

Want to create a new habit? Get ready to break it. - peterkchen
http://joel.is/post/36591651818/want-to-create-a-new-habit-get-ready-to-break-it

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kirse
Building/breaking habits became far easier to me when I started to understand
the true importance and power of choice in the present moment. If you can
cultivate the ability to fight with yourself in the moment - when you do (or
don't) want to execute - a habit is really just reduced to a single choice
during the day. I still have to do it every night when I'm tired and don't
_feel like_ brushing my teeth... but I've had no problem running/lifting
regularly since I was 18.

If you think about it, character is really just the additive (or
multiplicative?) result of thousands of tiny choices we've made along the way
in each present moment, for better or for worse. The only time you can be the
person you want to be is _right now_ \-- including building or breaking
habits. A choice promised to the future has no power or worth, the only time
it matters is in the present, when it's time to put words and dreams into
action.

In the case of habits, the long-term will take care of itself by focusing on
the short term. Win the small daily battles and you'll be on your way to
winning the war. And don't forget to manage expectations and give yourself
grace when you lose a few of those battles. Something is always better than
nothing.

~~~
tehayj
Every decision requires willpower. Doing things without thinking (making
habits out of them) saves your willpower for other valuable things you have to
do.

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c0riander
More than just expecting to break your habit, I think the crucial piece is
_planning_ what you will do once you have.

The most dangerous moment in building a new habit is the moment when you
realize that the best case scenario (aka sticking with the awesome new habit)
is just not going to happen. For me, unless I have my Plan B ready to go, I
tend to just revert to the status quo or worse (since I already failed, why
not go all out). Having the Plan B - a glorified "if failure to complete Plan
A, then do B" - already articulated lets me immediately move on to the next
thing without beating myself up.

This was really helpful for me when I was getting going with a regular early
morning jog. If I didn't get it in before work, plan B was a quick run after
work before I drove home. The latter wasn't the habit I wanted to stick, but
it helped me forgive myself the lapses until morning running became a habit.

~~~
eytanlevit
pure gold, going to try this tomorrow.

thanks!

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rwhitman
This article seems to be more of an excuse to brag about a morning workout
routine than the self help article its masquerading as.

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ImprovedSilence
I like the authors method better. It's more of a "lead by example".

To be honest, I'm not likely to just pick up whatever life-changing advice
someone is preaching. But when I see somebody striving extra hard to achieve,
that's what is truly inspiring, and lights a fire under my ass. You can tell
me how to create good habits until you're blue in the face, but nothing is
going to sink in until I see the results of your actions, and the competitive
streak in me comes alive and wants to catch up to that.

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wcchandler
Sometimes I like to think about the "why" for these sort of posts. Why are you
building the habit? Is it like an addiction? Are you getting a sense of
euphoria? While it's a good mantra I don't think it's a traditional habit
you're creating.

If I approach this from a CBT perspective then you're not building a habit.
Instead you're retraining your mind to place a higher importance on health or
physical attractiveness. We can break personal aspirations into different
categories ranging from mind, body, spirit... or more specifically --
intellectualism, mental acquity, empathy/compassion, love, friendships, family
relationships, spirit, tranquility, peace, relaxtion, etc... We can generally
rank these in order of importance from 1-3. 1 being very important, 3 being
not important at all.

Prior to this experiment, if he assessed his importance on health and
wellbeing, he probably placed it low. Easily a 3. Maybe a 2. After a month or
so it may have transitioned to a 2. Either by constant reinforcement of his
necessity to go to the gym, or because of an actual change of mind.

Or I'm talking out my ass... I don't know.

~~~
marknutter
You may be focusing too much on the fact that the example habit the OP talks
about has to do with exercising. The point of the post isn't how to become
"physically attractive", it's about to build habits by accepting the fact that
you will break them from time to time and to not feel guilty about it.

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AutoCorrect
One other thing: it's much much much easier to start a new, good habit than it
is to change an old habit.

I experimented with this a while back - I figured I would change a small habit
(no effect on me either way). For as long as I could remember, I put my wallet
in my left back pocket, and my keys in my front left pocket (I'm left-handed).
I decided to put them in the corresponding right-hand pocket - I know, very
small change, right? Took me a couple of years before I would do it without
thinking. Even now, I sometimes put them in the wrong pocket without thinking.
For me, this was a big eye-opener.

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bonaldi
I love that his examples of starting with simple+easy (gym three times a week
at 7.30am) are what are for other people the end goal!

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manmal
I could not do that. When I go to the gym, I work out really hard, and it's
not healthy do to that every day. Whenever I try to do that, I will fall ill
quite soon (maybe due to overtraining) - everybody has her own upper limit of
stress the body can cope with, and exercise is stress by definition - no pain,
no gain! :)

~~~
Ixiaus
If that's how you're training, then it isn't necessarily the volume/intensity
but your diet that's holding you back. I train as an advanced Crossfit athlete
5 days a week and it's _very intense_ exercise!

Diet is more important than most people think! If you are truly training hard
and you don't have a hard time getting your last few bites per meal down, then
you're not eating enough.

At peak training (for me) an example diet would look like this:

Morning: 6 eggs (free-range), 4 strips of bacon (only happy pigs), two apples,
one pear, and a little cup of almond butter.

Pre-lunch snack: half a bag of cashews and/or a few Kind Bars and 48 grams of
protein in a shake.

Lunch: usually something I've cooked the night before, like Coconut Curry,
Chili, steak or chicken. I always eat bacon to get my fat - some of these
dishes will have been made with it, if I'm just eating steak I'll have 3-4
slices of bacon with it. To get my carbohydrates I fall back on fruits and
sweet-potatoes. I'll have two sweet-potatoes and an apple, usually, with the
above type of meal.

Pre-dinner snack: 48 grams of protein in a shake.

Dinner: similar to lunch, it will be some paleo meal that has been cooking in
the Crock Pot all day or something I already made with enormous amounts of
protein and fat in it. Again I get a lot of my calories from sweet-potatos and
fruit so for dinner I'll usually eat a lot of berries, pears, sweet-potato
fries, &c...

This type of diet is 100% gluten free and 100% refined sugar free and HFCS
free; I also try to eat organic/free-range where I can. There are some
instances where it just gets too expensive for me and have to buy some
veggies/fruits that are not organic.

~~~
graue
Wow. How on earth can you coordinate buying and preparing that much food every
day? That seems like a big challenge in itself.

~~~
Ixiaus
It is. Add 2 hours of oly/power lifting and metabolic conditioning in 5 days a
week and it's like working a second job :)

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psycho
Very interesting. I'm not that big fan of healthy habbits (I go to bed late at
night and get up in the afternoon, for example), though I do some running
occasionally. But what I liked in the post is that it's not only about habbits
in fact. It's about human's psychology that's involved in doing anything. So
we can say: "Don't cease working on your startup if you fail at some point -
you should be ready to overcome the failure and pivot or start another
project".

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rickdale
Expecting and planning for failure is definitely a good system to use for
losing weight and exercise. Tim Ferris's famous slow carb diet (which has me
down 50lbs this year) is based on one day a week breaking the habit and
allowing yourself to not feel guilty about it. That was a big factor for me
being consistent on the diet plan. I knew if I eat bad today, guilt, but if I
eat bad in 3 days, pleasure.

Exercise is a great habit building tool because when you start off, you can
really only get better. 30 minutes working out can turn into an hour can turn
into 2 hours. And you start to enjoy it more as you go along and learn new
things.

Reading is also a good habit to build on. I had an english teacher in high
school that would assign 5-10 pages of reading every night. It made the class
discussions meaningful because instead of expecting people to be in the habit
of reading 50 pages of a book/night he knew he had to build the habit to read.
The rest of my teachers expected us to be readers, and didn't focus at all on
the habit building side of it.

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stevewilhelm
<http://tinyhabits.com/>

~~~
gavingmiller
Additional context: Tiny Habits is a free course about learning how to make
habits like the OP talked about. It teaches the habit of habit making. Highly
recommend.

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charleshaanel
BJ Fogg (at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab -
<http://captology.stanford.edu/>) and Nir Eyal have great research on the
topic of forming habits:

The Fogg Model for Behavior Design and Eyals MEA "Minimum Enjoyable Activity"
for habit design are excellent frameworks.

<http://www.tinyhabits.com> [http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/01/your-new-years-
resolution-i...](http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/01/your-new-years-
resolution-i..). [http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/02/habits-are-new-viral-why-
st...](http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/02/habits-are-new-viral-why-st..). (great
read for founders <http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/nir-eyal>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbHMwNbXnXo> (nice video presentation)

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kfk
It seems people here don't travel much. If you travel a lot for work, the hell
you manage to wake up at 5 am and go running.

Just saying, not everybody stays in the same place long enough to build those
habits.

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supersaiyan
I know this wasn't really discussed, but is there a recover fast technique to
help you get back on track once a habit breaks; I've noticed that if I break a
long standing habit (3 months+) a few days in a row (exercising, flossing) it
spirals down to non existence, and takes considerable amount of effort to re-
establish

~~~
philbarr
I don't know if this will help others but it helps me - I try and go to the
gym at lunch, or if I have to work my lunch then go after work, basically get
to the gym at some point in the day. If I'm skipping too many days and feel
like I'm losing it, I wear my gym socks all day until I go. It's like a
constant physical reminder to go. Seems to work for me.

Also, I find that I tend to overwork at the gym and feel tired or I ache too
much to go the next time. Recently I've been able to go more just because I'm
deliberately not working out so intensely. I tend to do a 5 minute rowing
warmup, a 2-3 mile run, some cycling (10 mins alternating easy/hard every 2
mins) and then, if I have time, I'll do some weights (legs or arms depending
on what I did last time).

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ablefire
I like your gym sock "trick". Regular visual reminders are good.

Regarding your routine, try inverting it once in a while and doing weights
first (after some movement prep!) and then doing your cardio.

~~~
philbarr
I've heard this advice before but I'm not sure what the benefit is? Will give
it a try though - I guess it makes things more interesting when you mix it up.

