Connecting the dots.
Since the end of December I have had to drive to the airport a different way.
I have been driving in to Logan airport for 30 years, sometimes 3 times a week. When I have to get up and go to the airport at 4:00 AM I can get there, literally, with my eyes closed.
I spoke to you last week about how I organize my travel and packing routines so that they are rote and habitual. They just happen. I don’t have to think about it.
In December they closed the Callahan Tunnel from Boston to Logan airport. This meant I would have to take a different route to the airport. This route isn’t much longer, or worse than my habitual route, but I hate it and it stresses me out. Why?
If you were to hook me up to a brain wave machine you would see that when I drove my old route my neurons were barely firing. I could travel that route without turning my brain on. If you watched my brain on the new route you’d see my brain working hard the whole way.
That’s the difference habit makes.
I read a book over the last couple weeks that seemed to arrive at the right time. It was “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. It wasn’t a great book. It wasn’t all that well written. But it showed up at the right time in my life to connect the dots of many of the things I think and teach and write about.
In fact, the prediction software at Amazon probably knew it was the right book at the right time and put it in front of me at the right price so I would buy it!
This is a good time of year to think about habit. People are trying to lose weight or get consistent in their exercise routines or do something positive in their careers.
Why do you care about habits?
First, habits will allow you to ‘automate’ the more mundane aspects of your life – like driving to the airport or packing for a trip. It will make you mindful that you are doing some things on ‘automatic pilot’, whether for good or for bad.
If it wasn’t for our habits we’d have to think about every mundane task we do and our brains couldn’t cope. Habits allow us to focus our big brains on more important things.
When you understand what habits are and how they are formed it give you the power to re-program yourself. It will allow you to untangle your sticky bad habits and potentially replace them with good habits.
What is the basic science of a habit?
Habits are automatic routines that we do subconsciously. They consist of three parts
- A cue or trigger
- The routine itself
- A reward
For example; when you get up in the morning you probably brush your teeth. The cue is the time of day and getting up. The routine is getting your toothbrush, toothpaste and brushing your teeth. The reward is the tingly minty freshness. If you couldn’t brush you teeth when you got out of bed it would really bother you because it is an ingrained habit.
This is what makes bad habits so hard to break. You’ll notice that ex smokers when they see someone on TV light up a cigarette the ex-smoker will unconsciously crave a cigarette and look around for their pack. Seeing that person light up on TV was the cue to kick off the old routine.
If you examine the habits you’d like to modify you can figure out what the cue is. Maybe it’s the time of day or the person you are with or a commercial or some combination that causes you to get up every night and wander to the fridge to grab a cookie?
It’s very hard to just stop an existing habit. It takes willpower. And studies have shown that willpower is finite. Will power is actually just like a muscle. It gets tired. That is why you are more likely to have a cue that reverts you to a bad habit when you are tired or worn down. Like that cookie in the fridge at night when you’re tired.
You can work on building up your willpower muscle by making consistent small good habit decisions but it is very difficult to make your brain run counter to a habit.
It’s much easier to co-opt the existing habit. For example if I just replaced the cookie with a glass of water or a carrot when I get up off the couch to wander over to the fridge maybe I could leave the rest of the habit alone. Unfortunately a carrot may not produce the same reward as a cookie.
The final piece of the puzzle that you need to change a habit is simply the belief that you can change. If you think you can do it you can. If you don’t think you can do it then you won’t change. Don’t overlook the belief step because this is the first step.
How to we re-engineer a habit?
The first step is to believe in the change. Do whatever it takes to believe in the future state. This often takes the form of goals or even repeating some affirmations of the belief every day until you internalize it.
The second step is to identify the components of the habit you want to change. What is the cue? What is the routine that is kicked off by the cue? What is the reward?
The cue can be a location, a time, your emotional state, other people or a preceding action or event. “You always eat buttered popcorn at the movies.” “You always eat more when your depressed.” Once you identify the cue you can eliminate it, isolate yourself from it or, at the very least come up with a strategy.
Your strategy will be to recognize the cue and then change your routine. For instance I know if I’m watching TV I’m going to get up during the commercial break and wander into the kitchen looking for something to eat. What if I recognized the cue and instead did 10-20 pushups during the commercial break then got a glass of water?
See how it works? You can have fun with it. Keep a log and see if you can’t find different ways to re-engineer your habits in your favor.
Keystone Habits
You and I are lucky. We are endurance athletes. We already understand the importance of keystone habits. These are habits that you can create or change that will have a cascading effect on your life. Creating the habit of running every day will also change your eating habits and have a positive influence in your personal and professional life.
That means you don’t have to re-engineer all your habits. Look at all the habits you’d like to change and identify the keystone habits. Where can you do your engineering work where it will have the greatest leverage?
Life events are habit moments of truth
Have you ever noticed how people will be able to make radical changes to their lives as the result of life events? We all know the divorced individual who gets in fantastic shape. We all know those people who got bad news from the doctor and were scared into a healthy lifestyle.
These life events are powerful because they break the familiar patterns in our lives and in doing so disrupt our habits. When our habits are in disarray we can introduce new ones.
You don’t have to wait for a near death experience or a divorce to change your habits. You can use this knowledge to your advantage. If you have a particularly sticky bad habit pattern don’t worry about re-engineering it. Just break the pattern. Go to a different place. Do something radically different (like going outside to run barefoot in the snow drifts during a commercial break instead of eating that cookie.)
Running a marathon can be a life event that puts people in a new pattern. Getting your ass kicked by a marathon can break your patterns.
Summary:
Once you understand the habit loop of cue-routine-reward you can recognize them in your life. Once you recognize them you can start to re-engineer them. Look for keystone habits to concentrate on first. For particularly deep habits you may have to do something radical to blow up the pattern.
By the way this all works when you’re trying to change the culture of an organization too.
Before any of this will work you need to believe in the change. The simplest thing is often the hardest.
Repeat after me, (you might want to write this down):
“I believe I have control over myself, my life and my destiny. I believe I can become better if I choose to. I believe I have the free will to change. I can do anything. I can be anything. I am not afraid.”