker like in your healthier days, refrain from smoking all day. Decide what you are going to do instead (and where).If you are a writer, write one page (at least) "for the garbage bin". (Most songwriters know that a large percentage of their compositions are not good. That doesn't block them. They compose every day and toss the bad stuff!)

Perhaps  you are trying to conquer procrastination. Pick out an important task, event or activity you’ve been putting off and do it today. Or a good size portion of it, at least!

Day 4: We may be able to find the time for something important, but not the energy. Going to the gym, when it isn’t a habit, requires willpower. After a busy day, you probably don’t have a lot of spare willpower. If it is a habit, you won’t need so much self-discipline.

Today, find a time when you are feeling fit and awake. Exercise your new habit at this time. Your willpower muscle is still strong and you have enough energy.

Day 5: Make your habit a daily habit.

Woody Allen famously quipped, “80% of life is showing up.” With habits, the percentage is even higher and the trickiest part of establishing a habit is the first step. This is easy to understand intuitively. Exercising is mostly about that first step into the gym. (My first step is getting off the couch and to the fitness center. After that, I have no trouble.) Writing is mostly about filling up that blank page. Overcoming procrastination is mostly about the first five minutes of a task.

If the first step requires the most conscious control, then habituating that first step would cover most of the habit itself. This means that learning a new skill or language doesn’t need to begin with commitments to invest dozens of hours each week. Simply committing to starting for five minutes every day conditions you to performing the habit.

Once the conditioning period is over, it’s much easier to scale up your efforts. One way to do this is to commit to only the first step of your habit in a 30-day trial, with the rest being optional. For example, committing to jogging every day, but not committing to any specific workout length (allowing you to run for just 10 minutes if you really have little time). For some people, the first step is getting into the jogging shoes.

The advantage of this approach is that even though your commitment is minimal (5-15 minutes), in practice you’ll probably do the entire habit most of the time.

Today, focus on making the first 5-15 minutes of your habit your “must” every day during the next 30 days.

Sorry, during your conditioning phase there should be no exceptions. Just keep up the good work this weekend and the next 30 days. If you want to „upgrade“ to the next level after that time, please feel free.

Have a nice weekend.