Habit Formation Experiment
Today is July 1st, 2016 and the first day of my new habit: writing every single day.
Over the course of the last 5 months, I’ve worked on building one new habit every month. The first habit I picked up was in March which was daily meditation.
One thing to mention is that the goal is to practice the habit every day for 30 days straight for two reasons: (1) cement the habit as it takes approximately 30 consecutive days for a person to develop a new habit, and (2) ideally get to the point where the habit is performed every single day perpetually until I die.
Being the first habit in this journey I felt meditation should have a focus for a longer period of time. The habit formation period began in mid-March and ended in the beginning of May with the highest consecutive period being 65 days of meditation.
Though I am still meditating about 98 days later, I’ve only missed 3 days. It sucks when you break your streak but at the end of the day it’s the practice that counts and not the streak. Sidenote, check out the zen-ness of that last sentence, shows that 95 days worth of mindfulness did something at least.
On May 1st, I began a new habit: Inbox Zero. Simple enough, have no unread emails by the end of the day. My current streak is 60, a perfect score — unless I miss it today but as of now it’s a relatively simple habit to form. Instead of ignoring notifications, snoozing my reply times, or shying away from my inbox with social anxiety, I archive useless emails as soon as they arrive (but of course with respect to my personal space, I hate reactive work so I’m not springing at my phone upon every notification), and respond to emails as quickly as possible keeping responses down to 1–5 sentences to make the effort minimal and non-intrusive while still taking care of my responsibilities.
In my research and experience in habit formation, everyone recommends focusing on one habit per month or you’ll risk overwhelming yourself with the multitudes of different changes and you’ll fail at all your habit goals.
Since I’m super impatient I still wanted to form multiple habits on a monthly basis, part of the reason why I gave myself extra time on meditation so I could ramp up to multiple habits each month. The defining factor though is in the forming of good habits and the breaking of bad habits.
My Inbox Zero habit isn’t a newly formed habit, it was actually the breaking of multiple bad habits. Rather than letting anxiety take control of me and push away the inbox, the notifications, and the impending human interaction, I broke through the bad habit of email avoidance.
Think of it as two different forces each month: push and pull.
When forming a new good habit, you’re pushing yourself to do something new that you didn’t formerly do often or everyday. Make your bed every morning, brush your teeth before bed, go to the gym more, etc.
When you’re breaking a bad habit, you’re pulling yourself back from doing something you do all the time that you know is bad for you. Ritualistic snacks before bed, ignoring emails, watching too many YouTube videos each day, etc.
Building complimentary habits each month makes it easier for you to adopt multiple habits at a faster rate. They exercise different “will” muscles, if you will (no pun intended), so you don’t tire yourself out.
To round things out, the other habits I’ve worked on after the first two are <30 Minutes of Video each day (I get distracted by cute puppies), and Daily Journaling. I use RescueTime to track my video watching and I carry a pocket-sized Moleskine to document my daily activities, thoughts, and ponderings with a new page for each new day. Currently I’m 25 days strong on both of those habits — I started the habits on an odd day after June 1st.
Oh and my complimentary habit for July is No Phone/Computer for 1 Hour Upon Waking, I couldn’t think of a sexier and shorter title for that habit. It helps calm your mind each morning.
