Open thetrevorharmon opened 1 year ago
thetrevorharmon
commented
3 months ago make the goal so easy to hit at first that it takes very little effort. if you want to workout daily, set the minimum bar not to be "workout for x amount of minutes" but something so simple as "do something intentional toward moving your body". what counts?
thetrevorharmon
commented
3 months ago ensure that the habit corresponds to an identity change. if you say "I want to work out every day until my vacation", you are setting an end date for the habit. But if it is "I want to live an active lifestyle", you are building a habit into your identity and that ensures long-term change
thetrevorharmon
commented
3 months ago In 2020, I was facing a dilemma. It was during the summer of the start of the pandemic, and despite having a lot of time on my hands, I struggled to get certain things done. There were a couple of daily habits that I felt like I should be doing, but most days I arrived at the end of the day with those habits still left undone.
The first habit was reading scriptures. Despite believing that it was an important spiritual practice for my life, I never seemed to find the time for it. The second habit was working out. I knew that, as I was beginning to age, exercise was becoming more important for my brain and body–but despite having lots of time, I was still a perpetual couch potato.
One day in August 2020, while I was reflecting on my inability to read scriptures daily, I had an internal conversation that went something like this:
Me: I can't seem to find the time to read my scriptures daily Also me: Oh yeah? Don't you play guitar every day though? Me: Well yeah... Also me: And don't you spend hours of time on your phone every day? Me: Yeah...
I realized that I would never have the time until I made the time. In that moment I had a bit of an "aha" moment, where I decided to internalize the habit into becoming part of my identity. I decided I wanted to become the kind of person who reads scripture every day. I defined "daily reading" as 15 minutes per day, and that I wouldn't take a single day off, ever. I downloaded a streaks app and started building a chain of days where I did the habit.
That fall I decided to hike Mount Mitchell with my brother. I started running as a way to train for the hike, and when the hike was over, I wanted to keep up my newly formed habit. But I knew from many broken new years resolutions that setting a daily goal of running a certain amount of days wasn't going to work for me. I decided to begin forming a habit but set the bar lower than before–much lower. The goal was not "go running for 30 minutes a day" but instead "do something deliberate every day to be active". The focus of the goal was the outcome of the lifestyle instead of trying to hit a certain level of effort every day.
It's been almost 1500 days and I still have that first streak going (the second streak has had to adapt after becoming a dad and having a kid in the mix). I have reflected on why I got that habit to stick, and I think it comes down to three things:
I feel like I discovered this part of the formula purely by accident. When I decided to become the kind of person who did the habit I wanted, I divided my life into the before and after. Once I had embraced my new identity as the kind of person who does the thing, it is less about "do I want to do this thing today?" and more about "who am I today? am I the person who I claim to be?" When my identity is at stake, it becomes much easier to have the energy to fulfill the habit.
Much has been said about how to set goals, with SMART goals being the framework that immediately comes to mind.
thetrevorharmon
commented
3 months ago In 2020, I was facing a dilemma. It was during the summer of the pandemic (well, the first summer), and despite having plenty of time on my hands, I found myself spending it poorly. There were a couple of daily habits that I wanted to implement, but most days I arrived at the end of the day with those habits still left undone. I decided to try to make some changes, and something happened that I didn't expect–it worked! While I had made many previous attempts that had failed, something was different that enabled me to actually turn these aspirations into reality.
Since then I have reflected on what I did differently, and it boils down to three key reasons:
The first change I wanted to make was reading scriptures. Despite believing that it was an important spiritual practice for my life, I never seemed to "find the time" for it. One day in August 2020, while I was reflecting on my inability to read scriptures daily, I had an internal conversation that went something like this:
Me: I can't seem to find the time to read my scriptures daily Also me: Oh yeah? Don't you play guitar every day though? Me: Well yeah... Also me: And don't you spend hours of time on your phone every day? Me: Yeah...
As a result of this conversation, I realized that I wasn't really the type of person who reads their scriptures every day–I was the type of person who read them sporadically. In that moment I had a bit of an "aha" moment, where I decided to internalize the habit into becoming part of my identity. I decided I wanted to become the type of person who reads scripture every day. I defined "daily reading" as 15 minutes per day, and determined that I wouldn't take a single day off, ever. I downloaded a streaks app and started building a chain of days where I did the habit.
When I decided to become the type of person who did the habit I wanted, I divided my life into the before and after. Once I had embraced my new identity as the type of person who does the thing, the experience became less about "do I want to do this thing today?" and more about "who am I today? am I the person who I claim to be?". When my identity was at stake, it was much easier to find the motivation to do the thing.
That fall I decided to hike Mount Mitchell with my brother. I started running as a way to train for the hike, and when the hike was over, I wanted to keep up my newly formed habit. But I knew from many broken new years resolutions that setting a daily habit of running a certain amount of days wasn't going to work for me. That approach often led to burnout followed by a long period of inactivity. Instead, I decided to begin forming a habit but set the bar lower than before–much lower.
My new habit was this: "do something intentional that works out your body". That's it. No time limit, no requirement for type of workout. I decided to make the habit so stupid easy that skipping out on it was worse than just doing something towards it. Sometimes that was 5 pushups at the end of the day, sometimes it was walking the dog, sometimes it was riding the stationary bike. The focus of the habit was the outcome of the lifestyle instead of trying to hit a certain level of effort every day.
By setting the habit to be something that was stupid easy, I found that I would end up doing more effort overall than the previous hit-hard-then-burnout method. I could keep the momentum of the habit going even on days when I was really busy or my schedule was upside down. It helped me avoid the guilt of breaking a habit and feeling like a failure.
In both of these cases, I found that tracking the habit every day was critical to keeping me on track. I looked at a few different habit or goal trackers, but ultimately the most important thing was simplicity. I shouldn't need to be elaborate or have any additional friction when tracking a habit beyond checking a box. I like the Seinfeld "don't break the chain" methodology, and have been using Streaks to manage my habits for 4 years (I highly recommend that app, it's the best one for tracking habits!).
Recently reached 1000 days of reading 15 min a day
Before that was inconsistent at best
A big part of the change was to internalize the person I wanted to become as a result of the habit, instead of focusing on the habit
It was also useful to have a very specific goal and to track it every single day
(There was an TikTok video about this, maybe reference that?)