Take the Stress Out of Bringing Your Old Habits Back: 3 Reasons to Reframe Habits as Routines
Habits make you more effective but only if you don’t punish yourself in the process of building it
For over 10 years, I’ve been on the cycle of creating and breaking habits.
This happens whenever there’s a major change in my life (such as moving in with my partner or having kids). And because they were “habits”, incorporating them back into my daily to-dos shouldn’t be that hard…right? However, I fail 80% of the time.
What’s going on?!
Unlike habits, routines are not directly tied to your identity
Your habits reveal who you really are.
Therefore, the more “successful people” habits I build, the more I’m convinced that I’m on my way to being successful in life. I agree with this, however, it made me tie habit-building to my identity. This explains why I mentally punish myself for being undisciplined whenever I fail to cross off my “habit-to-build” list.
Failing meant that I didn’t want it bad enough.
In other words, I became a slave to the idea.
The goal became more about checking off a list. The more you do something, the more likely that something will turn into a habit. It is a move inspired by The Jerry Seinfeld Strategy.
While I had the right technique in place, it didn’t serve me well because I wasn’t clear about what I was trying to do.
There’s a difference between habit and routine, and it’s more than semantics
Whenever I read about productivity, I always thought the word ‘routine’ was just a synonym for ‘habit’.
English is my third language. To me, both words meant “repetitive action”. I thought authors used them interchangeably. It stayed that way until Nir Eyal simplified the difference for me:
“Habits are a type of routine, but not all routines become habits.”
— Nir Eyal
With this new definition, I understood why I kept failing to bring my old habits back. That’s because they were never habits, to begin with! They were routines. They belong to the same category as “flossing your teeth” but not “brushing your teeth”.
Said differently, I haven’t been doing them consistently for more than 10 years.
Now, I’m not sure how long you need to do a routine before it turns into a habit. But if doing it still requires some self-convincing, then I would not consider it a habit. Simply put, habits are more permanent in nature.
Understanding how routines are temporary, relieved the pressure of getting myself to do them on a daily basis.
Routines are only as effective as your current stage in life
I had a set of routines before moving in with my partner:
I used to be able to meditate for 10 minutes, read for 30 minutes, write in my journal for (another) 30 minutes and 30 minutes to exercise — before getting ready for work.
That shows how I had a lot of time for “self-improvement”.
But that changed when I moved in with my partner. Why?
My values have changed. I’d rather fit her more into my schedule than block out time for exercising or writing. The next update in my morning routine happened when we had our first child. Then it changed again when we had our second.
Routines (unlike habits) will continue to evolve as your beliefs and values in life evolve.
I had to stop doing some of what I considered a “healthy habit” because they are not as useful to me anymore. Then, I incorporate new ones (as a replacement) or make some of those activities less intense or less frequent.
The goal is to adapt my routines to my lifestyle — not the other way around.
Here are some examples of those changes in my values when I became a father of two:
- I threw out the importance of 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep because I’d rather get up in the middle of the night to make milk for our baby.
- I gave up on meditating in the morning because my kids often interrupt me right when I’m about to start. I’d meditate but only when it’s convenient.
- I stopped prioritizing exercise because I’m almost always sleep-deprived. What used to take 30 minutes now only takes about 10 minutes.
And because routines are temporary in nature, I’m not pressured to put that much effort into something that is going to change anyway.
“If you are on the journey of self-improvement and regularly beat yourself up for not meeting goals you’ve set, it’s not really self-improvement. It’s self-punishment.
Remove the shame, rather than re-enacting it”
