It starts with a thought

Introduction 

Last year I made the radical decision to take a break from my professional career and focus on what was my hobby and my passion besides physics and technology since my fourth term in university: The art of body control, specifically handstand balancing (see image below). For all who don’t know what hand balancing is I recommend to check out this YouTube video of Andrey Moraru who is truly a master of this art.

Luckily, the great company and the great people I work with afforded me the opportunity to pursue my dream by taking a sabbatical.

Before visiting the Paris Air Show, a handstand before the Eiffel-Tower is mandatory..

Therefore, at the beginning of the year I packed my stuff and moved from Munich to Madrid. Though I was conscious of the news about Covid-19, I scarcely thought that Europe would be forced to go into lockdown the same way China had. However, shortly after I got settled in a cute little place in Madrid downtown, I noticed the streets begin to fill with kids as schools were shut down. “Well,” I though “I guess it is good to shut down the schools and keep the kids safe.” But, ops the circus school where I attend my regular practice also closes two days later; indeed, it is called “a school” as well and is a publicly run place – how could I oversee these obvious connections?

Some days later, I am locked up just as the rest of the people with not so much space and opportunity to continue what I actually intended to do.

What felt very frustrating in the beginning turned out to liberate time and spirit to read a bunch of books that I wanted to read for a long-time .. Everybody knows how the Eisenhower matrix works: If it’s not urgent and not important, probably it’s never done. Unfortunately, reading inspiring books is a typical “very important-not so urgent” kind of activity. Finally, without the obligations of daily business, I started; and just a few books and chapters later I came cross the following phrase that made me think, really think, deeply:

“Sow a thought, reap an action, sow an action, reap a habit, sow a habit, reap a character, sow a character, reap a destiny”

It struck me that this well-known proverb has deeper meaning for our daily lives than I ever realized. Think about a smoking person whose initial though of smoking when he is young becomes a lifelong habit eventually resulting in severe health problems down the road, or a person who starts with a Instagram account just to follow a friend through her holidays and ends up with a serious procrastination problem. But there are positive examples, too. A person who decides to spend $1,000 less of his monthly income and invests into the stock-market winds up building a small fortune over 40 years of work.

While these examples are rather simplified, it appears to me that in their core they hold one important truth: The compound interest effect of good and bad actions. Just as the compound interest that can drive one into dept or riches, the constant feedback loop on one’s personality generated by positive or negative actions, forms an individual’s character and consequently a general attitude towards many things in life. And over long time, this attitude is what attracts us towards the people and opportunities in our lives, which become our life – our destiny eventually.

Make a long story short, I assume each one of us has patterns of behavior that, if sustained, would lead our life’s journey to a particular outcome. Pondering about this, some of the negative extrapolations gave me quite a chill; hence, while being in lockdown, I decided to learn more about how new habits can be built or old habits can be reserved. Looking into various books and sources, I derived the following path for myself:

1.   Chose five habits

I decided that I would like to take a period of one year and see what happens if I commit myself to developing new habits in this time. After choosing this time span, two questions followed, namely: How many habits are meaningful for one year and how long should I stick with one. Many sources state that a habit is formed within 20 days dedication and fortified with 20 days more. Adding a safety margin of 20 days, gives a total of 60 days or 2 months. Using 2 months per habit would allow 6 habits per year, but I thought that having at least a week between two habits to prepare for the next one, would be best, so I settled on 5 habits for the first year. One could think of doing more than one habit at the same time, but that is generally regarded as a bad idea. As Warren Buffet and Bill Gates both concluded that the one single most important thing that made them successful was “focus”, one habit at a time seems a good way to go. Multiple simultaneous habits would be bound to become a distraction.

It took me a bit of time and concentration to figure out which habits to take on. While the first one or two came easy, the next ones were more difficult. In fact, what helped a lot was to reverse the perspective and think about the little nagging things that I wanted to change about myself. For example, a habit to combat “procrastination” could be daily time-management or a regular digital detox (as a lot of our procrastination today comes from our “little, smart helpers” I assume). Writing troublesome tendencies down and then looking for habits that would “fix them” helped a lot to accelerate the search.

2.   Rank the habits

One of the very basic principles of training and teaching is: Start with the easy things first and then proceed to harder ones. A similar principle applies to building habits. Thus, it appeared meaningful to think about which habit is the easiest one for me to build and which one is the hardest. According to this judgement I ranked them and began with the easiest one.

3.   Looking for material

Ok so a list of habits, let’s start with the first – but how to start? Indeed, before taking up a habit it is necessary to find ideas, methods, little things that could be done realistically on daily basis to contribute to build up the habit. In my experience, just typing the habit into google will yield a lot of books, articles, blog posts, essentially many more possible recommendations then could ever actually be accomplished.

Thus, it is important to choose things that can work within the typical daily environment: A good balance between “things that hurt” (so that the effect can be felt) but can be done by putting in the effort and will. It’s more or less similar to the typical gym trade-off: Can I still do my reps if I put on 5 kg extra? Either there is a coach to guide or it is in one’s self-responsibility to make a proper choice. For my first habit, I ignored this fact and chose a whopping 10 (!) things that I wanted to do on a daily basis. After a week it became apparent that it was too much and had to be reduced to 4 things that I can do realistically, and so I had to start over again..

4.   Commit to a habit for 60 days

.. the last part is also the hardest one: Actively doing the things that will bring out a new, wonderful habit. Whatever it is that helps to build the habit, it is against the “business as usually” way of live, so it hurts – but as the well-known proverb goes “if it hurts and it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger”. It is easier in the first week as there is this “day 1” mentality that Jeff Bezos likes to speak about. However from week three, it gets harder and it is essential to reserve sufficient willpower to keep on track.

Nevertheless, I found some little things that are helpful: One thing that seems obvious but is indeed worth noting is to remove as much as possible things that are in contradiction to the habit. For instance, for digital detox, it already helps to charge the phone in another room than the bedroom. Further, for things that can easily be forgotten during a hectic day, it can help to print out a custom postcard and put it in a well-visible position. Again, an example: Yoga every morning? A reminder on the bedroom door (and toilet door) will certainly help. An additional trick that helped me is to buy a calendar (a big one) and put it in a visible place, checking off every successful day. It creates some sense of accomplishment and accountability (especially if other people can see it). Having a track-record and daily reminder of progress is certainly something that gives a bit of extra push.

Conclusions

Is it something “really new” that I discovered? Probably not, but as I learned from five years of looking for a revolutionizing electric drive technology: Almost anything “innovative” or “new” that one can think of, was already thought of. If you dig deep enough, you will surely find somebody from the Soviet Union, the 18th century or perhaps ancient times who formulated ideas similar to the ones that are “invented” today. The realization or the large scale breakthrough for this idea did not happen for many reasons, maybe because of the political environment or the lack of a necessary underlying technology. And maybe, 200 years later it’s the right time, place and market for an idea to blossom.  

I believe, for me it was these months that represented the right time to rediscover what has been known to many for long. For all those who have known and executed this, you probably have better things to do then reading this article. But for all who don’t, I hope that this is a positive inspiration to remind you that our destiny lies at our hands by actively forming our own character through the good habits that we deliberately can choose and practice.