Our struggle and opportunity with habits

Yesterday I was reading 'The compound effect', by Darren Hardy and thought about combining these thoughts with learnings from 2 other books that touch upon 'habits'. Habits can be a nasty animal.

The Compound Effect outlines the impact, compounded over a lifetime. I strongly believe in it, as I feel the impact of destroying some of my bad habits and learning new good habits about 3 years ago. It says 'Habits are like trees: the older they get, the harder to uproot them'.

So how long you have this habit certainly matters, but also how complex it is. On average changing habits takes 67 days (from 'the one thing', another book...). I did some tests myself:

SIMPLE HABITS I EXPERIMENTED WITH:

• Brushing my teeth with my left hand instead of my right: about 2 days
• Respecting the speed limit while driving: 1 week
• Drinking more water during the day: about 3 weeks

COMPLEX/OLD/DIFFICULT HABITS I EXPERIMENTED WITH

• Work out 3 times a week, consistently on fixed days: about 2 months
• Habitual use of an advanced self-management system, managing emails, tasks and weekly agenda: 6 months
• Consistently take notes in Evernote: 8 months
• Going to bed at 9.30pm, waking up at 5am, every day: 1 year
• Stay calm when kids cry and consume all your energy: 8 months or a bit longer (this was so hard)
• Listen while people talk: >1 year (and still ogoing; it's very old... :-))...

Poor Charlie's Almanack has an expression I like very much

The rare life that is wisely lived has in it many good habits maintained and many bad habits avoided or cured - Charles Munger

So the good news is that the power of habits is also valid for good habits. If your good habits have strong roots, it's very hard to go back. But it takes energy to get there (think about the many new year's resolutions that fail).

Time, persistence, yes. But if you read 'The power of habit', you will learn that a habit has 3 steps:

1. Cue (starting signal that makes you craving)
2. Routine (execution)
3. Reward

For example: If you see a bag of chips or candies (seeing it is the cue) or smell pizza (smelling can also be a cue), it's very hard to resist this craving (if you do this often, it might be a bad routine/habit). The reward is the taste of course. Probably one of the most difficult bad habits is smoking...

So age and complexity of habits, yes. But there are many tricks to avoid bad ones by taking away the cues and stimulate the good ones by creating cues (for example put the cross-trainer in your living room so you see it often). Want to read more? Surround yourself with books. Want to eat less sweets? Never buy them, instead of buying less.

Let's summarize the learnings of these books:

• Avoid bad habits in the first place. Curing them comes second.
• Cure bad habits by taking away the cues as much as you can. Find the cue. Every bad habit has a cue.
• Stimulate good habits by inserting cues as much as you can, and certainly persist until the good habit has strong roots. Think about this during new year: 2 months of gym is not enough, you'll lose it.
• Realise that, compounded over a lifetime, it has a dramatic impact on your life... I already feel it after 2 years...

I am very curious to learn about your bad habits (or good ones if you prefer :-). Have you read these books? Let me know by commenting below!