Habits – its all about habits, really.
If we really want to be productive, effective, outgoing, happy-go-lucky kind of people, then it isn’t when we consciously do things, its making the extraordinary ordinary, as it were.
When I first read The 7 Habit If Highly Effective People, what struck me wasn’t so much the habits themselves, it’s that they were habits at all. It wasn’t called “The 7 Things That Successful People Do But Suckers Like You Will Never Be Able To Learn”. Granted, that would hit sales. But more importantly, it reinforces the fact that this is simply about learning to do something, then doing it so well that you automatically do it.
We need habits, of course. Imagine the pain in the ass if you had to get up each morning and decide, consciously, what to do – every morning. If you had to consciously think about and choose your route to work, the order you turned on the computer and whether to check your emails before you turned on the kettle.
Truth is much or our lives are simple things we do habitually – and here’s the problem. It seems our sub-conscious, which I guess handles these things we do automatically, doesn’t seem to care if something is good or bad for us, in any objective sense. It just wants to keep doing what it’s doing. Not only that, but since it takes care of so much of what we do, were at its mercy.
It doesn’t matter if our habit is eating too much, snacking, drinking too much coffee, going to bed too late, waking up at daft o’clock in the morning, taking on more work than we can do, or getting into stress. We seem to keep on doing it.
Even worse, our sub-conscious seems much more stubborn than our conscious mind. Any of us can think “right I’ll never ear chocolate again”, but will we do it? Doubtful. Our sub-conscious mind is waaay more stubborn.
And yet we learned these habits in the first place, we weren’t born doing them.
Seems that our sub-conscious learns through repetition. Many of our habits we either decided to do at some point in the past, or maybe just fell into doing path-of-least-resistance style, and did it often enough that we don’t think about it any more.
So, time for some action. I don’t have any wildly destructive habits (double vodka for breakfast, that kind of thing) so the habits in my life that I want to change are the daft ones.
For example, in the mornings I have to remember every day to put on moisturiser and hair-stuff (feel free to insult me for using moisturiser). Teeth, shower, no problem. Similarly I like to mediate in the mornings, but since i moved to London I’ve gotten out of the habit. Sometimes I put some washing in, if i remember, other times I forget. How good would it be if I did all of these things, every day, without even having to think?
So what I did was this –
- brainstormed out all the things Id like to do in the morning;
- narrowed it down to the realistic ones (out with the 100 sit ups for example, but kept in that I wouldn’t have anything with sugar in it for breakfast);
- wrote out a list in order that I wanted to do them;
- printed it and put in a place that I would see it (notice board in front room);
- put reminder in my phone with my alarm to check it.
The idea is that every day, for as long as it takes, I’ll get up, see the reminder, check the list and do everything on it, in order. Even if I work out a “more efficient” order of things, I won’t change. I’m trying to imprint a habit, not save time. Then, fingers crossed, in a week or a month or a year, I’ll have learned everything on it as habits and won’t have to think about it at all.
Now you might be thinking, “Dude, why not just let things flow instead of being so anal about it all”. Its back to that 7 Habits thing again. Some people, effective people I suppose, have some habits naturally. If you’re one of those people who makes no effort and just falls into positive, constructive, interesting habits, then cool, write up a blog and let me know how. With me, if i let it drift I sometimes fall into good habits, like showering as soon as I wake up, and sometimes fall into bad ones, like eating sweet waffles for breakfast.
So enniways – I’ll keep nagging away ay my sub-conscious and see how this habit develops. Success, failure, I’ll let you know.
