How to Hack Your Habits
Habits are difficult to build and getting them to stick can feel impossible. That’s why experts around the world offer up simple advice, they say that you need to start things slow and steady, that you need to take it easy. They say “don’t spread yourself too thin or bite off more than you can chew”.
But I’m hungry! Hungry to reach further, to push beyond what was previously thought possible, to grab my habits by the balls and say “this time I’m gonna do things”!
Okay, I’m actually one of those chicks that says that you should keep things simple and only build one habit at a time. After all, It might take one habit to kickstart many other positive changes in your life.
But it’s important every once in a while to do the opposite of what you’re told. So I thought about this if I were to build three habits over 30 days. How would I go about it? What would I do? And what might I learn that could help you guys develop habits on your own, especially if you’re impatient?
I started out by creating a list of all the habits I currently wanted to bring into my life. Then I thought about which three of these might overlap with each other, which ones relate enough that they could happen around the same time. I ended up with drink more water, do more cardio and read more books.
Since it’s difficult to read while jogging I decided to listen to audiobooks. So to make this as easy as possible for myself this month, I decided to build these three habits into a pre-established routine. I already go to the gym five days a week. So the only thing I’m doing is bringing along a water bottle, having an audiobook prepared, and actually using the cardio equipment this time.
Our lives are a series of unconscious habits, they ensure we don’t have to make decisions every day about what to eat for breakfast what media to consume, and whether or not we should floss. And these foundational habits are being built whether you like it or not.
In a lot of ways the fact that we have these mindless automatic behaviors, it’s a pretty good system that evolution has designed. I mean if you think about it from a very high level, as you go throughout life you are facing problems and some of those problems are big problems and some of them are small ones like you need to tie your shoe. Whenever you come across a solution to the problem that you’re facing and you repeat it again and again your brain starts to automate that.
The role that habits play in our lives, is that there are these mental shortcuts, these kinds of automatic scripts that you can play whenever the situation or the context is right and they free up cognitive resources to focus your attention elsewhere. You can choose to let yourself check email or social media or you can decide to build more positive habits, like drinking water, meditating, or getting eight hours of sleep a night.
Of course, it’s easier said than done. But, if we’re able to master our habits, we can master our lives. It gets to the point where it’s reflexive, automatic. That’s the point that we want to get to, where it becomes so much more difficult not to do the habit than it is to actually do it. I
vary my cardio from low to high impact, from the stair-master to the bike, to the treadmill. When traveling, I laced up and hit the streets. I set a small threshold for each habit that I had to reach every day. So that meant 10 minutes of cardio, which tracked on any machine. 60 ounces of water which measures out to exactly 3 refills of my water bottle, and 30 minutes of listening to audiobooks. I didn’t track this, it was a roundabout measurement.
I didn’t want to go to the gym today, but once you get in the doors once you get on the elliptical, or the treadmill, or the stair-master or whatever and get your heart moving, it feels good. You know, I’m glad I went, I’m actually beat now. Before this month, I would go to the gym four or five, sometimes six days a week. It would be very rare that I would actually break a sweat because I just never did cardio and it feels good.
Instead of forcing myself to go 30 days straight as I have done with the other 5 thirty day challenges that I’ve done this year, I want it to be a little bit more realistic because these are three habits that I want to bring into my life, and I don’t want to overdo it. So, I decided to enact what I call the two-day rule. It’s a rule that I’ve implemented into my gym habit for years in the past and it’s helped me to stay on course and it’s also given me the time to relax and to take a break. With the 2 day rule, it’s very simple. I don’t let myself take 2 days off in a row. I could take one day off, I can take multiple days off in a week, but having two days off in a row I know from my experience that it’s so much more likely for me to have 3, 4, 5 days off. Then I completely lose track of the habit and I stop going to the gym completely.
So I had a long, full day today. I didn’t have a chance to go to the gym in the morning and I skipped yesterday. So that means that according to the two-day rule today I have to go to the gym in the morning. That’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions to this rule and that I don’t break it. It’s gonna happen, life’s gonna get in the way.
Don’t see the 2-day rule as this “etched in stone” Bible that you have to follow, like oh “I got to keep the 2-day rule going cuz Marta said that, that’s what she does…” It’s gonna be fine. Take a day off if you have to, take two days off if you need it. But for the most part, if you look over a year and you stick to the two-day rule, with the habits that are important to you- I think you’re gonna find that it’s really gonna help you stick through with them.
As the weeks went by, I found it easy to follow through on my goal. Even though I was building three habits at the same time. It’s been the easiest out of all my challenges this year since I worked it into my established gym routine. It removed most of the friction I experience. Like trying to remember to meditate or take cold showers.
So, instead of doing my cardio at the end of my workouts when I’m tired I decided to bring them to the very beginning because I knew it would be that much more difficult for me to come up with any excuses not to do the cardio. If it’s the first thing I’m not gonna forget about it, either. I swear it’s so easy for me to come up with excuses whether it’s “I don’t have my workout shirt” or “I don’t have any clean clothes” or “I’m a little bit tired from yesterday’s workout” my brain will come up with all these excuses for why I shouldn’t.
I want to make it as easy as possible and do the most painful thing first which at the moment for me is cardio. The simple 10-minute cardio session at the beginning of my workout acted to kickstart my other habits in a way that I didn’t expect.
Once I left the gym I didn’t let my water bottle leave my side. It was the only vessel I drank water out of which made it much easier for me to track and make sure that I got the full 60 ounces I aimed for.
Also by listening to an audiobook with my workout I was more likely to want to continue listening to it in the car and even later that night. Especially when I got into a captivating listen, like ‘The Obstacle is The Way’ by Ryan Holiday, my favorite book of the year. It shows how you can overcome some of life’s most difficult challenges through stoicism. I recommend you check it out on Audible!
So, after 30 days I feel amazing! I feel good. I have not felt this good in a long time. I feel more alert,I feel like I have more energy. I have more interesting things to talk about, a lot more passion and creativity for my work and I cannot wait to continue to build these rules into the future!
