Habits

In my experience, the best way to get something done on a regular basis is to "make it a habit". By "habit", I mean that certain activities should be done at standard times of the day.

The human will is honestly pretty weak. Left alone, we'll naturally drift away from the things that need to get done. Thus, any outside agents that will allow us to get things done with a lower level of willpower should be welcome[1].

For example, when I was younger, I had an incredibly difficult time brushing my teeth every day. But at some point I realized that unless I get into a habit of brushing my teeth, "bad things" should happen to my mouth down the line. I decided that I would consistently brush my teeth directly before going to bed, and make this a pattern.

In the beginnning, I only had about a 70% success rate. I still had spells where I wouldn't brush my teeth for 3 days straight. I struggled, but kept at it. At some point, it became completely natural for me to brush my teeth each night, and now it feels completely wrong for me to not brush my teeth before bed. I've expanded this further, and I now brush my teeth once in the morning after showering (which itself is a habit now), and floss, brush, and rinse my teeth (with fluoride) before sleeping.

The exact way in which I successfully made this into a habit is somewhat unknown to me. "Just keep doing it until it sticks" sounds like a completely flawed way of going about it, yet in hindsight this seems like what I did. My attempt would fail, and I'd tweak something and try again. Or my attempt would fail, and I'd try to find another intrinsic motivator and try again. Perhaps the key is to truly believe that the habit I'm trying to form is important and valuable to me. It's pretty undeniable that brushing my teeth is super important, in terms of health, appearance, and also finances[2].

Dental activities are not the only habit that I've successfully formed. The most prominent one is my gym routine. I go to the gym 3 times a week after work at well defined times (usually around 8:30pm), on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday/Saturday (depending on my fatigue level). Working out is an annoying and painful routine, and making it a habit that I believe in has been a boon to my attendance rate. It also helps that the program I am on is a very regular, well defined routine.

For a few months last year, I wrote a blog every night from around 11pm to 1am (in Japanese). However, I quickly realized that this routine was suboptimal. I've decided to adopt a different habit this time around; one that I believe is superior.

My current attempt is to wake up at 7am and write a blog (in English) before going to work. My mind is sharp at this time, and productivity should be high. On top of that, the need to wake up at 7am naturally leads to me needing to go to sleep by midnight. The pieces of the puzzle come into place, so to speak.

I have a professional and personal need to improve my writing ability, so the underlying reason to form this habit is very real. If I didn't have such a need, and blogging was a "would be nice" kind of thing in my life, then I imagine that elevating this into a regular habit would be much more difficult.

Today, on day 1 of this new attempt at a habit, I succssfully woke up at 7am. I successfully wrote this blog, and will hopefully be able to repeat the performance tomorrow. If I fail, I fail. I'll figure out what went wrong and what extra help I can give myself so that I will have a better chance at succeeding next time.

As long as I believe that this is important, I'm confident I'll make it happen one way or another.

[1] Others include peer pressure, a room without a computer, a clean desk, etc.

[2] Dental bills are not cheap!