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Studies have shown that about 40% of the activities we do each day are our habits. That means that almost HALF of everything we do is done without much thought or effort. Of course simple tasks like hitting the alarm, brushing our teeth, getting our coffee in the morning are mindless rituals that we wouldn’t think twice about. But there are deeper and sneakier habits that we may not even realize are dictating our lives.
That is a scary thought that we are only making about half of our daily choices with a conscious and active thought process. The good news is that we are not stuck in our habits. We have the power to change the course and be the author of are own lives. This may come with some time and effort, but we can write the narrative and create the life that we want to live.
In full transparency, I set out high hopes for myself at the beginning of the month, and hit the ground running with a mile high list of habits that I wanted to adapt in this new year. I will say that I am proud of a few changes, and have seamlessly transition into some of these new endeavors easily and fluidly. However, some habits have proven to be a little peaskier than expect and has brought awareness to how deep some of habits lie.
The first step in making any change is to bring awareness. We cannot make a conscious choice to change our ways if we do not know we are doing it in the first place. As I discussed in my recent blog post 4 Books to Read to Kick Start Your Business This Year, I read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and this book really made me take a hard look at my currents habits. Simply writing a goal down and saying you are going to accomplish it is not going to will it into existence. We must make a conscious effort to change the things that we do on a daily basis. And these small systems and habits can then start working for us and making us successful without mindless thought.
I wanted to write this post to give you REAL advice and experience on setting up positive habits and systems for success in this new year 2020. I have already failed and succeeded in these short first two weeks, but I believe I learned a few valuable lessons.
1. The 40% of our daily habits can be made up of mindless activities that are bringing us success without much effort.
The goal in setting up these new habits or systems is to have more of our mindless habits be comprised of things that are working in our favor without much thought or effort. But the Catch 22 is that it takes time and effort to get them to BECOME mindless. For example, I found myself constantly running to the grocery store after work to pick up yet another item we ran out of. Constantly making several trips to the grocery store each week was wasting unnecessary time each day.
So I decided to put a cute magnetic notebook on my fridge, where I would write the name of an item that I recently ran out of. Then when I ran to the store, I could pick up a bunch of items and limit my mindless mistakes. This simple and easy task, still took a conscious effort to adapt. I had to consciously remember to write it on the fridge and this took some time and patience. But now, I have already found myself mindlessly grabbing a pen to write an item down on the fridge when we need something.
So my point is that sometimes it is those small and what seems like insignificant changes that can actually save of time and effort in the future. But we have to make that conscious effort in the beginning to make these habits mindless.
2. The “cue” before the habit is just as vital as the habit itself.
As I begun implementing these new habits at the start of the month, I found it easy to adapt and change as my schedule was smooth and the cues that signaled my response for the habit were on track and normal. But I noticed that my “cue” went missing, so did my habit. For example, my mom came into town the second week. I had briefly forgotten that her visit was coming up, and my new habits were thrown for a loop because my daily cues got off track. I have found it MORE difficult to transition back into these habits and have almost had to start over and work extra hard to bring them back to life. My point is that we have to be aware of the other little habits that surround the habit we are looking to change. It is a snowball effect. If one habit goes off track, this often signals a chaos of habits loosing control.
3. We always go back to the pleasurable habits. So make the new habit PLEASURABLE.
When we loose site of our habit or we get off track do to a lost cue, we always resort to the behavior that was the most pleasurable in the past. I believe it is almost a survival tactic that we have as humans. For example, if you were support to eat dinner at the table that night, but you had to run to the grocery store to grab things you forget, this made you miss the cue to start dinner at the usual time. Once you got home from the grocery store, you were extra hungry and this desire to eat made you forget that you were supposed to set the table and eat there as a family. You found yourself grabbing your pasta dinner and bringing it to the couch to eat and watch Netflix because you were just so tired and hungry and wanted to “relax.” You see how one small adjustment in a cue can mess up a whole spiral of habits.
So if you want to start a new habit, it must bring some sort of pleasure. Sitting in front of the couch to watch tv while you eat obviously brings you an immediate sense of pleasure. But you end up being frustrated in the long run because you binged on too many shows and forgot to do the other tasks that you had set yourself up to do. So if you really do want to make that habit of eating at the table happen, you need to find a way to make it pleasurable i.e light candles, play music, and have delightful conversation as a family. We always revert to what brings us pleasure. So tricking out brain that our new habit also brings us pleasure is a sure way to make that new habit stick.
Have patience with yourself as you set up these new habits and systems. We want our habits to be working mindlessly to bring us success. But it will take that up front time and effort to make the mindless. Don’t make my mistake of trying to take on too much at once. Take on only a few at time, and as you master them you can add more along the way.
What are some of your habits and systems that you plan on setting up for this new year? Did you read the book Atomic Habits? What are your thoughts?
Thanks so much for reading.
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