Here's what I understand about the nature of changing habits:
- The brain follows the path of least resistance.
- Changing habits is hard.
- Change is difficult without feedback.
- It takes a month to get through withdrawal or for a new habit to stick.
With my experience of applying Process Reflection to my work on software development teams, and attempting to apply the ideas to my personal life, here are some tips for changing habits.
Monthly Reflection
When it comes to changing habits, I schedule the first of the month for reflection. This is something I learned from Process Reflection in Extreme Programming. Improving how you work every month leads to continuous improvement. Without being explicit about a routine schedule, it's easy for time to pass without improvement. Scheduled reflection is important for identifying what needs improvement, and for assessing the changes in the past month.Because it takes a few weeks to break through the "tough period" before a habit is broken, you want to focus on any habit change for at least a month.
1 Habit at a Time
Change is really hard. From my experience, it's practically impossible to take on more than one habit at a time. It takes too many resources.Working on multiple habits at the same time also makes it difficult to assess whether any one habit was successful. Let's say I suffer from headaches, so I decide to start jogging, and stop drinking caffeine. Let's say my headaches don't go away. Was it because the jogging helped, but the caffeine made is worse? Or neither made a difference? Or either would have helped, but the combination was a new headache generator?
Collaborate
It's much easier to plan and problem solve with other people. In your scheduled monthly reflection, find a friend or mentor to do this with. Ideally, both of you are using reflection to change your habits.Reduce Commitment Thresholds
The brain follows the path of least resistance. You want to reduce commitment thresholds to make it more likely for you to do what you should be doing. That's one reason to only work on 1 habit a time.With regard to the 1 habit, I consider them "experiments". I tell my self that I'm going to commit to a 30-day experiment to run 3 times a week, rather than acquire a new habit to run 3 times a week for the rest of my life. At the end of the 30 days, I'll assess whether to continue with the habit. So the 30 days is short enough for me to commit to, and long enough for the habit to stick.
Here's another example of lowering the commitment threshold. In my example above (running 3 times a week). What exactly am I committing to? If I usually go for 40-minute runs, am I committing to running for 40 minutes 3 times a week? That seems like a hard thing to commit to. How could I reduce the commitment threshold? How about committing to running for 20 minutes 3 times a week. Can I take this further? What's the minimum I would need to commit to to change my behavior? How about committing to putting on my running shoes and walking to the end of the block (at the end of the block, I can decide whether to run) 3 times a week.
I actually made the above commitment to running. One day, it was raining. I almost didn't run, but because I had reduced the commitment threshold so low, I put on my running shoes and walked to the end of the block...and despite the rain, I went on a run.
Leverage Accountability
Because the brain follows the path of least resistance, it is sometimes not enough to just lower commitment thresholds. It helps if you can "trick" your brain. The trick is to setup a consequence so that the path of least resistance becomes doing what you should be doing.I've been talking about using Amazon's Mechanical Turk for weeks to Alistair to come up with a company name. To ensure this would happen, I told Alistair that I would have it done by the end of next week, or I would eat a can of dog food. I was really surprised when I found out that you need a U.S. credit card to use Mechanical Turk. Without my commitment, my plan would have come to a halt. I found ways to get around this obstacle. Obstacles become much smaller once eating dog food is on the line.
Here are a few tips to leverage accountability:
- Make your commitment public.
- Select someone you respect that you would not want to disappoint. Additionally, this person should be someone who will hold you to your consequence if you fail to meet your commitment.
- Select a consequence that is more painful than what you should be doing, but not so painful that you can't commit to it, or follow through with it if you fail to meet your commitment.