Lydia’s crossfit gym let us borrow an indoor rower while they’re closed.  Since my exercise habit has basically imploded, I thought I’d use this opportunity to establish a rowing habit for the duration of the quarantine. 

For this post, I’m going to outline the science and strategy behind forming a basic habit - one I define as an action done once at the same time every day. I had a rock solid rowing habit that lasted for 3 years (until we moved), so I’ve had a lot of time to figure out how to practically implement this with the minimum amount of effort. 

THE STRATEGY

1. Form a ludicrously small habit. Instead of rowing for 30 minutes, focus on something so ridiculously small you’re more likely to do it on your worst days. For me, that’s 5 minutes, and I have no compunction about dropping it down to 1 minute if need be. Behavioral scientist BJ Fogg’s method of making habits small has a lot of backing - and it makes sense.  Lowering the “habit load” will help you focus on the automatic trigger-response and mentally make getting started easier.

2. Form a clear trigger. “When [X] happens I will do [MY HABIT]”. Remember that the clearer, more precise, and temporally connected the two are, the more efficiently the habit will form. DO NOT use sloppy triggers like “sometime in the morning I will go for a run”.  This technique is called an implementation intention and you can check out Dr. Peter Gollwitzer’s research linked in this Wiki article.

3. Perform a mental contrasting exercise. Positivity isn’t enough, and can sometimes blind you to the issues involved in forming a habit. This exercise uncovers the complex emotional entanglements that often underpin the act of change. It also draws out potential stumbling blocks and forces you to plan how to get around them. Check out psychologist Gabrielle Ottingen’s research on it here.

4. Strategize growth. Resist the urge to go all out at first. Stretch out the energy you have on, say, day 5, and instead stick to just keeping it a tiny behavior. Once the habit is established (take the Self Report Habit Index to make sure) then you can start to grow it. At first, it will grow naturally without pushing it. But then you’ll inevitably hit a plateau.
   
   To get through the plateau, modulate practice. If you’re doing cardio at a gym, I find the best way is to drop your time, and cycle between different cardio equipment. I found that plateaus aren’t necessarily about your own endurance, but more about focus. We just get bored. Directly forcing your way through it drains massive amounts of willpower, and modulating practice like this can result in easier progress.
   
   Once I hit my natural growth plateau for rowing, I’m going to try including some kettlebell rows or HIITs to shake things up.

5. Record your habit on a spreadsheet. I know, it sounds like a painful extraneous step, but there’s a lot of behavioral science to this. Keeping clear metrics is a principle used in everything from biofeedback, food diaries, and gamification to FitBit-style wearable trackers and the quantified self movement. If you know what you’re doing each day, you’re likely to automatically try to beat your score. 

   
   In most cases, the “score” would be the surface level metric - like how many meters I’ve rowed. But we’re not going to track that at first. Instead, we’re going to use the SRHI (The Verplanken-Orbell Self Report Habit Index - the questionnaire should be at the bottom of the .pdf) - a sliding scale metric of how strong a habit actually is. You can track it however often you want just to gauge how far along your habit is, and to know when to add more to it. I’m pretty anal retentive and tend to take it every day so I can make a pretty graph at the end.
   
   I tend to drop habits when I forget them, or when I’m generally (and inevitably) interrupted by life. Recording adds an extra layer of accountability that is the best method for remembering to pick up the habit again before it completely dies.

6. Kill your habits. After about 3 months, plateaus really start to take root. And if you’re trying to do another exercise - like running or taking a class - you’re really shaking up the triggers or the preplanning. Your class might be at a different time, or you might have to plan on how to deal with rain if you’re switching to running outside. This “habit drift” is natural when skills grow, but they wreck havoc on automaticity. It’s just better to restart another habit, and do all the preplanning for the new one.

Hopefully after 3 months the quarantine will be over. That might just be the best time to switch things up, get out, and try something new – maybe even around people!

TIPS

• Don’t worry about a few missed days. A habit is about a collection of instances, and in the studies, one day didn’t really seem to make much of a difference. Just continue to record it as a miss, pick it up the next day, and try to avoid missing long streaks.

• Actually write down the mental contrasting and implementation intention exercises. I write them on my blog, but you can easily jot them down wherever you record your habits.

• Do one habit at a time. The more habits you try to form, the less likely you’ll actually accomplish any of them. You might have the energy to do 5 things at once today, but will you have that same energy in 3 weeks? The stats say no.

• Take time off. I drop all my regular habits on weekends. There’s a lot of research that shows that regular time off has innumerable benefits. For a great read on this, check out Katrina Onstad’s book, The Weekend Effect.

• Go with the flow. Every aspect of this plan rests on system architecture rather than personal struggle. If done right, this will be the easiest habit you’ve ever made. Let the system do its work

BONUS MATERIAL

• Recording. Here’s the format I use for my spreadsheet:

• Implementation Intention:
  After I finish one writing Pomodoros, I’ll immediately row for 5 minutes

• Natural and Forced Growth Progressions:
  I want to start this as ludicrously small as possible. I think 5 minutes will be fine, but I’ll drop it to even smaller if it even begins to feel arduous.
  
  After my natural growth cycle plateaus, I’ll shave off 5 minutes from my rowing, hop off and do some alternative rows with kettlebells, then hop back on and do some additional rowing. I’ll also change things up by introducing HIITs twice a week.
  
  At 3 months I will kill it off and reestablish it as another exercise habit. This will depend how the quarantine goes, but I have options like walking or going to a gym, or even bodyweight training from an online course.

• Mental Contrastion:
  1) Positive Aspects
  I see this as a great way to get back into exercise, especially with the quarantine going on. I have a rower, might as well use it. I think it will also get me more energized and provide a welcome break from my extended writing work sets.
  
  2) Obstacles
  I see almost nothing wrong with this. I think that I might get sore, or pull a muscle, but I hope to chain this habit with a mobilizing habit which should mitigate things.

• Here’s the chart of my previous rowing habit.

There’s a few things to note here. First, you can see the curve is really steep at first, and that was even with missing a few days. At this time I was including missing weekends, which didn’t really affect the habit either. By day 22 the scale had gotten to the 70s, indicating a formed habit. A little before this time is when I’d shoot to start naturally growing my habit, resisting the urge to do it before it’s fully established.