Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed…They shape our lives far more than we realize — they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.”
– Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
Not sure yet what habit you’d like to create first? Here’s an example from my own life. Getting myself into the habit of exercising in the morning is something I’d wanted to do for ages. At the time I started doing this, I was consuming a huge amount of energy trying to get myself to exercise. I’d plan elaborate workouts for myself, but alas, I’d always find an excuse to skip them. Since exercise is one of those things that I know brings great ease and power into my life—contributing dramatically to my physical, emotional, and intellectual strength—I decided that I needed to make it an automatic habit.
The first step in getting into a good habit is to spend some time actually designing the habit or routine that you’d like to get into. So instead of just saying to yourself, “I must exercise every day,” create a “flight plan” for yourself that would includes exactly what you’d like to do on autopilot.
The key is to figure out where the routine actually starts. Most morning routines actually originate for me the previous evening because what happens the night before can dramatically influence how tired I am in the morning, and therefore whether or not I’m able to do what I intend to do.
Here’s my “flight plan,” or the blueprint for my whole morning routine, which includes exercise (and begins the night before).
9:15 p.m.: Turn off all screens: TV, computer, phone, iPad (to prevent getting a second wind at night, which keeps me up too late).
Before bed: Put exercise clothes on chair next to bed, including shoes, heart rate monitor, headphones, and the armband that holds my phone.
About 10:00 p.m. (school nights): Lights out! Perhaps because this is now a habit, I generally fall right asleep.
Eight hours later: My alarm goes off—this is the trigger for my whole morning routine. After a quick trip to the loo, I’ll throw my exercise clothes on and then meditate for seven to twenty minutes. Although I know I’d get more out of this with a different and longer meditative practice, I’m more intrinsically motivated to listen to a guided meditation or to use the Headspace app. I like Deepak Chopra’s recordings because they are inspiring, which embeds a reward (inspiration is a positive emotion, which tells my brain that the practice is something that would be good to repeat). It might not have the same payoff, but it is certainly easier for me to get the elephant to do this than to do the Transcendental Meditation I’ve paid good money to learn how to do.
6:20ish: I let my dog Buster out (if I’m home), and drink a full glass of water.
Usually around 6:30 a.m.: I begin my “better than nothing” exercise circuit. This started as a set of fifteen push-ups, thirty sit-ups, and twenty-five squats, all of which takes me only a minute or so. If all I have is a few minutes, that’s all I do. Really! These days I usually use the iPhone app Seven, starting my daily exercise with a seven-minute circuit of twelve different high-intensity exercises. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I follow this seven-minute circuit with a ten-minute run, and then a three-minute walk/cooldown, and another couple minutes of stretching. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I do one or two more seven-minute circuits. On Saturdays, I sometimes go for a slightly longer run, and on Sundays, I go for a three-mile hike with a friend.
This might not seem like a very ambitious exercise plan to you—some weeks I truly do only the “better than nothing circuit” and nothing more. But those weeks I’m still doing 75 push-ups, 150 crunches, and 125 squats! And after a year of habitually doing at least some exercise every morning, I woke up one day to realize that I was in the best shape of my life! Clearly I’ve never been all that athletic—not a single varsity sport in my high school career—but these days I can definitely keep up with my CrossFit-obsessed husband when we hike, surf, and ski.
The reward embedded in my exercise routine? I listen to books on tape. Really easy and gripping fiction—the stuff my teenage daughters read, like Divergent, Harry Potter, and the Hunger Games books. This is for entertainment only; no actual effort can be involved or it doesn’t motivate me to exercise. (I read a lot of other things, too, at other times of the day—books that make me think big thoughts and feel big feelings—but there is a time and a place for everything. For me, Chaucer is not for exercising. Not that I actually ever read Chaucer. But you get the point.)
When possible, I also exercise outside because I love being outdoors. If it is raining or too cold or I’m in a new city and afraid I’m going to get lost, I take to the treadmill, which would normally be boring were it not for . . . Downton Abbey! Modern Family! All my favorite TV shows! That’s right, folks: I sometimes indulge myself with TV first thing in the morning. I used to feel guilty about it, but I’ve come to realize that it enables and reinforces my health and happiness.
7:00ish: Hit the shower, get dressed, et cetera. This is when my kids are usually up and in the shower themselves, and I know that I’m at most risk of getting distracted. This is another mini-routine, but it’s one that I didn’t really have to work to automate because I found that I was already doing everything pretty much in the same order. (Except, funnily enough, putting on deodorant—sometimes I’d do it right out of the shower, other times after I got dressed. Which means that I would often forget this critical part of my morning routine! Here’s the thing about this mini-routine: Because there was no inherently embedded reward, it was hard to get through it in a timely way. I was prone to doing much more rewarding things, like lingering in the hot shower or checking my email on my phone in the bathroom or cuddling in bed with one of my sleepy children. All these things are so much more inherently rewarding—and so much more derailing—than running a brush through my tangled curly hair.)
So I started timing myself. I challenge myself to ever-greater efficiency, to a faster and faster morning routine. This is fun enough for me; I particularly like seeing how short I can make my shower here in drought-ridden California. But it did add an element of complication—I had to get into the habit of noting the time before I started, and watching the clock. I learned (the hard way) that I couldn’t use my iPhone to time myself, because I’m prone to getting sucked into whatever texts and calls came in after it went into silent mode the night before. So I just moved a clock to the bathroom, and I keep an eye on that.
7:30 a.m. (school days): Make and eat breakfast. Another mini-routine, this one is always triggered by the clock. I help my kids prep their breakfast and finish off their lunches, and then I make my breakfast (unless I’m in someone else’s kitchen or a hotel), pretty much always a variation on the theme of eggs with vegetables, prepped over the weekend, or a high-protein smoothie. Breakfast takes me exactly five minutes to make. (My kids usually have a banana and peanut butter smoothie and toast with avocado on top.) The reward is getting to actually sit down with my family with a healthy and delicious breakfast.
7:55 a.m. (school days): Clean the kitchen (kids do their own dishes, so this is an easy job) and take the kids to school. The reward is—you can make fun of me if you want—the satisfaction of an empty and fully clean kitchen sink. If we are all in the car on time, without rushing, we do a celebratory dance (imagine us “raising the roof” of the car) and listen to an audiobook in the car. Lest you think that all the trains always run on time in my house, I’d say this occurs about three times per week. That is very good for us; if you have kids, you understand why.
I know that I can get through this whole routine in an hour and a half by shortening my the time I spend in the bathroom to a little less than twenty minutes and breakfast to about ten minutes. On a slow morning, or one where I have more time to meditate and exercise, it will take three hours.
Although this may seem like an excruciating level of detail, here’s why it’s so totally worth it. I’m not making any decisions in the morning. I do everything the same way every morning, in the same order, on autopilot. Sure, sometimes the flow is interrupted, but due to all the repetition, my inner elephant now rarely strays from the comfort of this well-worn path.
Most people don’t take the time to deliberately construct a routine, so they interrupt themselves constantly (maybe by deciding to make the coffee before showering one day but making it after showering the next day). In so doing, they alter their routine just enough that it takes self-control to get back on track. I don’t know about you, but I’m like most human beings: I don’t have a lot of self-control at six in the morning. I need to rely on autopilot instead.
What to do now:
Construct your new habit using the Day 1 Worksheet (.pdf file). Right click and choose “save link as” to download.
Contact Marielle, the class administrator, with questions.