Building Habits

An everyday system, TM, is a simple, commonsense solution to an everyday problem, grounded by a pun or metaphor. Propose/discuss new systems here.
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NoelFigart
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Building Habits

Post by NoelFigart » Thu Feb 07, 2008 2:47 pm

I love the simplicity and intelligence of the No S diet, but I confess I've never stuck to it well for a significant stretch.

Part of it is that while I love breakfast, I got out of the habit of being a breakfast eater. (There's not much worse that you can do to throw yourself off and encourage yourself to snack, I know!)

Part of it is that I never threw off the guilt of being an idiot on S days.

Part of it was that I was developing an alcohol problem and was concentrating more on the glass ceiling than on No S, as I considered the other the problem I wanted to concentrate on first....

Which brings me to an interesting point.

I'll go whole hawg to "get healthy" and exercise regular and eat right and and and and without taking the time to add habits gradually. Because I'd go hammer and tongs at something, I'd get tired of it and quit.

When I realized I had the whole glass ceiling down just fine, and just wasn't CONSIDERING breaking it (it just stopped being an effort at all), I decided to give No S a good try again. After I get that down pat, I'm gonna start a daily habit of 15 minutes of strength building exercise first thing when I get up on weekdays.

I don't know how it is for other people, but I think that for me, working on one thing at a time might be the way to go.

I was wondering how other people did with habits. Does taking it one thing at a time work for you?

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Thu Feb 07, 2008 3:22 pm

One at a time is VERY important. At least for the first break in period.

People tend to mess up not because they aren't ambitious enough, but because they're overambitious. They take on too much, and as soon as it inevitably becomes too much and they slip, their sense of perfectionism is outraged and they give up in a fit of righteous self-revenge.

A structure that helps enforce "one new habit at a time" is monthly resolution: every month, focus on no more than one big change at a time. This structure is valuable for a number of reasons:

1. it narrows your focus. you are more likely to succeed when you have a single objective

2. you don't worry so much about all the other habits you'd like to change someday because you know that next month you get another chance. 12 new habits a year is A LOT (judging by most peoples success at new year's resolutions, 1 is a lot). You can even make a list of potential future monthly resolutions if it helps to get them off your chest (I've been doing this in a box on my Big Picture sheet).

3. a month is enough to build some serious habit -- 21 days plus some buffer. But not so long that you have to wait long for the next resolution interval if you find the current one just isn't working (one reason why new year's resolutions are such a terrible idea): every new month is a blank slate, a reboot, an opportunity to dust yourself off and get on a new track.

4. a month is clearly defined. You can't suddenly decide that you want to change the meaning of "february" and load up on extra habits halfway through the month. If you use the habitcal (or a regular paper calendar) you can further leverage this pre-existing temporal structure to track and encourage compliance in a simple and visually compelling way.

As for guilt on excessive S days, I'm going to address that in detail in my next podcast episode. Stay tuned...

Reinhard

kccc
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Post by kccc » Thu Feb 07, 2008 4:40 pm

Reinhard, I will look forward to that podcast!

The one that has helped me best thus far is the "Strictness" one, particularly the part about "no retribution." But I still struggle sometimes about S-day idiocy-guilt.

Noel, I have tended to do the same thing as you in the past. Monthly resolutions have helped (which I did even before Reinhard). But I had to beware of "sneaking in" extra resolutions in addition to my "official" ones. I can do a lot, but not all at once.

I also have started building in rewards. With the time I used to spend perma-snacking (yes, it can fill big blocks!), I'm reading or knitting. I've started taking a knitting class, and am enjoying it more than I thought possible.

Learning to knit was actually an exercise in addressing perfectionism. I read somewhere that part of the problem was wanting to skip over the "awkward beginner stage" - or just quit entirely when faced with it. Or, to give up at the first failure.

So, the recommendation was to pick something you'd kind of like to do that wasn't critical... learning a new language, musical instrument, or skill were suggested... and BE A BEGINNER at it. Practice the skill regularly, so you could learn to trust the process, and SEE and INTERNALIZE that practice will build skill over time.

But mostly, learn to live with - and even enjoy - being a beginner. Experience it as non-threatening, and normal. Learn to coach yourself through hard parts. Develop strategies for when things aren't perfect. See the power of persistence.

At this point, my knitting is getting good enough that I may have to find another skill to learn, lol! (Though there's still an awful lot I can learn about knitting, people have stopped believing me when I claim to be a beginner.) But much more importantly, I've learned a lot that is continuing to transfer to the rest of my life.

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Post by sgtrock » Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:50 am

This is without a doubt my #1 weakness. I tend to get over-enthusiastic about something and push myself too far too fast. Then I find out about all the *other* ancillary things you can do that are similar to the new habit and want to start them as well. But all that does is dilute my mental focus and the original effort starts to slip.

Case in point: my wife bought me a Garmin Forerunner 305 for Christmas, and I fell in love with it so much that after only running 2 5k runs per week for the past 9 months (and taking most of Christmastime off, no more than 2 miles a week for a couple of weeks) I immediately upped my mileage to 11 miles in one week AND boosted the intensity (well, I just HAD to try out the heart-rate monitor part of it).

Now I've barely run in a month because I have Achilles bursitis in my right heel, painful as all hell. Today was only the second day I ran half a mile, and only after downing 1000mg of Tylenol. Unfortunately I have a test coming up so I can't afford to stay off my feet any longer, or I'd just wait for it to fully heal. Oh well.

I think the key is focused intensity, focusing on one thing at a time and blocking out all others until you complete the task before you. This is THE HARDEST thing for me to do, because I jump around mentally so fast that I find it hard to focus on any one thing. So *mentally* I know this, but emotionally (or whatever it is) I don't.

Incidentally Reinhard, I'm a programmer as well, and this same problem affects me in that role as well. I don't just want to learn a new language, I want to completely understand it in all aspects, even though that is really impossible. And since I can't, I wind up getting discouraged and dropping it before I really get too far into it. Right now I have to learn J2EE for my job and am forcing myself to take it one step at a time. So far it seems to be working.

The more I mess with your systems and the more I think about my own past successes and failures (mostly failures), the more I believe this is THE KEY to what you have created. Your systems are fun as hell so you WANT to do them, and you've figured out how to hack your own mind to bend it to your will. Outstanding job.

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Post by reinhard » Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:59 pm

sgtrock,

It seems paradoxical, but throttling your interests is the key to sustaining them. It's a little like tai chi: move as slowly as possible while still moving. The really hard part is not the progress, but limiting your progress, wrestling with your initial enthusiasm to build sustainable habits. If you recognize that that's the real challenge, you can then enlist some of your enthusiasm against itself. Hard core is soft core is hard core.

I remember when I started programming professionally in the late 90s it was possible to get ALL the books on a particular technology. If you wanted to be a monster perl hacker, all you needed was the llama book, the camel book, and the jaguar book. Coming from a previous career as a librarian, this was very appealing to me. But now narrow sub-technologies have shelves of books devoted to them -- by the time you plowed through them all, the technology would be obsolete. Knowing what to ignore is as important as knowing what to learn. So I now resist my obsessive, bibliophile impulses and focus on the problem I have to solve -- I'll google the technological bits as needed. Surprisingly, this isn't just more effective, it's actually more fun: problems are more interesting than technologies.

Reinhard

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david
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Post by david » Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:34 pm

This is an excellent thread. Thanks, everyone, I was planning on going full bore with something next week and it probably would have burned me out. I'll take it a bit slower now!

--david

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Jaymiz
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Post by Jaymiz » Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:37 pm

sgtrock wrote:This is without a doubt my #1 weakness. I tend to get over-enthusiastic about something and push myself too far too fast. Then I find out about all the *other* ancillary things you can do that are similar to the new habit and want to start them as well. But all that does is dilute my mental focus and the original effort starts to slip.

I think the key is focused intensity, focusing on one thing at a time and blocking out all others until you complete the task before you. This is THE HARDEST thing for me to do, because I jump around mentally so fast that I find it hard to focus on any one thing. So *mentally* I know this, but emotionally (or whatever it is) I don't.

I don't just want to learn a new language, I want to completely understand it in all aspects, even though that is really impossible. And since I can't, I wind up getting discouraged and dropping it before I really get too far into it.
Wow... This sounds SO MUCH like me! I, too, need the "one focus at a time" thing, and this "monthly resolution" thing sounds helpful -- I'm starting to give it a try!

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Jaymiz
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Post by Jaymiz » Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:42 pm

reinhard wrote:If you wanted to be a monster perl hacker, all you needed was the llama book, the camel book, and the jaguar book. Coming from a previous career as a librarian, this was very appealing to me. -- by the time you plowed through them all, the technology would be obsolete. Knowing what to ignore is as important as knowing what to learn. So I now resist my obsessive, bibliophile impulses and focus on the problem I have to solve
LOL.... I'm a bibliophile at heart, too (though, still waiting for the right life-circumstances -- read, finances -- to be able to go back to school and get my MLIS degree!). And, my friend likes to say that I've been "chasing rabbits" concerning weight loss... reading every book out there, looking for that "magic cure" that will fix my weight problem. I have read more weight loss / diet / health books than you'd like to know (see http://gethealthyreviews.blogspot.com for the list!).

Have yet to try out NoS and see if it's the "cure" I've been looking for! LOL.

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