Welcome back to the All About Habits blog.
The key themes this week is how I’ve used The Atomic Habits book content to ensure that my exercise regime is pretty much instinctive now.
(And I’m still working on how I’ve been getting on with my inner voice, I’ve not forgotten that bit…..)
So- the exercise habit is ticking along nicely- I kind of know this as last week there was a morning where I was unable to do it at my usual time and I felt both a bit irritated as it changed my nice morning routine and it meant I didn’t get the reward of completing it and feeling positive.
I’ve been using the ‘4 Key Stages of habit Formation’ Model in the book. It’s a model also beautifully covered in the other great Habit-focused book I’ve read- Charles Duhigg’s ‘The Power of Habits’
Put simply there are four key stages in how habits develop-
- The Cue– This triggers your brain to initiate a behavior that will bring a reward. And because the cue is the first indication that we are close to a reward, we experience…………
- The Craving -The Motivational Force behind every habit, Every craving is linked to a desire to change our internal state so we act/think to get……….
- The Response– This is the actual habit you perform- it could be a thought or an action. The Response delivers….
- The Reward-These work on two levels-They satisfy us- energy, respect, money etc- they sate the craving at least temporarily. And they teach us what rewards are worth repeating in the future- our brains are reward detectors!
Care and honesty needed here though-Are the rewards actually helpful to us? The feeling of relaxation after a cigarette? The welcome distraction of the internet to avoid a task of work?
I’m jumping ahead here but one key element of habit formation is that good habits tend to have immediate costs but long-term benefits while bad habits are the other way around. Life’s not fair is it……
After the 4 key stages come the key rules of how to tailor them to either create a new/good habit or remove an old/bad one.
So for my exercise habit-
The Cue – The Rule is ‘Make it obvious’
For me- I put out my exercise mat on my office floor and move my chair away from my desk each night so the first thing I see in the morning says ‘healthy start’.
There’s an interesting link here, anyone familiar with ‘Nudge’ theory will understand how critical our environment is as a driver of our behaviour. Around 90% of our sensory receptors are visual, so what we ‘see’ in our surroundings is hugely important -so by making our environment visually reflect healthy living we make it much easier to behave healthily. You won’t need heroic levels of will-power and self-control to stick to good habits if you structure your daily environment well….So make the cues of your good behaviours obvious.
So look around your work environment- What objects are acting as cues to good effective work behaviours? And what objects are not? Just as an example- What Cue does your mobile give? What craving does it create? What about the ‘Outlook’ icon in your taskbar?
The Craving– The Rule is ‘Make it Attractive’. This is a fascinating one and I’m going to leave it for blog 4 but the paradox here is that if I recognise that good habits essentially come with costs first, benefits later then how do I get myself craving what is essentially a costs heavy behaviour? Workout or coffee and biscuits? Important but challenging work task or internet browsing?
See you next time………