Habits > Motivation > Hacks

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” -Aristotle

The danger of leading off with a quote such as Aristotle’s above is that there isn’t much else to say on the subject, but I’ll try and fall short anyway.

When we decide to “improve” a part of our lives, we often aim too high. Or rather, we try to change something too big too soon. Going from writing 0 hours a week to trying to crank out “War and Peace” every night will end poorly. You’ll be back to Netflix in no time. The trick is to start small, like making your bed, as Admiral McRaven would suggest, and build on those small gains throughout the day. Those days will become weeks, then months, and years. Small changes and habits will become life changing.

Despite some pop culture anecdotes (like the ‘21-day Rule’), individual habit building timelines vary drastically. A University College London 2010 study found it took different participants between 18 to 254 days to form a habit. Just as importantly, missing an opportunity to perform the action did not affect the habit formation, so be kind to yourself. All is not lost when you miss that alarm for your morning run.

Motivation, on the other hand, is fleeting. Watching Rocky might get you out for a run culminating in a victorious climb up a flight of stairs, fists pumping in the air, but it will not last. Once the high wears off, you will not have anything to fall back on (unless you watch Rocky again, of course), and your couch with a warm cup of coffee will seem a lot more enticing than running in that drizzle which is making those stone steps a slipping hazard.

And don’t get me started on “hacks.” You can’t hack anything truly worth doing. Certainly not life. And if there were a way to do it easily, it would not be worth your time anyway.

Make small changes, build on those small wins, be patient, and above all, be kind to yourself- save some room for hot coffee and Netflix- in moderation.