Why Habits Make you Successful — and 5 Ways to Get Started
“You have the same amount of time each day as Oprah. Everyone gets 24 hours.” That internet-ism has always bugged me because it’s a little trite and also it’s convicting. How does Oprah do so much more than me or you?
If your first answer is something like “privilege” or “money” keep in mind Oprah came from a broken household, was piss-poor growing up, suffered sexual abuse, racism, and sexism and has still accomplished more than any of us.
So, the answer isn’t as simple as tired political troupes. Getting the answer right is the difference between empowerment and permanent victimhood.
And I think the answer has more to with forest roads and NASA rockets than privilege.
The Power of Habit — Roads and Rockets
Imagine sitting in a little Honda Civic at the edge of a Pacific Northwest forest, the kind of place Bigfoot likes to hang. You need to drive just one mile, but the only thing connecting you to town is a small footpath, and all you have to make the road better is a machete. How long is it going to take you?
You’re probably never going to make it, to be honest.
Now imagine the same forest. But someone has already cut down the trees, cleared the timber and laid beautiful, smooth asphalt.
Now how long will it take you to get there in your affordable sedan?
That’s the difference between someone who has habits and someone who doesn’t. Habits are paths we have taken so many times that we’ve turned them wide, paved roads. A new neural network has been built into our brain and thoughts and actions that were impossible before become as natural as breathing.
Or think of habits like a rocket leaving the earth.
The amount of energy needed to leave the earth’s atmosphere is immense — it takes the space shuttle around 16 million horsepower.
Have you ever watched a Saturn V rocket take off on its way to the moon? Notice how relatively slow it’s going at first?
That’s what it is like to build a new habit. It’s slow and takes a lot of energy, like leaving the earth’s atmosphere. But the higher you go, the easier it gets, and when you get to space, it takes almost no energy at all. You can be clipping along at 24,000 mph and not even break a sweat.
Compare that to someone on earth who, still fighting with gravity every day to get up.
That’s the difference between having a habit and not having a habit.
Why The Free Spirit Always Ends Up a Slave
That being said, I hate habits.
I told myself in my early 20s that I’m a free spirit: I can go anywhere and do anything anytime I want and that’s what makes life exciting.
It took many wasted years and intermittent bouts of depression to be able to rethink that mindset.
Let me give my fellow Millennials a new frame: habits and routines are *liberating*, not limiting.
Millennials are savvy, creative, and have a deep desire to make the world a better place. These are all good things. But they lag in professional and personal achievements, and this has led to a ubiquitous generational guilt which breeds depression.
Though it’s popular to blame the economy, or boomers, or privilege, the truth is you and I don’t control these things. No one person can or does. But we do control ourselves. If we want to make our world — our experience — better then we need to start with our own choices.
Instead of trying to change the world in order to better ourselves, we should try to better ourselves in order to change the world.
The point is, you don’t control the world, but you do control yourself. If you want to reach your potential — which is the freedom and fulfillment millennials ultimately want — it’s time to build some healthy habits.
Though healthy habits aren’t the only key to success, they play a huge part. Because you have limited time and energy you have to limit what you spend those resources on, and spend them as efficiently as possible. That’s why true freedom will always require personal limitations. Freedom isn’t being able to do anything, it’s being able to do the things you want to do.
So, for people like me who hate habits, what is the best way to start heading in the right direction?
How To Start a Habit: 5 Quick Tips
Start Small — Micro-Habits
Since starting a habit is the hardest part, start by making it the easiest. I like to use “micro-habits” to get started.
Say you want to exercise more. Set up a goal each day that is so small that you know you can achieve it i.e. doing 5 pushups a day or doing 5 crunches a day.
These are habits so small, you can’t not do it because it takes less than a minute and you’d be ashamed if you didn’t do it. It’s something you could bust out right before bed if you needed to.
Or let’s say you want to read more, so you decide to read a chapter a day. But reading a chapter a day might be more than you can honestly do at the moment, it certainly was for me.
So just try to read a page a day. Or even just a paragraph. Whatever amount that makes you say to yourself, “of course I can do that.” If you still can’t do that habit, then make the threshold of accomplishment lower until you can.
Here’s the magic of micro-habits: they grow, like seeds in rich soil. You’ll never be fit just doing 5 pushups or be well-read just reading a sentence a day. But momentum breeds momentum, and usually, after you start, you won’t want to stop.
And don’t feel like you need to do keep doing more right away. If you’ve accomplished whatever your goal was, congratulate yourself. You accomplished something! After you can accomplish your small goals easily, you can set bigger goals later — and you’ll be capable of actually accomplishing them.
Start with the Easiest Thing
Along the same lines, if there’s some habit you’ve been putting off, just start with the easiest, smallest step you can think of.
Want to learn to build websites? Maybe just do one Google search today — and then pat yourself on the back when you are done. Do two tomorrow. On day three take notes. Day four, maybe you can take the first, easiest steps in applying what you’ve read.
Want to build a habit of journaling? Just write one sentence today. If that’s too hard, find a notebook you like, or open a Google Doc.
Maybe you want to learn to cook. Write down one thing you want to learn to make. The next day, just Google it. On day three maybe you can get the first two ingredients assembled and ready.
Set a smaller goal, and achieve that first. It doesn’t matter how small your first step is because it is always more than doing nothing.
Treat Yo’ Self
There’s a bit of Pavlov’s dog in all of us, and that means we can train ourselves exactly like the way Pavlov did that salivating mutt: associate good behavior with rewards.
When you accomplish something, find a way to reward yourself. There’s a small dopamine hit when you can check something off your to-do list (that’s what makes micro-habits so great) but look for other ways to reward yourself as well.
Maybe you like taking walks but feel guilty because of how much time it takes. Set some activity as the “price of the walk” e.g. once I have done my daily exercise routine I can go for a walk.
Maybe you’re addicted to Facebook. Try setting a rule that for every half hour of getting ahead on homework, you can spend 15 minutes on Facebook guilt-free.
Healthy snacks are great rewards! As long as you actually like them, use them exactly as Pavlov did with his dog. Give yourself a treat every time you do something you want to make into a habit. That will train you to keep doing it because you associate it with something you like.
You’ll have to negotiate with yourself — and learn to do it fairly. If you made a deal that you could get whatever drink at Starbucks you wanted if you finished doing all the chores at home, don’t skimp when you get to Starbucks. If you promised yourself half an hour of TV once you finished writing for an hour that day, sit down and enjoy that TV session! So often we are our own tyrants thinking that somehow makes us stronger when in fact it just trains us to not trust ourselves.
Reward yourself when you do well and treat yourself fairly.
Avoid Burn Out
There are times to grind, but when you’re starting a habit isn’t one of them. If your habit makes you resent the activity, just stop — you won’t do something regularly if you can’t appreciate the process. Either reduce the time and effort you spend creating that habit or just abandon it.
This is the inverse of the treat yourself principle. Just like you should associate habits you want to build with rewards, you also don’t want to associate new habits with pain or negativity, if you can help it.
If you work out so much that you are sore (in a miserable way) the next day, then you will associate fitness with a bad kind of pain which will destroy your new habit.
Keep it light and simple starting out. When your body is stronger it will be able to handle more. And when you are more in love with the process, you’ll be able to get sorer and endure more pain with creating negative associations.
At the beginning of making a new habit, go easy on yourself. Focus on just establishing some pattern of behavior first before you ramp up. You’ll never get where you want to go right away — every journey takes time.
Code Your Days
Have you ever got up to do something and then immediately forgotten what you meant to do? This is called the “Doorway Effect”: our brains use our surroundings to organize our thoughts.
Thus, when you were in the living room you knew what you needed, but when you went into the kitchen, your brain turned on kitchen mode. You’re in a new context, and so your brain serves up the info you normally need in that context — not what you wanted in the living room.
It’s like free autopilot software that comes with being human. For example, when you first learn to drive, it takes up all your mental power to do it well. After doing it for years, some people (for better or worse) barely have to think about, it’s like riding a bike. This is what allows us to listen to audiobooks, talk, or daydream while driving without (always) crashing.
You can use this free mental software to program your brain for certain tasks.
Map out certain parts of your day for specific tasks. Some people save the early morning for meditation or prayer or writing. Others will block off 9:30 to 11:00 for intense work sessions, reserved for high ROI activities. Point is, once you have coded certain parts of your day for certain tasks, those tasks are easier to do during those times because your brain is expecting to do them.
You can also use space or clothing to program your mind. Work-out clothes are great because once you get in them, it helps turn on the “work-out” mode in your brain. Saving certain spaces for specific activities is also very powerful. Save the bedroom for sleep and sex, don’t put a TV in it, save the TV for the living room and couch. Save the office or study nook for intense work.
Conclusion
Obviously, habits aren’t Oprah’s only reason for success. And some people do have advantages over other people.
But habits are a hugely powerful tool available to everyone, and they are the best way to optimize each hour of your life. They are the difference between a life frittered away on social media and Netflix and one spent deliberately building toward your goals and aspirations.
Making a better life for yourself is not about sleeping only 3 hours a day. It’s not about quitting your day job to pursue your dreams. It’s not about cutting off all connections with your friends and family (though sometimes you will need to grind, and they will understand). It’s not about turning into a machine.
It’s about settling the vast western forests of your days. Take the millions of acres of unused minutes and turn them into a fertile country. Build a rocket that can free you from whatever social or personal gravity weighing you down.
Habits allow you to make the most of your most valuable resource, the only thing you can’t make more of: time.
Habits don’t trap you, they free you. They don’t limit you, they make your limits unknown. The more you can leverage your time, the more you can accomplish in your life.
What’s something you want to achieve or learn? What’s a habit that will get you there? You’ve got the time. Go and build those habits.
