How to maintain a habit
Image by Heinz Hummel from Pixabay
I was defeated by life once again yesterday, by failing to publish my weekly blog post every Monday. Still, two times out of 197 consecutive weeks isn’t too shabby. But as I suspected back when I missed the first one, the chance that it would happen again increased tremendously. But a week with several deliveries in combination with sick kids for several days is just a combination that cannot add up. Not without giving the middle finger to your wife at least, but it was not worth it. Instead, I have been thinking about potential solutions to the problem of how to maintain a weekly writing habit.
Yesterday, I finished my non-negotiable chores around 00:55 and with the alarm set at 05:30 it would have been outright stupid to push on, because I was supposed to hit the road. A tired driver is more dangerous than a drunk driver. A drunk driver usually crashes his car because he braked too late. A tired driver however, does not brake at all… because he was sleeping. That’s worth thinking about. I believe the social stigma on drunk drivers is probably stronger. But if we just look at the facts, we should perhaps be even more harsh to tired drivers?
Anyway, my decision to give up yesterday is simply common sense. And now I am here on Tuesday, writing again, and then we are officially back on track. To miss a scheduled activity that is your habit, can probably be solely blamed on insufficient planning. If I really, really wanted to get that post online yesterday, it is not acceptable to do it in the evening like I usually do. There will always be unforeseen things that wreaks havoc on your pretty planning. But if you get your most important things done as early in the day as humanly possible, the probability of success increases. That is the obvious solution. Set the alarm clock earlier.
However, I have come to like writing on Monday evenings. Even though it carries a higher risk of failure. What is the next potential solution to guarantee a 100% success rate in your weekly habit? I thought a lot about pre-loading content. If my strict deadline is to publish a blog post every Monday, I could always write one or two in advance and keep it in a “buffer” folder. This works, but the downside is that it kills the magic. For me, a huge part of writing these posts is to always be in the moment. It is a brain dump, and the thoughts are in my head now and they will be transformed into words for you to read now. That’s the whole point. Even if I preload an article every Sunday for publication on Monday, that still means a lot of water will have flown beneath the bridges. Too much for comfort.
That is why I at least for now, chose to play catch up instead. This post is a day late, but the benefit is that it is written and published in real-time. And for now, that is the rules of the game for my habit. To be “in the zone” triumphs consistency in this case. I did not think I would write these words. For the past decade, I have been obsessed with habit formation. My most defining characteristic is that I play music for 15 minutes every single day, unconditionally and have done so since 2014 with mind-boggling results. A proper obsession. Two years ago, I would have moved mountains to get that post online yesterday. But that was because I used to value consistency over purpose. And today, that priority has shifted to purpose over consistency. Maybe it sounds rather obvious that purpose is more important, but I would argue that it requires 10X more discipline to let a habit slip and play catch up using tremendous will-power, than to just be ruthless and get the thing done no matter what. Catch-up is a very dangerous game to play if you intend to keep the habit going. But after 10 years of practice, maybe I am ready to go for purpose instead.
The most important lesson from this is that it is physically impossible to maintain a habit if you aren’t completely obsessed by it. You must put it on the very top of your priority list. Otherwise, life will throw you a curve ball every now and then and derail you. And you only need one failure to kill a habit. Obviously, this is why so many people fail to maintain their habits no matter what they might be. They are not obsessed. They do not love the habit. It is easy to visualize by a thought experiment. If your kid’s life depended on it, you could muster strength to proceed anytime, anywhere, regardless of how exhausted you are. You would tap into energy reserves that you did not know existed. That is the level of obsession you require if you want to keep a 100% hit rate/consistency on your habit. Personally, I consider the Stick more important than the Carrot. I channel my fear to push me forward, and it is a strong motivator when you “trick” it to work for you instead of against you.