Day 4 -Habit Management

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.” — James Clear

Three years ago, if you had asked me what I thought about having a structure and repeating the same things day after day, I’d have yawned in your face. “Boring,” I would have said. I very much dislike comfort and thrive on doing different things as frequently as I can. Or, so I thought. 

The moment I starting developing good habits is the moment I started to build real momentum and thrive like never before. And when it comes to learning anything, there’s no escaping good habits and setting up good systems. 

Here are three ways to get better at managing your habits:

1. Track the doing or non-doing of your habits.

Here’s a template I built and use weekly for tracking habits:

Built in Notion

I rotate the habits regularly. Sometimes there are fewer, sometimes there are more. A lot of times, if I’m at the end of the day and I still have a few things to do, I feel an urge to check those boxes! It has been quite game-changing for me.

The hardest one from my list, as you might guess, is the grouping of all the bad habits into a single bucket. If I do a single bad habit on a given day, I can’t check that box. That, my friends, is hard!

“The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.” — Charles Duhigg

2. Know your why

We explored this in module 1 when we discussed finding your purpose for learning. For self-awareness, it’s not that different.

“What is your burning desire?”, as Napoleon Hill would say. Why do you do what you do? Most people can’t properly answer that.

In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, The Little Prince, the little prince asks the railway signalman where people are going when they get off the train, noticing how much in a hurry they were. The signalman tells him. “They are pursuing nothing at all.” (The Little Prince, Wordsworth Editions, 1995, chapter twenty-two, page 85)

I like this metaphor. In adulthood, many we seek jobs without meaning. We don’t know why we do what we do. We work to make money. So what? Boring if you ask me. There’s more to life than that!

When you know why you do what you do, you can more properly decide which habits are good and which habits are bad for you. Until then, you are just like these train passengers who are going nowhere at all.

3. Shape your environment

Your environment is the most powerful factor in your success or failure in keeping your habits. You think you have control over your own actions, but that’s simply not true. No mind is strong enough to resist the urge to do your bad habit if it’s right there in front of you at all times.

When I can’t control myself playing video games, I make it impossible for me to play them. I leave my Nintendo Switch at the office or in the mailbox.

If you’re addicted to porn (many are but won’t admit it), there are apps to block your favourite websites. Let someone else set the password so you’ll never be able to unlock them ever again!

Be aware of the impact your environment has on you. Brainstorm what you can change to help you with your habits — good or bad.