James’ journal cont.
3. Eliminate excessive options
According to a variety of research on self-control —and
expounded upon in books like The Willpower Effect —
there is great power in being boring. Take, for instance,
Barack Obama’s insistence on never wearing anything but
blue and gray suits. According to the president, “I’m trying
to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make too many
decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I
have too many other decisions to make.”
The president’s belief is well supported by the research—
Kathleen Vohs and her colleagues’ study on self-control
found that making repeated choices depleted the mental
energy of their subjects, even if those choices were
mundane and relatively pleasant. According to the Harvard
Business Review, if you want to maintain long term
discipline, it’s best to “Identify the aspects of your life that
you consider mundane — and then ‘routinize’ those
aspects as much as possible. In short, make fewer
decisions.”
For lasting change, the steps you take must
ultimately change your environment and schedule. Stop
buying snacks if you want to stop snacking (no willpower
needed), pack a very similar lunch every day of the week,
and embrace
the power of routine to
get the necessary done each day.
5. Eliminate “ah-screw-its”
New habits are often very fragile, and it is for this
reason that we must eliminate any source of friction
that may lead us astray. These “ah-screw-it” moments
(hat tip to blogger Derek Halpern) are the specific
moments where you find yourself saying, “Screw this,
it’s not worth the effort!” A more scientific take on this
phenomenon is called the What the Hell Effect, which
explains why we are so likely to abandon ship with a
new habit at the first slip-up.
The solution? Examine your habit and
find exactly where things start to break down. In a
great example of putting this in action, Author and 99U
speaker Ramit Sethi has explained how he improved
his gym attendance by finding where things would slip:
When I sat down to analyze why I wasn’t going to the
gym, I realized: my closet was in another room. That
meant I had to walk out in the cold [to] put on my
clothes. It was easier to just stay in bed. Once I
realized this, I folded my clothes and shoes the night
before. When I woke up the next morning, I would roll
over and see my gym clothes sitting on the floor. The
My gym attendance
soared by over 300%.
result?
4. Process plan (but don’t fantasize)
The step that many people skip when they fantasize about
building a certain habit is they never clearly answer why
they want the change to occur. It may seem like a small
detail, but it plays a huge role in keeping our motivation up
over time. A variety of research shows us that excessive
fantasizing about results can be extremely detrimental to
the stickiness of any habit.
According to this study from UCLA, the mistake is in what
we visualize. Researchers found that those participants
who engaged in visualizations that included the process of
what needed to be done to achieve the goal (ex:
fantasizing about learning another language, by visualizing
themselves practicing every day after work) were more
likely to stay consistent than their peers (that visualized
themselves speaking French on a trip to Paris). The
visualization process worked for two reasons:
• Planning: visualizing the process helped focus attention
on the steps needed to reach the goal.
• Emotion: visualization of individual steps led to reduced
anxiety.
You can even incorporate an “if-then” scenario once
you find the culprit. For instance, if fatigue is stopping
you from playing guitar after work, you could set up a
system of “If I’m feeling tired after work, then I will take
a 20-minute nap and listen to music for five minutes to
get myself motivated.”
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