The Hardest Thing is Not Doing More

Last week I made a decision not to go on a meditation retreat.

I was really interested in doing a 10 Day Vipassana Course. It’s a silent retreat, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. The only problem is that it involves a lot of uncomfortable sitting on the floor, and most beginners report online that it’s incredibly painful - as Westerners we’re not usually used to sitting on the ground for long periods without our legs going numb. During my year in Korea, I got used to it, but it took many months.

I started to practice sitting for long periods of time, tacking it on o my current list of habits, and it was surprisingly painful. I also felt that weight that to me signals willpower depletion - it felt like when I was doing too many habits - that feeling right before I just gave up on every skill I was trying to acquire.

It really does feel with this program that the hardest thing is not jumping into doing more things. Meditation will help me keep focused. Eating right will give me more energy, and I have so many ideas now for apps for gamification that I have to fight urges not to dive into learning programming.

It was a really difficult decision for me, because I felt like I was copping out of going, of just biting the bullet and forcing myself to do it. But I have to remind myself that this is part of the process - I’m trying something new here, something that has thus far worked at least once - 750 words is now a habit. And I know my previous way of doing things hasn’t worked.

Since making the decision not to go, I’ve stopped my timed sits, which has been a relief, both in terms of the pain involved,and a renewed feeling of endurance with regards to practicing my new habit - and I know it will be easier to continue along the process of habituation without such a huge distraction.

But I’m still eying that retreat - and I will go in the future - just not now.

Dr. Angela Duckworth and Grit

A few weeks ago I was randomly looking at the MacArthur “Genius” Grant winners and came across Dr. Angela Duckworth, who researches grit and self-control with regards to education. In watching her video on the MacArthur website she describes her research, which seems geared towards shifting the focus away from talent to grit with regards to how to measure success.

When she talked about grit, sparks went off in my head, and I thought that it might be the missing part of my equation with regards to habit formation - willpower over time.

However, after taking her 12 - point Grit Scale, I realized that there are some other issues - and I’m not quite so certain. 

The scale seems to focus on two things -the ability to overcome setbacks and the ability to stick with one thing for a long time. The latter is what I’d say is my missing ingredient - the endurance to continue a task until automaticity is reached.

The former seems, after watching her TED Talks video, to be a smattering of different things - from dealing with obstacles to putting yourself through the pain period to push past plateaus and achieve true mastery. 

And although this is very applicable for becoming the best in a field, it’s not exactly what I’m thinking is needed for habituation.

On one hand, you can view grit as overcoming everything - the pain of willpower, the pain of endurance, the pain of really pushing past plateaus in learning.

But I’d like to view them as separate - when I choose to practice the violin today, I’m using Willpower to do so, which is a depleteable resource for that day. A few months in, and I’m struggling with a depletion of Endurance. And I can form a habit of practicing the violin at a certain time without actually mastering the instrument - which is usually caused by practicing easy sections and not putting myself through the painful trial of consistently pinpointing and practicing aspects of the art that are not perfect.

These three things act in different ways.

If Grit is some sort of combination of Endurance and overcoming, I want to know  - do the two act separately? What replenishes Grit? And how does it react - is it like Willpower? Can you train it?  

Right now her research seems very focused on identifying Grit - but to me this isn’t very satisfying - it simply becomes and indicator for success - I want to know how to foster it.

Nonetheless, I’m very curious what form her future research will take.

Willpower Over Time Theory

I have another theory that I’ve been turning over in my head for a while.

The hardest thing about a habit isn’t the willpower needed for an individual task. Flossing is an easy task that pretty much stays easy. It’s the STREAK - it’s doing it over time that becomes a drag. 

My theory is that Willpower is one aspect of the equation, but it’s Willpower over time that’s the real issue for any given habit. Call it persistence, endurance, doggedness, or tenaciousness - but it’s what caused me to make 750 words a habit despite having periodic setbacks.

I feel it reacts differently than Willpower - after about 2 months of working out, it’s not as though working out becomes difficult in that instance - it just becomes exhausting when it comes to the streak.

The reserve that fuels the act of extending the activity over time gets depleted, while the actual activity remains the same.

Furthermore, in my theory, as I have eluded to before, after a quarter of the way into a habit, Endurance becomes heavily depleted, while for Lally, it just becomes more and more easy.

And gamified programs, (although I’m sure they help lower the threshold with regards to Willpower) through their emphasis on badges over time and accumulating streaks, help the most with regards to Endurance depletion - Or whatever we should  call it.

There is a researcher - Dr. Angela Duckworth - who recently won the MacArthur Research Grant, who may be doing research into whatever this is. I’ll get into that in the next post.