Habits are not enough

The typical narrative in productivity is that you’ve done all the heavy lifting once establishing a strong, daily habit. 

I’ve experienced the exact opposite.

These days, many of my multi-year habits have been getting shaky. In fact, it seems all habits involving complicated skills eventually erode themselves under the weight of progress, especially when stacked. I’ve pinpointed 3 problems with advancing habits - issues with:

1. Eroded implementation intention. A good habit is a clean if-then protocol. If you start cross training (which you should do) then it’s not the same habit anymore. When I attempted switching up my workout routine depending on the day of the week, the fold naturally got a bit messy because suddenly I wasn’t just doing one thing in one place. I might be walking outside, I might be climbing, I might be going to the gym.

2. Cadence in progress. Progress is a weird stagger step. Some people describe it as two steps forward and one step back, but I think it’s worse -  it’s  a drunk tango dancer trying to walk a straight line. Unfortunately, this nonlinear progress is difficult to handle, especially emotionally. 

3. Task switching costs. Whenever you switch thought patterns, there’s going to be a lag in focus. This is particularly salient when you’re trying to stack habits into a fully fledged routine. The goal isn’t one habit - it’s a host.

Luckily there are a number of counters to these issues.

For sloppy implementation, it’s focusing on crisping up the initial habit. A few options are:

1. Focusing on the time to start. As soon as the trigger occurs, focus on the next minute task.

2. Focusing on some small external thing. I have an experiment I’d like to try on tying habits to ring tones, then triggering them 66 times in a day. This could potentially not only speed up the habit building process (on average a habit takes 66 days to form), but would  shore up the trigger response of an already established habit.

3. Using click training. Click training works by identifying and rewarding the exact moment a trigger-response occurs. This yet another way to zoom in and shore up that tiny moment.

When you’ve got a lack of continued, smooth growth, it causes emotional friction. You start blaming yourself which in turn causes energy dips throughout the day. Some counters include:

1. Walking away. Sometimes it’s worth it to just stop and refocus. I tend to just fight and fight without really accomplishing anything, which just leaves me exhausted.

2. Creating a discrete end. Even when I’m having a good day I tend to have no stopping point  to some of my habits, like writing. This intersects with good planning and seeing the big picture, so you know for sure that your bit of work in one day will contribute to a longer strategy. In Deep Work, Cal Newport advocates having an ending ritual to shut off his brain.

3. Momentum. Getting a few easy wins early in the day by moving around my schedule.

4. Setting a trip wire to know when to engage anti procrastination strategies.

5. Priming the next task. This seems to bypass the task switching cost.

Marriage counselor Dr. David Schnarch believes that all long-term relationships go through shaky times. It’s built in to the system. People grow, often because of each other. That change in character naturally changes the relationship, which can result in interpersonal turbulence. 

While the past ideas are solutions for specific problems, I’m beginning to view this process as a similarly inevitable issue, one that must reflect an addition to my self-development model:

1. Establish a tiny habit using implementation intention and mental contrasting

2. Once it’s a super habit, extend it by cycling what you do in one session.

3. Deal with energy issues as you collect multiple habits.

4. Begin cross training that habit across different days (which seems to answer cadence issues)

5. As the habit becomes shaky, reestablish it in a way that encompasses the cross training

Over the last two weeks I’ve implemented a number of these protocols. For writing, my issues of starting disappeared once I focused on tying the habit to starting the Pomodoro timer.  Whenever I remember to watch a climbing video at the end of my previous habit, all the empty time I spend dithering around disappears, and I get to the gym faster.

But the biggest protocol I’ve experimented with is compacting my routine. I’ll go to the climbing gym, do a cardio workout, then do some writing, and meditate between Pomodoro sets before doing some climbing. I think movement maintains energy throughout the day and a change in scene can give me an extra boost. I have a theory that artificially constraining practice time is also a really good way to cross train, and has certainly benefited me in meditation. 

This type of condensing is not only good for efficiently stacking habits, but it plays them off each other. Meditation gives me rest from writing, which in turn recharges me from my initial workout. At the same time, I’m cross training, extending my practice, and harnessing momentum. 

This will be particularly key the more skills I stack on to the entire system. The goal for all of this is to master multiple skills at once while maintaining core lifestyle habits.

You’ll notice I haven’t said much about cadence, which is also key to a broad science of polymathy. I’m still getting a hold on the messy pattern of how naturally staggered progress works.

But I’m hopeful. As this project continues I see more beauty and opportunity in that chaos. And that bodes very well for the future. 

photocred: stairs by Matt, lightsaber duel by Morgz, steamroller by nex230