Keep doing what works

Published on January 25, 2023

Does this sound familiar? You discover that a new habit, like making your bed or drinking water, works, but after a week you stop doing it.
There are various reasons for this, but fortunately there are also things you can do to keep doing what works.

Awareness

The most important thing is to become aware of what a good habit costs you and what it gives you. The same goes for continuing a bad habit. Taking a conscious moment to consider this makes a few things clear:

• It gives you something even in the short term. What need does it meet, and could you meet that need another way?

• You can follow the pattern into the future. What would your life look like if you kept this up for a year? How about five or ten years?

• What pattern does this habit belong to? Skipping breakfast, for example, might be part of getting up far too late, which might follow from going to sleep late because you use your phone in bed.

What it gives you

Although it can sometimes be difficult, a new habit also makes you feel good right away. If you have just drunk water when you normally barely drink anything, for example, you may notice the difference.

It is important to pause and notice these positive effects.

If you find this difficult, doing a little less multitasking can help. Try to focus only on what you are doing, which in this case is your habit. Questions that can help you unpack what a habit gives you include:

1. What thought drives my action? A habit often follows a particular thought. “I am bored” or “I am hungry”, for example, can lead to walking to the fridge and getting food.

2. Do I feel it somewhere in my body? Does any tension disappear, for example, or appear?

3. Does my emotional state change? Do I feel rushed? Or the opposite?

What a habit costs you

A bad habit can have many costs. Not just money, but time or attention too.

With consumption habits such as Starbucks, cigarettes or daily alcohol, this is easy to work out. Take a typical day and multiply it by 365. That gives you a reasonable estimate of the annual cost.

Suppose you buy a Red Bull at the petrol station every day for €2.45. That costs you almost €650 a year. You could spend that money on plenty of nicer things. To really become aware of it, pay for these things from a separate budget or in cash. You can also turn it around: every day you do NOT indulge in a certain habit, put the money in a savings jar. At the end of the month, you can spend it on something fun.

You can do the same exercise with time. This can be even easier, because tools like RescueTime or Digital Wellbeing, which is probably already on your phone, automatically track the time you waste on your phone and so on.

For things such as travel time, you can calculate it the same way as the Red Bull example.

Write it down

What you write down stays with you. There is a reason your grandparents write down and keep their recipes. They are a library of knowledge you can always return to.

They often include notes on things to watch out for, variations, tips and tricks.

You can extend this principle: make a recipe book for everything in life!

It can be as easy as buying a notebook and starting to write. Start small!

I use Obsidian for this. It lets you write in Markdown, add daily notes and organize your notes with tags.

Remembering to keep doing something

Another problem is simply forgetting to do something. Personally, I struggle with this most in the morning.

How can you solve it? In two ways: practise, or introduce another anchor.

Introduce an anchor

An anchor can act as a reminder. You attach a new habit to another action, like an anchor.

The trick is to do it after that other action, so the action serves as a reminder.

The habit you introduce can be a physical habit or a thought. The best way to phrase it is:
“After _, then _.”

Here are some examples:

• After my feet touch the floor in the morning, I tell myself it is going to be a lovely day.

• After I take off my coat, I hang it on the coat rack.

• After I walk into the kitchen for the first time in the morning, I get a glass of water.

Make sure you choose a specific endpoint to attach your new action to. “After I exercise” is not specific enough: when exactly is that finished? After you shower? When you walk through the front door? Make it explicit!

Practise a habit

Have you discovered that a certain habit works very well, but sometimes find it hard to remember? Practising can help too.

Practising a habit sounds silly, but it is a very effective way to remember to keep doing something. You can practise in different ways: physically or in your thoughts.

How to do it physically is self-explanatory. You can choose an anchor for this too. Often, you only realize later that you forgot a habit. That is the ideal anchor for practising it a few times.

You can also prepare mentally. Run through the trigger and picture yourself taking the desired action. Ideal for those idle moments in the car or cycling to work.

I do this myself at various moments. Cycling to work, I imagine myself answering “Water, please” when someone asks, “Would you like coffee?” On my way to swimming practice, I go over my technique.

It is a very powerful tool for moments when you would otherwise do little.

Too much effort

Sometimes something simply feels like too much effort. The trick is to make it easier.

Do not be afraid to do the silliest things to make that happen! If something works, it is not silly.

My washing machine is in the shed, for example, and I have to go outside to reach it. So I always keep the keys hanging in the utility room and a pair of slip-on Skechers ready. That makes the step of going outside to the shed to do laundry much smaller.

Be as creative as possible in setting up your environment to make everything easier.

What you can do now

Do not make it more complicated than it is! Try one tip. Small starting steps linked to another action are a good place to begin. Above all, experiment and get going. See what works for you and what does not!